Diatonic Harmonicas - Coast to Coast Music - Harmonica Lessons, Harmonicas and Accessories

1. Get a pitch pipe. The one I have is by the Wm. Kratt Co. and is called "The Master Key Chromatic Pitch Instrument". It costs about $16.00. It has 13 tones (all 12 chromatic 1/2 step tones with a high and a low F) and is tuned A=440. It has reeds just like a harmonica. Since it is small (about 2" diameter and 1/2" thick) it is easy to carry around (like a harp). The value (for those of us with out perfect pitch) is in being able to pinpoint the key of a song without pulling out every harp in your case. I also use it to help me zero in on a bend note, for instance the first bend on hole three draw on a C harp is the note Bb, but it is real easy to go past it. The pitch pipe reminds me what a Bb sounds like so I can hit it right on the harp. I know this comes second nature in time, but I find it easier to get the right sound in the first place if I know what I am trying to hear. Here are some tips on How To Find The Song Key using the pitch pipe.

Many have suggested a keyboard for the same purpose, and it is a great tool, but not as easily carried around with the harps, or as easy to use when driving (which is one of the great places to practice). You can't beat a keyboard for working out a tough riff by ear though.

Once you find the key of the song, you'll need to know what key harmonica to use. For blues, and as a beginner, you will want to play cross harp - NOT the same key of harmonica that the song is in, for example, for a song in G you will be using a C harmonica. Go here for an explanation of What The Heck Is Cross Harp?

2. Get on and stay on Harp-L. and HarpTalk. These are a couple of the best learning tools I have run across for harmonica. They are free, and some of the top experts in the world are available to answer your questions, give tips on techniques, and generally show you the way. The sound library is a great resource to hear how things are "suppose" to sound. If you had to pay for the teaching you can get on Harp-l and HarpTalk for free, you could not afford it. If you are not already subscribed, go to the links above and follow the directions to subscribe. The digest version gets you all of the posts, but not so many messages in your mailbox.

3. Listen to the music you want to play as often as possible (for me it's blues). In the car. On work breaks. At home. While going to sleep, etc. The more you listen, the more you will understand where the changes will be, where the harp fits and where it doesn't.

If you go to the used CD department, or even the cut out bin, you can accumulate a pretty sizable collection in a hurry for not a lot of money. Many times you can find great albums in these places. For instance, in one month I bought the following CDs for $6.00 or less each from a used record department: William Clarke -- THE HARD WAY , Paul DeLay -- Take It From The Turnaround , Frank Frost and Sam Carr -- Keep Yourself Together, Johnny Hoy and The Bluefish -- You Gonna Lose Your Head, Satan & Adam -- Mother Mojo, Billy Branch -- The Blues Keep Following Me Around, and The Best of Muddy Waters (tons of Little Walter ). In addition, I found two Gary Primich CDs and a John Mayall (Room to Move) for $2.00 each in the clearance bin. That's 10 great CDs with tons of harp for less than $50.00! Also in the cut out or clearance bin in the past I have found CDs by Little Walter , Muddy Waters , Sonny Terry , Johnny Winter , various blues compilations, and many more, often for only $2.00 or $3.00 each.

Record company "samplers" are usually sold at a reduced price (about $6.00 to $10.00 each -- I think they hope you will fall in love with an artist and buy their full price albums) and usually have plenty of harp and always plenty of blues. There's plenty of music available without paying $16.00 for a CD.

My local public library has a fair selection of blues CDs that can be checked out for free. Be sure to check in all of the CD sections, since music is often misfiled or incorrectly classified. I found a number of blues albums files under rock, jazz, folk, gospel, and R&B. You can always tape these to add to your collection.

4. Practice, practice, practice -- in the car, on work breaks, at home, between meals, before going to sleep, etc. Carry your harps and other stuff with you when you go places, you'll be surprised how much practice time you can get in that way during odd moments.

I bought a case made to carry 15 CDs in their cases for about $7.00. In that CD case I can put 12 harps, my pitch pipe, 4 CDs, my micro-cassette recorder, and a couple of spare micro-cassette tapes (most of the harps are Huang Harmonicas which have smaller cases than Hohners, but I have a few Special 20s, a Lee Oskar, and a Big River Harp in there). I took a black permanent marker and put the key on the end of each harp case so the key I want is easy to find.

5. Use a tape recorder. I just use a micro-cassette recorder, the kind usually used for recording meetings, etc. I know that the sound quality is not up to the "best", but it is plenty good for a couple of things -- recording yourself while practicing, and recording a solo or riff that you are trying to learn. Most of them have 2 tape speeds, so if you record at the higher speed you can slow down the riff to 1/2 speed (drops the pitch one octave) to make a fast riff easier to understand. It's real easy with these recorders to rewind small sections at a time to hear a sound over and over. Also, listening to yourself practice will show you quickly what you are doing wrong and/or what sounds best. I also carry it with me in the car and can grab it and record a neat horn riff or something else I want to try to play from the local radio station.

