lesson

In Hob's first lesson we cover holding the harmonica; cupping a bullet mic; throat tremolo; importance of playing softly; playing with a relaxed embouchure; closing the nose for breath control; Solo Harmonica Study 1, examples 1.2 and 1.4; Tongue Block Study 1, example 1.2 and Walk With Me Study song, Chorus 1; Music Theory Study 1, Section 1; and bonus footage on the definition of tone in music, and how to create big tone on the harmonica. http://www.bluesharmonica.com/contributor/hob_bosold

If you've read it once, read it again... this paper is as important to advanced players as it is beginning. The more we can understand how the harmonica and mouth works in the bending process the better. In Ross' Overbending Study 1 he'll be referencing the concepts from this paper, so you'll want to review it to fully understand how the reeds work in the overbending process. https://www.bluesharmonica.com/sites/bluesharmonica.com/files/mri_bendin...

In this lesson Ryan and I work on Accompaniment Study 7: Tramp Bass Line; Transitions; Walking Bass Lines; Solo Harmonica Study Final Ideas; Tongue Block Study 5: Blues for Paul deLay (all choruses); Music Theory Study 3, Sections 6 and 7.

An alternative to the Flutter Tongue is the Side Flutter, where your tongue moves side to side. I commonly see three ways this is approached...

1) The tongue moves side to side on the face of the harmonica. When the tongue is to the right, the low note sounds (D for example on the C Harmonica when performing a 1 draw/4 draw side flutter). When the tongue moves to the left, the high note sounds (4 draw in this case). With a light touch on the face of the harmonica and a relaxed tongue, the tongue moves side to side quickly, jumping between the two octave D's. continue reading...

Start with a slap and continue to make the slapping motion with a fully supported airstream (not individual pumps of air like that of individual slaps).

TIPS:

Most importantly...
1) Keep your tongue to the left. The most common error is to allow the tongue to drift to the center, essentially causing the technique to turn into multiple pulls. continue reading...

It’s very common for students to come in after transcribing a bit of music to have parts written, that they're supposedly reading from, but they actually play something slightly different. For example... they may write 4 5+, but actually play 5 6+. To fix this, slowly play out of rhythm (one note per tap of the foot will do), what you wrote. This will stop your muscle memory, which is commonly linked to rhythm, from guiding you towards playing by ear, not what you wrote on the page.

Happy New Year to everyone!

For those that read the paper and watched the footage (http://youtu.be/I5kogDrivvQ) of me bending on the harmonica in the MRI last week, here's the story (four part video series) of the bending study with Peter Egbert MD http://youtu.be/I5ZjNUWnhgk

In this video snippet (Recording Study 2) I show you how to record to a study song jam track and reference it with the original track to check your rhythm: https://www.facebook.com/bluesharmonica

As I spoke of yesterday, your focus is to use the front of your tongue, far forward in your mouth... this creates the small chamber needed to tune your mouth to the blow bend you wish to produce. It's common to hear someone describing their bending process that their tongue moves forward to produce the blow bend. This is consistent with us wanting to create the small chamber, and this will work for holes 8 and 9 blow bends, but not for the 10. Chew on this for a bit... continue reading...

It was obvious to me that the players that had the coolest IV licks (bars 5 and 6), V-IV-I licks (bars 9 and 10) and Turnaround licks (bars 11 and 12) had spent a lot of time studying bass lines.