The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #11431 Message #85045
Posted By: bseed(charleskratz)
08-Jun-99 - 09:15 PM
Thread Name: Learning the Harmonica (Blues Style)
Subject: RE: Learning the Harmonica (Blues Style)
Books I've worked with are Jon Gindick's "Country and Blues Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless," from Klutz Press, naturally: a book (moderately useful), a tape (very useful), and a harmonica (C) --you can't play harmonica without one.
David Harp also has a bunch of books and tapes--and travels around the country giving workshops. Again, his tape (or his workshop) is more useful than his bood (he does have a good one on music theory, aimed at folk/blues players, but probably as good a brief introduction to the subject as there is).
But the best thing of all is to try playing along other musicians--I worked from the books and tapes mentioned above for years, but it wasn't until I started playing regularly with a group that I started getting good.
Note that blues harmonica is usually played with a harp keyed in the subdominant of the key you want to play in: To play in G you use a C harmonica (my own favorites are Lee Oskars because it's very easy to bend notes on them from the first, while most Hohners have to be broken in a bit for the bends to become easy). Use a G for the key of D, a D for the key of A, an A for E, etc. If you are playing C harmonica in G, draw on any of the first four holes when the chord is G; when it's C or C7, blow on the 4th hole or above, and when it's D or D7, draw on the 5th or sixth holes. Start with that and work in more range as you go.
More on harmonicas: I like the Lee Oskars for the reasons noted above, and also because they have a plastic comb (the core of the harp is shaped like a comb with big teeth). Wooden combs tend to swell up a bit with moisture, particularly hot waterwhich is useful for removing food particles, moustache hairs, fragments of skin, dried up spit, and so on from your harps. The Big River harmonicas by Hohner also have plastic combs, and are less expensive than Hohner blues harps.
For music other than blues, I prefer Lee Oskar Melody Maker harps--they're made to be played cross harp style, but have complete scales in the cross harp key--that is, a G MM harp is set up like a regular 10 hole C harmonica, but it has the G scale, and isn't missing the low A (a C harmonica has two low G reeds, one blow and one draw--useful in blues, but a bit of a handicap in melody playing). Also, of course, they have F# instead of F natural (F natural is important to blues in G--it's the note that turns a G major into a G7 chord.