Harmonica For Dummies

Winslow Yerxa is a widely known and admired harmonica player, teacher, lecturer, and author. He has written, produced, and starred in many harmonica books and video projects. He provides private harmonica instruction both online and in person in the San Francisco Bay area. He also offers classes, interviews, and lectures via the Harmonica Collective.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Started with Harmonica 7

Chapter 1: What Is This Thing Called Harp? 9

Considering the Harmonica’s Coolness 9

Becoming the Next Harmonica Idol: What It Takes to Play 11

A harmonica 11

A little music know-how 11

Your body 12

Regular practice — and unstructured fun! 12

Taking Your Talent to the Next Level 13

Hanging Out in the Harmonica Village 14

Sharing your music with others locally 14

Visiting the repair shop and the accessory store 14

Chapter 2: Becoming a Harmonica Owner 17

Shopping for Your First Harmonica 18

Understanding the construction of the ten-hole diatonic 18

Tuning in to the key of the harp 19

Starting out with a harp in the key of C 19

Pricing a harmonica 20

Determining where to buy a harp 20

Safe and Sound: Caring for Your Harp 21

Collecting Additional Diatonic Harps 23

Purchasing popular keys 24

Expanding your range with harps in high and low keys 24

Adding Variety to Your Harmonica Kit 25

Chromatic harps 25

Tremolo and octave harmonicas 27

Making Your Harps Portable with Carrying Cases 28

Getting to Know You: Discovering How a Harmonica Works 29

Making a five-layer tin sandwich 29

Taking a closer look at the reeds that make the sound 30

Locating different notes 31

Chapter 3: Making Your First Harmonica Sounds 33

Preparing to Play the Harmonica 33

Picking up the harp 34

Putting the harp in your mouth 34

Breathing through the harp 35

Moving through the holes 35

Getting Acquainted with Some Musical Concepts 36

Zeroing in on harmonica tab 36

Counting with musical time 36

Locking in with the beat 37

Using beats as building blocks 39

Developing Your Sound 44

Expanding and sustaining your breathing 44

Cupping the harp in your hands 47

Nestling the harmonica in your mouth 50

Playing some cool rhythms 50

Chapter 4: Relating to Notes, Scales, and Chords 55

Getting in Tune with the Singable Notes 56

Understanding the curious phenomenon of octaves 56

Naming the notes and creating a scale 57

Using octaves to name all the notes 57

Altering pitches with sharps and flats 58

Measuring small distances with semitones and whole tones 59

Sizing Up Intervals 60

Counting out the size of an interval 60

Determining the quality of an interval 61

Finding the Key of a Song 62

Stepping Through Scales 63

Diatonic and chromatic scales 63

Major and minor scales 64

Modal scales 66

Altering a scale with sharps and flats 66

The Building Blocks of Chords 67

Four basic types of chords 68

Adding notes to basic triads 68

Chord progressions 69

Writing Notes Down 70

Placing notes on a staff 70

Writing sharps and flats on the staff 72

Unlocking key signatures 72

Finding harmonica notes on the staff 73

Part 2: Starting to Make Some Music 75

Chapter 5: I Hear a Melody: Playing Single Notes 77

Shaping Your Mouth to Single Out a Note 78

Forming the pucker embouchure 78

Producing a tongue-block embouchure 80

The Elements of Motion: Moving from One Note to the Next 81

Exploring breath changes 82

Finding your way with hole changes 83

Alternating breath changes and hole changes 85

Coordinating simultaneous hole changes and breath changes 86

Exploring the Three Registers of the Harmonica 87

Playing Familiar Tunes in the Middle Register 88

“Good Night, Ladies” 89

“Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” 89

“Mary Had a Little Lamb” 90

“Amazing Grace” 91

Making Your First Multi-Hole Leaps 92

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” 92

“Frère Jacques” 92

“On Top of Old Smokey” 94

Shifting up from the Middle 95

“Bunessan” (“Morning Has Broken”) 95

“Joy to the World” 96

Floating in the High Register 97

“Aura Lea” (“Love Me Tender”) 98

“She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain” 99

“Silent Night” 100

Chapter 6: Shaping Your Sound 103

Enlarging Your Sound with Projection 104

Using your air column 104

Enriching your sound with the smooth swimming exercise 104

Increasing airflow through the reeds 106

Varying your volume with dynamics 109

Projecting with your hands 110

