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Does anyone here play harmonica?


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Today I remembered that I have three, picked up at flea markets in England years ago, so I dug them out and started surfing around for lessons. They are all Hohners - a Marine Band in Bb (good for blues in F), and a Pro Harp and Echo in G (good for blues in D). The first two have ten holes and the long Echo has two rows of 24 holes :eek:! I'm curious about this, I must say....will be surfing soon.

 

 

So, if anyone has any tips, pointers, thoughts, humorous anecdotes...............

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Posted

Today I remembered that I have three, picked up at flea markets in England years ago, so I dug them out and started surfing around for lessons. They are all Hohners - a Marine Band in Bb (good for blues in F), and a Pro Harp and Echo in G (good for blues in D). The first two have ten holes and the long Echo has two rows of 24 holes
:eek:
! I'm curious about this, I must say....will be surfing soon.



So, if anyone has any tips, pointers, thoughts, humorous anecdotes...............

 

Paul, might you not do better here? http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forumdisplay.php?95-Woodwinds-Brass-and-Harmonica

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Posted

Today I remembered that I have three, picked up at flea markets in England years ago, so I dug them out and started surfing around for lessons. They are all Hohners - a Marine Band in Bb (good for blues in F), and a Pro Harp and Echo in G (good for blues in D). The first two have ten holes and the long Echo has two rows of 24 holes
:eek:
! I'm curious about this, I must say....will be surfing soon.



So, if anyone has any tips, pointers, thoughts, humorous anecdotes...............

The Echo sounds like a chromatic harmonica (the kind Stevie Wonder and Larry Adler used to play) - playable in all keys, I think. (I believe the second row is detuned slightly to give a "chorus" or "tremelo" effect.)

The others are diatonic ones, as used for blues (in "cross-harp" keys, as you say).

With a diatonic harmonica, you get the tonic chord when you blow, and a mix of dominant and subdominant when you suck (and I don't mean that word as in "play badly" :D). With blues, it's the reverse, of course: because you want a dominant-type sound (with a b7) for the tonic chord. The other advantage for blues is that's it quite easy to flatten notes even more by sucking vigorously - AFAIK, blowing harder doesn't flatten quite as effectively.

 

I have no humorous anecdotes; although you might like a couple of colloquial terms for blues harmonica: "tin sandwich" and "gob iron" are my favourites. "Mississippi saxophone" is another.

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Posted

Paul, might you not do better here?
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forumdisplay.php?95-Woodwinds-Brass-and-Harmonica

 

Thanks, but it's a very quiet forum indeed.

 

 

I managed to sound a clean and clear major scale yesterday! It's an interesting instrument....

 

 

Roll up! Roll up! Step this way! Welcome to the wonderful world of spittle :):

 

 

http://harmonicasessions.com/?p=179

 

 

The secret is having a willingness to....kind of....kiss yourself. The note set-up on a ten-hole diatonic harmonica is interesting. Blowing produces sequences of major 1, 3, 5, and drawing....doesn't.

 

Diagram attached.

 

An Ab would be extremely handy for blues playing, but for some reason it got left off. Never mind. I can simply bend an A down half a step :).

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An Ab would be extremely handy for blues playing, but for some reason it got left off. Never mind. I can simply bend an A down half a step
:)
.

Precisely. That's quite easy if sucking (sorry, "drawing" does kind of sound more polite doesn't it...)

Remember these instruments weren't designed for blues (any more than guitar was ;)).

 

Let me introduce you to the new member of our teaching staff, Professor Williamson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELLV-qzSgIo&feature=related

- pay particular attention from 2:08...

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Posted

Chromatic harmonicas allow easier access to all 12 notes of the chromatic scale than diatonic harmonicas, however some things are easier to play in certain keys than others even on chromatic - for example C major arpeggios, C# major arpeggios, lines in Bb major, etc. That is why chromatic harmonicas are available in various tunings, in addition to the popular C major/C# major (the two scales combined to create the chromatic scale on this particular type of chromatic harmonica): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_harmonica

 

I'm not sure which tunings are used by Toots and Stevie Wonder on their chromatics. Both are such legends it almost doesn't matter to me.

