Right you are, Murray: Gindick's Country and Blues Harp for the Musically Hopeless, David Harp's courses, etc., usually have a couple of straight tunes to be played in C, things like "Oh, Suzannah" or "Home on the Range," then they take you into blues and country playing which mostly emphasize the draw notes:

Embo, if you draw on the first four holes of your G harp you will be playing a D chord, holes 4 and 5 give you an incomplete A7 chord, and blowing on any three holes gives you a D chord. You can start playing simple blues that way: draw on holes 3 and 4 for the first four measures, blow on 3, 4, and 5 for two measures, back to the 3-4 draw for two measures, draw holes 4 aand 5 for one measure, blow 3 and 4 for a measure, draw 3 and 4 for a measure and slide up to 4 and 5 still drawing for a measure: That's a 12 bar blues complete with turnaround. You can start jazzing it up by learning to bend notes--possible on draw notes up to 6th hole, blow notes 7 to 10, pick up some blues runs from Gindick or Harp or Sebastian or someone else's course (Charlie McCoy made a great blues harp book complete with CD--only problem, there are no track breaks, so you can't repeat anything without starting the CD at the beginning all over again. I eMailed him about it, he responded that I should tape it, I told him I bought it because it was on CD so I could repeat things, he gave me his publisher's eMail, I sent them a note--and never heard a word about it and it's been about two years. Very lame, I thought and think.

Ultimately the way to learn cross harp is just to play it. I started playing along with accompaniments I played on a cheap keyboard, but it wasn't until I started playing regularly with other people (Will Work for Food--see "Do you play with a traditional band?" thread) that it really became second nature to me.

--seed