Starting and Ending Notes with Articulation 112

Starting notes with your tongue 113

Using your throat to articulate notes 115

Initiating a note with your diaphragm 116

Shaping the Tone Color of Your Notes 118

Changing vowel sounds with your tongue 118

Brightening and darkening your sound using your hands 119

Slowly changing the sound 119

Combining hand and tongue vowels 120

Pulsating Your Notes with Vibrato 120

Diaphragm vibrato 121

Throat vibrato 122

Tongue vibrato 123

Hand vibrato 123

Synchronizing and layering pulsation 124

Chapter 7: Enhancing Your Sound with Your Tongue on the Harp 127

Using Your Tongue to Combine Chords and Melodies 128

Knowing the chords on your harp 128

Accompanying melodies with chords 129

Chasing the beat with a chord 131

Reinforcing Melody Notes with Your Tongue 132

Applying the tongue slap 133

Popping chords with pull-offs 133

Creating Chord Textures with Your Tongue 135

Alternating tongue placements to produce the chord rake 136

Lifting and replacing your tongue to play a chord hammer 137

Rapidly alternating widely spaced notes with the shimmer 138

Combining Widely Spaced Notes with Splits 139

Sticking with a locked split 139

Inching along with variable splits 140

Playing Quick and Wide Leaps with Corner Switching 145

Chapter 8: Bending Notes 149

Knowing the What and the Why of Bending 150

What is bending? 150

Why bend notes? 151

Getting Started with Bending Notes Down 151

Exploring the roof of your mouth 152

Making some helpful noises 153

Creating your bend activator with the K-spot 154

Playing your first bend 156

If at first you don’t succeed: Practicing persistence 158

Deepening Your Skills at Bending Notes Down 159

Surveying the bendable notes 159

Working through the four stages of bending control 162

Bending draw notes down in the middle register 163

Bending draw notes down in the heart of the harp — the low register 165

Bending blow notes down in the high register 170

Bending on Different Types of Harmonicas 174

Chromatic harps 174

Double reed harps 175

Chapter 9: Positions: Playing One Harp in Many Keys 177

Understanding How Positions Help Your Playing 177

Figuring Out a Position 179

Relating Positions, Modes, and Avoid Notes 181

Rocking with Six Popular Positions 182

First position (C on a C-harp) 183

Second position (G on a C-harp) 185

Third position (D on a C-harp) 188

Fourth position (A on a C-harp) 190

Fifth position (E on a C-harp) 193

Twelfth position (F on a C-harp) 195

Part 3: Growing Beyond the Basics 199

Chapter 10: Fancy Playing: Developing Flair and Speed 201

Mastering Melody from the Ground Up 202

Seeing the scale 203

Recognizing scale patterns 204

Anchoring melodies on chord notes 209

Simplifying the scale to five notes 211

Adding Ornaments to the Melody 214

Shakes 214

Rips, boings, and fall-offs 215

Grace notes 215

Developing Your Speed 216

Start slow and know each individual move 216

Learn in small chunks 217

Speed it up — slowly 217

Think and play in larger units 217

Chapter 11: Mastering New Songs 219

Understanding How Songs Work 219

The container: Structuring time 219

The shifting backdrop: Chord changes 221

The foreground: Melody 221

Choosing the Right Harp 222

What are the notes in the scale? 222

What are the notes in the chords? 223

Making It Up versus Playing It Straight 225

Learning melodies 225

Jamming on a tune 226

Trial and Error: Playing Along with Random Music 227

Chapter 12: Behind the Hidden Treasure: Bending Notes Up 229

Considering the Coolness of Overbends 230

Playing more licks, riffs, and scales 230

Playing in more keys 231

Exploring the Things to Know Before You Start 232

How to choose a suitable harmonica 232

Determining which notes overblow and overdraw 232

Preparing your mind, body, and ears 235

Getting Your First Overblows 236

The push-through approach 236

The springboard approach 238

Achieving More Overblows 239

Getting Your First Overdraws 239

Raising the Pitch of an Overbend 241

Playing overbends in tune 241

Bending overbends up241

Blending Overbends into Your Playing 242

Strengthening your overbend approaches 242

Smoothing your follow-ons 244

Part 4: Developing Your Style 245

Chapter 13: Rockin’ and Bluesin’ 247

Getting Hip to the Blues/Rock Approach 248

The Three Basic Chords of Rock-and-Roll, Blues, and Nearly Everything 249

The Three Popular Harmonica Positions 249

Relating positions to chords and scales 250

