Harmonica Basics Pdf
Florene Pothoven
After searching around on instructables, I didn't find any complete harmonica tutorials. There are quite a few good ones around the internet, but I thought there should be an instructable.
So. The harmonica is one of the easiest instruments to play, it sounds really cool, and can be used for a variety of musical styles. All right, maybe not too many musical styles, but it's fun to play anyway. So. Here we go.
Playing "bends" using the TILT Method
Start with the #4 draw (you can pick any note to start with but the general consensus seems to be that #4 draw is easiest). Remember that you must change the angle of the airflow over the reed to "bend" the note. So let's cheat a little bit and alter the angle of the harmonica rather than alter the airflow angle by changing your mouth, tongue, and throat. Hold the harmonica by the ends and then while playing a clean #4 draw. Tilt the back of the harmonica up towards your nose. Make sure that when you tilt the harmonica up that you continue to draw the air through the harmonica though you hadn't tilted it up.
- Do not let your head, mouth, and tongue follow the angle of the harmonica with your airstream, or you negate the effect of tilting the harmonica in the first place.
- REMEMBER: You must change the angle of airflow across the reed to make the note bend. This trick of physically tilting the harmonica up, will create the same change of angle that you must eventually learn to do with your mouth, tongue, and embouchure. If the harmonica pops out of your mouth, start over and make sure you have the harmonica placed far enough into your mouth so that it won't pop out.
- TILTING TIPS: The reed in each hole requires a different angle to achieve a bend. Generally speaking these angles look like this:
Hole #4 draw takes about a 45 degree change of airflow angle.
Hole #2 draw takes almost a 75 to 90 degree change of airflow angle
to get it to bend down a whole step.
Hole #3 draw takes an angle somewhere in between 45 and 90 degrees.
Experiment with the tilting technique until you get a change in pitch. When you start getting a "bend" stay with it until you can make a noticeable change in pitch. If you just can't seem to get #4 draw to "bend"....go ahead and try a different hole. If one practice session doesn't yield any "bends", call it a day and come back tomorrow. But whatever you do, don't give up.
Playing "bends" Without Tilting the Harmonica (recommended)
After you have reached the point of being able to get "bends" using the tilting method, it's time to start learning how to get the same sound without tilting. Tilting is OK to get the idea of "bends", but you won't be able to play very many songs if you're constantly tilting the harmonica around. You now must learn to change the shape of your mouth and tongue to simulate the same change in airflow that you got by tilting the harmonica. This is the most difficult harmonica technique to describe in words (and different people describe the same process differently) but here goes.
-Start by playing a single, clean, draw note.
-Push your lower jaw forward just a tiny bit.
-Push the tip of your tongue against your front bottom teeth.
-Arch your tongue towards the roof of your mouth.. (but don't arch so much that you cut off your ariflow).
-Draw (pull the air) a bit harder to compensate for the sharp airflow angle caused by your jaw and tongue changes.
-Caution: Don't draw too hard or you will move past "draw bend" to "overdraw bend".
-Do 2,3,4, and 5 as close to simultaneously as possible.
-Listen for the change in pitch (the "bend").
-Congratulations!
-Immediately after the bend, relax you jaw relax your tongue
-Return your tongue to it's regular place (at the bottom of your mouth)
Continue the draw, and the note should return to it's usual clean single note sound.
Your harmonica might have more than one key printed on it. On one side it probably says C, but on the other side, it might say G. Which key is it in? Your harmonica is technically in C, but you can play a different type of scale in the key of G.
The natural position of the harmonica (in this case, the key of C) is called first position or straight harp. Second position, or cross harp, is the key a fifth up from first position (G).
Why use different positions? Two reasons. First, they allow you to play in multiple keys on one harmonica. Second, it allows you two play scales other than the standard major scale. For example, if I wanted to play a blues scale in C, I would use a harmonica in the key of F.
Each position is a fifth up from the next. So, on a C harmonica, 1st position would be in the key of C, 2nd in G, 3rd in D, 4th in A, and 5th in E. You will rarely use anything beyond fifth position, and you will usually stick to 1, 2, and 4.
Rockin Ron told me that he gets quite a few technical support questions about replacement reed plates. The harmonica looks like a simple instrument but once you have taken it apart for the first time, you realize how important all the little details can be!
In my early days as a player, the only maintenance advice I got was to soak my instruments in beer, often from those who had already soaked themselves. I resisted. Just as well, my Marine Band combs would have suffered.
