help

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...

If you play Hohner Harmonicas and need some help, Hohner has a new website with a "Ask a HOHNER Technician" page... pretty cool! http://reedology.com/contact-us/

No matter which technique you use from the list of three I presented on 1/6/2015, if you make an error in your key selection, it's usually because you heard that the 5th of the key sounded good and took it as the root note.

Let me help you to understand this a bit... continue reading...

We need to take a quick break from the transcription series today for a fellow student in need of help with octaves. continue reading...

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...

Play a 3' and turn on your tremolo... for most players a vibrato will be produced. As the throat opens it bends the 3' a little more and as the throat closes the bend releases a little bit.

If it's not happening for you... continue reading...

Our best tool for bettering our playing is to record ourselves and listen back with a critical ear. If you use this tool correctly, by the time you send your final recording of a study song to me, it should be pretty dialed in. I shouldn’t be making comments about missed notes, they should be more about technique, tone and approach. When listening back to your recording, use your finger to follow along with the provided music/TAB and mark areas that need improvement. continue reading...

“There is nothing more fatal for our musical sense than to allow ourselves—by the hour—to hear musical sounds without really listening to them.” Tobias Matthay, Pg 16

Last year fellow student Hank Stefaniak reviewed the new harmonica pitch reference software HarpNinja for everyone (thanks Hank!). I've been using this with students at my School of the Blues for a while to test its effectiveness and have been working with the developer on suggested improvements (he's been great about implementing my suggestions). continue reading...