 

Howard Levy was the first diatonic harmonica player to blow me (lol, no pun intended) away, accessing chromatic notes with his "overblow" technique to bend notes UP as well as the more familiar and easier-to-execute downward bends. I never did figure out how to overblow. The main advantage for Levy over the chromatic was the greater note bending range in either direction. He uses custom harmonicas made by Joe Filisko. He's been known to use as many as three different diatonic harmonicas (different keys) during a jazz solo.

 

Some custom harmonica makers if you seriously get hooked and want to check out pro quality harmonicas: http://www.harmonicalinks.com/repairs.html

 

I don't play harmonica anymore but it was a fun little ride.

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Posted

Thanks for that video link, Jon! Now just how cool is THAT?

 

Girevik....

 

I'm not sure how long my ride will be, but it's fun at the moment. Just a few minutes with a harp between the lips and....it's pretty awesome. Flicking the tongue around whilst blowing and drawing produces incredble sonic nuances. I can "talk" to myself whilst playing....and it sounds like talking. It's so easy to get a "vocoder" effect, which could be run through a music program and synthesized into....

 

One needs no talent or experience on this instrument to make it a viable part of the musical palette with which one experiments.

 

 

Of course, there's no substitute for the showmanship of "Professor Williamson"!

 

 

How do these guys do that?

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

At the moment I'm enjoying applying my theory knowledge to the harmonica (I'll call it a "harp" when I can bend down to Ab :)). It involves a totally different mindset to the one we have for guitar, in a physical sense.

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Posted

Sorry to keep harping on....:).

 

 

As an ear-training tool, if nothing else, the harmonica is excellent! It's impossible to watch what you're doing, so the only way forward is by listening. I've decided to start with my ten-hole diatonic G major Pro Harp, mainly because the holes are a bit bigger than those on the Marine band Bb.

 

Hole one produces a G with a blow, but the major scale starts on the G blown at hole four. As a beginner, I have to fumble around to make sure I'm starting the major scale on the right note. It's possible to count up from the bottom hole with the tip of the tongue but I've decided not to do this. I sound the low G and then go to locate the next G four holes up, by ear alone.

 

By learning to play harmonica in this way, my ears will get a serious dose of training!

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Posted

Just play to a song that's the right Key for your harmonica and you're golden.

 

My 11 year old daughter jams with my son and I all the time at the house or by the fire. She has a C harmonica, and we play a slow C->Am->F->G progression and she sounds like a pro.

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Thanks for the tip, Mike ^^^^. I'll be trying out straight harp as soon as I can move around the notes comfortably.

 

Meanwhile....

 

 

It's official! I am now learning to play blues harp.

 

I can dispense with the term "harmonica" now because I've just executed my first note bend - a draw bend, down, at hole six.

 

This a totally cool experience even though it doesn't sound at all bluesy. The draw bend at hole six drops an E, the sixth of the key (I'm on a G harp), to D#....or at the moment somewhere possibly quite close to it :). So I'll stay with this for now to get the technique entrenched in my mind and body. Then I'll head for the half-step draw bend on hole three to give me the b7 F in the IV7 chord G. Then it will be the half-step bend down from a D to the third of the V chord, drawing at hole two.

The same hole offers a further downward half-step bend to the V chord's flatted third.

 

I'm mainly posting about this because learning blues harp adds a whole new dimension to the application of theory, so I'm recommending it as part of general musical study. If I didn't know any theory, I reckon I'd have given up the quest at the second web site I visited in the hunt for info.

 

So....

 

....we have the ear-training aspect, and an additional way to make use of music theory. Both are bound to help me improve on guitar, as I see it. Plus, probably, a positive psychological boost to the musical ego! All for a small amount of money.

 

And it's a blast!

 

Figuring out how to play a major scale with clear, clean single notes took about five minutes. The first bend came after four ten-minute sessions, which followed a LOT of study on the web.

 

 

It's all downhill from that point!

 

 

Do you think white brogues will be okay with a black suit :)?

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Posted

Just got my first draw bends on holes four and two! Look at the times of this and the previous post - this doesn't take long - if you believe!

 

I just knocked out my first riff - hole two blown, then drawn, then bent down and held, then eased back up to a series of gentle blows. This is blues!

 

I reckon the guitar and the harp are close cousins, and am sure it will pay to learn both.

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