The most common problem is a note refusing to sound. Excess spit is often the cause. Bang the instrument against the heel of your hand several times, then breathe in and out rapidly over the offending hole.
Another common problem is a reed which suddenly goes way out of tune. Bad news here. The reed has cracked at the base, and either it, or the harmonica needs to be replaced. Most go for the latter. With steady playing, a harmonica should go at least 6 months before a reed goes bad. Modern harmonicas seem to last much longer than the older ones.
So. Next time some lazy money heads your way, buy a harmonica toolkit. Then get an old harmonica, watch the Hohner videos, then try setting the reed gaps, using the proper tools. Correct gapping greatly improves harmonica performance.
2. THE BLUES PROGRESSION: In order to jam along with jam tracks and eventually play with other people, you'll need to learn how to navigate the 12-bar blues progression. If you've never had any formal musical training, relax! I'll guide you with a lesson called Counting and Playing 12-bar blues. Once you've got a handle on that, the best way of owning it is to pick up some jam tracks and wail along. As a newbie, you have a limited repertoire of licks, including bits and pieces of the songs you worked through in Step 1. But the most important part of improvising for a newbie is just....making stuff up, with a beat behind you. Babbling like a small child. Blues is a language; you're easing your way into a new language. You'll gain useful pointers about improvisation from a lesson called Harmony for Improvisation I And you'll accumulate new licks if you begin to listen to, and imitate (however badly!) the great players I discuss in Step 9, "Tracking the Greats."
3. BENDS AND THE BLUES SCALE: Bends are the heart of blues harmonica. They are the wails and moans; the crying sounds. Bends are produced by narrowing the airstream in your mouth in a way that lowers the pitch of a note. You can learn about bending at the page called How to Bend Notes and on the FAQs page. The most important bend for a beginner (included in the Beginner's Deluxe package, above) is explained in a video and tab called Bending the 4 Draw. Here are some lessons that help you master that bend. "Down Home" is somewhat easier than the other two:
Finally, and crucially, you need to learn how to string all three bends--the 2, 3, and 4 draw--into a single line of notes called the Blues Scale. This is an EXTREMELY important element of blues harmonica playing. There's actually a "mournful" blues scale called the Minor Pentatonic Scale and a "sweet" blues scale called the Major Pentatonic Scale. I call them the Blues Scale and the Country Scale. Good blues players know how to dance between the two scales in interesting ways. (Note: the tab for these two lessons is the same; it includes both scales.)
That's a lot of material for one step! Take your time. You'll finding yourself circling back to this material for years to come, if you keep playing the harmonica that long. Even pro harp guys like me practice the 2, 3, and 4 draw bends every single day.
4. TONGUE BLOCKING: There are two very different ways of producing notes on the harmonica: lip pursing (also called "puckering") and tongue blocking. Most beginners use lip pursing. Lip pursing means fattening and your lips and narrowing the inner part of your "pucker" into a hole, as though you were going to whistle, then playing single notes through that opening. Tongue blocking, on the other hand, means putting your tongue directly on the harmonica and playing through one or both corners of your mouth--i.e., on one or both sides of your tongue. Virtually all of the great Chicago blues players used tongue blocking: Little Walter, Big Walter, James Cotton, Junior Wells.
I learned as a lip purser and played that way for the first ten years. Then, at the insistence of my teacher, Nat Riddles, I added the tongue blocking technique. What a revelation! Tongue blocking adds power, solidity, and a world of new sounds to any blues harmonica player's toolkit. YOU MUST LEARN TO TONGUE BLOCK! But you DON'T need to tongue block 100% of the time. (Some other harp pros disagree with me. They believe in 100% tongue blocking.) In any case, you'll get a good introduction to tongue blocking technique in my lesson called Tongue Blocking 1. You should also visit the Modern Blues Harmonica forum and check out some of the (contentious!) threads devoted to this debate.
5. GROOVES: A groove is, in essence, a beat. It's a particular way of constructing and locking in to a beat. It's the rhythmic feel of a song. Don't confuse groove with tempo! Tempo is simply the SPEED of a song: the beats-per-minute or BPM. Grooves, especially blues grooves, have names: shuffle, two-beat, swing, slow blues, funky, rock, New Orleans, swamp. Blues players often specify BOTH the tempo and a groove, along with the key: "Give me a medium shuffle in G." Or "Give me a fast two-beat in E."
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