6. Use computer sound software. GoldWave Digital Audio Editor , (shareware) is a great program for recording, manipulating, and listening to sound files. With this program you can record a solo you are trying to learn, narrow down to the particular part that is giving you trouble, play it over and over, change the speed and pitch, and generally dissect it until you can get it. I tried for weeks to figure out the bridge on Big Walter Horton's "Easy" (the part with a lot of bends), it took only about 15 minutes after I ran it through Goldwave. You can also record 12 bars of rhythm guitar from a CD, then loop the playback over and over to give you a rhythm track to play with when you practice your riffs and solos. I put an example of a Goldwave Jam Track in G here for you to try - just hit the continuous play button and jam away. The guitar on this track comes from an instructional tape by Doug Puls .

To slow down the speed of a riff without changing the pitch is the best way to learn a fast riff. With GoldWave Digital Audio Editor you can slow it down, but the pitch changes -- OK if you have all keys, or slow it down a whole octave. A great program for doing this without changing pitch is Cool Edit . Another useful shareware program for doing this is called La Tartaruga.

Another shareware program I find useful is Noteworthy . With this program you can compose midi files which are useful as rhythm tracks, for instance I was able to write a " Bass Boogie in F " (MIDI file - can be played on any MIDI player) to play Big Walter Horton's "Easy" with (and I suppose other songs) in about 15 minutes with no previous experience. I wrote it in F since that is the key I was learning "Easy" in (Bb harp in second position). The program will also help you learn to read music because you can quickly learn what something looks like written to get the sound you want.

Another program called Tune-It! allows you to use your PC as an electronic tuner, and can be used to tune harps. It visibly shows what note is being played and how far off it is from standard tuning (which is adjustable in the program - default is A=440) I've been playing around with this program and have found that it is also a great tool for learning to isolate bends. You can play a note and then watch the tuning change as you shape the bend, and then see when you have hit the right pitch. You get immediate feedback (visually) making it easy to correspond the "feel" of the bend to the correct pitch. On the three draw you can use this program to isolate all three 1/2 step bends with no trouble at all! Anyone that self-teaches like me will appreciate this program.

7. Get a lesson, even if only one. Through Harp-L I found a professional harmonica player near me and got a lesson from him. I had a list of things that I didn't know how to do, or I needed more detailed information. In that one lesson he moved me farther forward in my playing than I could have done on my own in about 3 months. The trick was to have worked on playing by myself for several months before taking the lesson so I knew what to ask about (or knew what I didn't know, so to speak). I also found that the local county recreation department was offering a 6 week, one hour a week blues harp class for $35.00. The instructor was Doug Puls. I took this class twice. It was very helpful in learning techniques, but one the most helpful aspect of this class was in getting over the fear of playing in front of strangers and other people. Doug is also a guitar player, so I was able to get some practical experience playing along, soloing, and improvising with a real guitar player. Doug has crammed 30 years of teaching experience into his harmonica and guitar instruction tape series, "Got the Blues? Learn How to Play 'em!"

8. Get as many keys of harmonicas as possible. This will allow you to jam along with many more songs, and therefore learn faster than if you restrict yourself to only one or two keys. If you can't get all the keys, at least start with: C, A, G, D. The next two should be F and Bb. Buying Johnson Blues King Harmonicas is a good way to get a lot of keys for not much money ($2.50 each).

9. Start with simpler riffs. I listen to a ton of different blues harp players, and while the playing is great, I found many of their riffs and solos hard to follow as a beginner. I have found a few few artists that tend to play simpler patterns that are easier for me to follow and learn. I've also found that as a beginner, nothing helps my confidence as much as being able to home in on a riff or solo quickly. But just because the patterns are easier to follow doesn't mean they are musically simple, check out a couple of these albums and you'll see what I mean. I'm sure there are many others in this category, but some albums/artists that I have found to be particularly helpful to me are:

a. The Seigel/Schwall Band Reunion Concert -- I had never heard of Corky Siegel before I picked up this album, but he plays with so much energy that I was immediately hooked. All songs are played on the C, D, or A harps with relatively easy to follow riffs and solos.

b. Keep Yourself Together Frank Frost, Sam Carr-- Keep Yourself Together - Great Delta blues playing with all songs on the album using C or A harp. Again, I had never heard of Frank Frost before picking this album up, but it looked interesting, and I have really enjoyed the music and harp playing.

c. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (their first album) -- Talk about simple patterns that work, listen to Born In Chicago and Got My Mojo Working- the basic riff on both is 2 notes -- 2 draw and 2 draw bent, there's even a whole 12 bar solo of only these two notes on Born in Chicago, and it really rocks, proving once again that it's not how many notes you have, it's how you use the ones you do have. You can download Paul Butterfield's 2 note solo here if you want to hear it. Most songs on the album use A, C, or D harp, although there is one song each for the G, the F, and the Bb.

With just these three albums and 3 keys of harp (A, C, and D) you can jam along with 29 different songs and learn a wide variety of riffs and solos. If you want to get these for yourself, you can purchase these albums from my Recommended Reading and Listening List or just click on the album title above.