Leeneia,

sorry I left just when things started poppin'....man's gotta sleep sometime and my time had come. in answer to your question regarding "bending" notes. I think perhaps I can illuminate that term a little better for you using two instruments common to blues: guitar and harmonica (harp).

with a guitar, let us say I have just struck the 4th tone in the key of C and I wish to raise it to the 5th and use the #4/b5 tone on the passage to the 5th. I would physically bend the string upwards, which makes the note sharper by shortening the string, bending through F# and holding the note when it has risen to the G (5th....I would probably also do a finger vibrato to the held 5th to force the note to continue sustaining and --as we say-- put a little "grease" on it)....eventually, I would "release" the bend and slowly allow the note to return to the perfect 4th where I had started my bend. there are a number of ways to acheive all of these pitch changes and I described but one....you could also raise the 4th to the b5 to the 5 and back by sliding that finger through the adjacent frets. most of us prefer to bend the note.

with a harp you are doing much the same thing in principle but it isn't so clear cut in practice. using differing amounts of blown or sucked air pressure one physically forces the reed to leave its normal position and modulate a half or whole step (in one direction or another? see below). not all reeds will bend the same amount but good players know which reeds on which particular harps will bend and how far to push them. I am far from expert on this instrument and I'm sure that some of the players I work with regularly could explain the technique much better than I....but that is the essence of the matter when we refer to "bending" a note......

something just occurred to me that I should mention, the process of bending a note on guitar only makes the note more sharp (we are making the string shorter with our manipulation) to one degree or another....but I really don't know if that is also true of harp. perhaps someone who plays much more than I do could answer that question: is it possible to make a note flatter with harp....I'm speaking of a single bent reed?

bird

btw., I have a sister with an unusual name as well: Anenia (we call her "nenie")....so your name does not seem "that" unusual to me.