Literature
Alfred Förtsch
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1. The instrument
The classic source is Steve Baker's Harp Handbook:
Steve Baker, The Harp Handbook (ISBN-10: 0711949190)
A wealth of information about the harmonica can also be found on Pat Missin's website.
2. Musical acoustics
A comprehensive popular science introduction to the physics of musical instruments has been posted on the web by the Australian University UNSW.
A standard among scientific textbooks is the book by Fletcher and Rossing, published in 1998 in 2nd edition, which offers a comprehensive overview of all types of instruments. Much emphasis is placed on a clean mathematical presentation in Chaigne and Kergomard's textbook published in French in 2008 and in English in 2016. This also applies to the 2004 published script by Rienstra and Hirschberg, which can be downloaded from the site of the University of Eindhoven: Link.
Fletcher, Neville H., and Thomas Rossing. The physics of musical instruments.
Chaigne, Antoine, and Jean Kergomard. Acoustique des instruments de musique. Belin, 2008.
Chaigne, Antoine, and Jean Kergomard. Acoustics of musical instruments. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2016.
Rienstra, S. W., Hirschberg, A.: An instroduction to acoustics. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (2004)
Chaigne, Antoine, and Jean Kergomard. Acoustics of musical instruments. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2016.
Rienstra, S. W., Hirschberg, A.: An instroduction to acoustics. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (2004)
3. The vocal tract
What happens in the mouth during bending? On YouTube you can find videos by and with David Barrett, who was filmed bending in the MRI tube:
Video Footage of MRI Harmonica Bending Study with David Barrett and Stanford University
The Study: MRI Harmonica Bending Study with David Barrett and Stanford University (part 1 to 4)
The scientific paper on this research can be downloaded from the Acoustical Society of America site: Link.
Egbert, Peter R., et al. "Real-tiime magnetic resonance imaging of the upper airways during harmonica pitch bends." Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics ICA2013. Vol. 19. No. 1. Acoustical Society of America, 2013.
The resonance properties of the vocal tract and their role in speech production were first studied in detail by Fant:
Fant, Gunnar. Acoustic theory of speech production: with calculations based on X-ray studies of Russian articulations. Vol. 2. Walter de Gruyter, 1971.
4. Physics of the blues harmonica
Own articles on the physics of the blues harp with detailed bibliographies can be found on the Essays page.