Tip of the Day

Once you've dialed in your amp to sound good for performance, turn the treble and mid up half a number. The tone we prefer is often too bassy and lacks the cut needed to be heard in performance. By bringing your treble and mid up half a number it provides a boost in the frequencies that make our sound more intelligible without sacrificing too much of the bassy tone we dig.

Make a binder (physical or digital) with your favorite licks in it. Have a section for: each Focus Note (1, 2”, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6+, 7, 8, 9, 9+… 11 sections total); V-IV-I licks; Turnaround licks; and Ending licks. On your Repertoire Retention Day, randomly grab licks from your binder to improvise to.

Players commonly stumble at the end of songs to perform an ending lick that sounds good and is in time (lots of players improvise this, and the results are sloppy). A strong ending lick not only sounds good, when played with confidence, it’s authoritative enough to really pull the band together for a solid ending. Grab a new ending lick from one of your study songs or the list provided in Improvising Study 6 and practice placing it into your improvising practice (which should be 1/3 of your practice time at this point). Make this your default ending lick for a minimum of two month. continue reading...

The turnaround area of the 12 Bar Blues (bars 11 and 12) is an area where we tend to go into autopilot and play a generic lick. Grab a new turnaround lick from one of your study songs or the list provided in Improvising Study 5 and practice placing it into your improvising practice (which should be 1/3 of your practice time at this point). Make this your default turnaround lick for a minimum of one month. If you do this each month, then by the end of the year you’ll have twelve killer turnaround licks in your vocabulary.

Reference: Improvising Study 5

The V-IV-I area of the 12 Bar Blues (bars 9 and 10, resolving to the downbeat of bar 11) is commonly the weakest area of the progression for players (great players always have their ears open for new, cool V-IV-I licks). Grab a new V-IV-I lick from one of your study songs or the list provided in Improvising Study 4 and practice placing it into your improvising practice (which should be 1/3 of your practice time at this point). Make this your default V-IV-I lick for a minimum of one month. continue reading...

If you’re having an issue with both notes of the octave not sounding equally as you play, focus on these points:
1) Center your togue
2) Use a very light touch with your tongue on the face of the harmonica
3) Put a little bit of rigidity in your tongue and your lips so that they maintain their shape as you move

If you're playing your song and your foot stops or stutters, this is your body’s way of letting you know that you don't quite know that passage yet.

If you're playing your song and your foot stops or stutters, this is your body’s way of letting you know that you don't quite know that passage yet.

If you want to get great at playing on the high end of the harmonica, one simple way to do it is to take each lick that you learn and play it one octave higher. When moving a lick, if it has the 2” F or 3” A, it will move just fine (2” = 5 and 9 / 3” = 6 and 9). Generally, stay away from licks that use half step bends (they commonly don’t transpose to the high end).

From Smartless Podcast on Sept 20th, 2021 @ 31:45
"If style is the authentic application of technique"... "it just means that you’ve used the tools at your disposal in a way that seems to be authentic, or genuine, organic, consistent."

Not a motivational quote, but a cool perspective on how one develops one's own style (AFTER developing a foundation of technique)