Second position and the three basic chords 250

First position 251

Third position 251

Playing Sweet Melodies in First Position 252

“Kickin’ Along” 252

“Youngish Minor” 253

“Morning Boots” 254

The 12 Bars of Blues 255

Making a statement: Tell it, brother! 255

Fitting the notes to the chords 256

Exploring 12-Bar Blues with Second Position 257

“Ridin’ the Changes” 257

Driving the rhythm with “Lucky Chuck” 258

“Buster’s Boogie” 259

Adding Minor Chords to a Progression: “Smoldering Embers” 261

Adding the Flat III and Flat VII Chords: “John and John” 263

Burning in Third Position: “Tom Tom” 264

Chapter 14: Expressing Yourself with Some Folk and Gospel Melodies 267

Sampling Some First-Position Songs 268

“Buffalo Gals” 268

“Wildwood Flower” 269

“La Cucaracha” 270

Getting Acquainted with a Few Second-Position Songs 271

“Since I Laid My Burden Down” 272

“Cluck Old Hen” 273

“Aura Lea” in second position 273

“This Train (Is Bound for Glory)” 274

Inhaling Some Third-Position Melodies 276

“Little Brown Island in the Sea” 277

“She’s Like the Swallow” 278

Exploring Folk Songs in Twelfth, Fourth, and Fifth Positions 279

“À la claire fontaine” in twelfth position 279

“The Huron Carol” in fourth position 280

“Poor Wayfaring Stranger” in fifth position 281

Chapter 15: Fiddlin’ the Night Away with Traditional Dance Tunes 283

Choosing Harps for Playing Folk and Celtic Music 284

The tremolo harmonica 284

The chromatic harmonica 285

Playing Fast Fiddle Tunes 285

Trying Out Some First-Position Tunes 286

“Jerry the Rigger” 286

“Soldier’s Joy” 287

“The Stool of Repentance” 289

Energizing Some Tunes in Second Position 290

“Over the Waterfall” 290

“Angeline the Baker” 292

“Bat Wing Leather” 294

Feeling the Excitement of Third-Position Tunes 295

“Dorian Jig” 295

“The Dire Clog” 295

Part 5: Taking It to the World 299

Chapter 16: Putting It All Together — Your Tunes, Your Band, Your Listeners 301

Putting Your Tunes Together 302

Selecting tunes for the harmonica 302

Making it your own: Arranging a tune 304

Adding vocals to your tunes 306

Making Music with Others 306

Setting some ground rules when you play with others 306

Knowing when to lay out 308

Playing in a duo 308

Jamming with a band 309

Strutting Your Stuff Onstage 310

Looking good, feeling good 310

Preparing for an onstage performance 310

Overcoming stage fright 311

Recovering from mistakes 312

Taking center stage: Soloing 312

Chapter 17: Amplifying Your Sound 313

Getting Acquainted with Amplification Basics 314

Playing through a Microphone for the First Time 314

Playing into a microphone on a stand 315

Playing with a microphone cupped in your hands 316

Hearing yourself through the chaos 317

Avoiding the dreaded howl of feedback 318

Taking Amplification to the Next Level: Clean and Distorted Amplified Sound 319

Getting better acquainted with microphones 319

Altering a harp’s sound with effects 321

Cranking it up with amplifiers, preamps, and speakers 322

Connecting Mics, Amplifiers, and Effects Units 324

Chapter 18: Improving Your Harmonica with Repairs and Upgrades 327

Gathering the Tools You Need 328

Following Good Repair Practices 329

Making Three Simple Improvements 330

Disassembling and reassembling a harp 330

Flexing the reeds 331

Smoothing sharp edges and corners 332

Diagnosing and Fixing Problems 332

Taking a harp apart and putting it back together 334

Clearing obstructions from your harp 336

Fixing reeds that are misaligned 337

Narrowing reed slots 337

Setting reed action 338

Tuning your harmonica 342

Part 6: The Part of Tens 347

Chapter 19: Ten (Or More) Ways to Connect in the Harmonica World 349

Take Lessons from a Pro 349

Enjoy Harmonica Performances 350

Seek Out Musical Events That Don’t Focus on Harmonica 350

Let Loose at Jam Sessions and Open Mic Nights 350

Contribute to Harmonica Discussion Groups Online 351

Surf Informational Websites 352

Use Paid Content Learning Sites 353

Join a Harmonica Club 354

Share Your Enthusiasm at Harmonica Festivals 354

Sign Up for a Harmonica Seminar 355

Advertise 356

Chapter 20: Way More Than Ten Harmonica Albums You Should Hear 357

Blues 358

Rock 359

Bluegrass/Old-Timey 360

Celtic 360

Country 361

Gospel 362

Jazz 362

Part 7: Appendixes 365

Appendix A: Tuning Layouts for All Keys 367

Appendix B: Audio Tracks and Video Clips 373

The Audio Tracks 373

The Video Clips 380

Customer Care 381

Index 383