Tip of the Day

In regards to the 10+ bend... If your tongue moves forward in your mouth, the 10+ bend will start in the fully-bent position (10"+... 10 blow whole step bend)... in this case the Bb. This is due to the fact that your mouth is starting from a low tuning, and as your tongue moves forward the tuning of your chamber raises in pitch until you reach the pitch of the 10"+, and the bend sounds. In order to hear a slide from 10+ (C) to 10'+ (B) and ultimately 10"+ (Bb), you need to start with your tongue forward, tuning your mouth HIGHER in pitch that the bend. 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...

I helped a lot of students with their blow bends at the Harmonica Masters Workshops and in ever case the student needed to have a much smaller, more frontal chamber in their mouth to produce the bend and control it. Remember back to Bending Study 1 on the site... we're tuning our mouth cavity to the pitch that we're trying to create on the harmonica for a particular bend. Blow bends are very high notes, so when raising your tongue for the bending process it's the very front of the tongue, forward in the mouth, to create the tiny chamber needed to match that very high pitch.

Like the harmonica, the bass is a single-note instrument. The benefit of studying bass lines are that they not only sound great when played on the harmonica, they're constructed of chord tones and the strongest scale tone choices to transition from chord to chord. It's difficult to come up with cool IV and V Chord ideas, and a player that studies bass lines has less trouble coming up with cool, unique likes due to their intuitive knowledge of the chords. Lastly, for those of you who don't like studying music theory, study bass lines... they are music theory in action. 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.

A student came in for her lesson yesterday and she had the issue of multiple harmonicas having draw reeds that were stuck. I unbent one side of a coated paperclip and handed to her so she could massage the offending draw reed across its length and it quick unstuck. I observed her playing and noticed that the back of her harmonica tilted downwards, essentially allowing gravity to do its thing by allowing saliva to travel down the draw reed plate, over time building up around the reed and its slot, causing the reed to seize. continue reading...

Students were naturally nervous to play at the evening jam sessions, especially with all the great talent and the video cameras rolling. We all have aversion to putting ourselves into situations where we may embarrass ourselves publicly. The key point I like to remind students of is that a jam session is not a concert. A jam sessions is an opportunity to explore new ideas and to allow the moment of collective vulnerability (for the band as well) to create new and exciting music that could only come from that dynamic moment.

I'm at my desk in the Movenpick Hotel Stuttgart, about to leave for my flight home. Today I'll start a series based on my observations from my classes, conversations with students and what I heard at the jam sessions... specifically what I saw in regards to deficiencies.

Memorize your three blues chords...

I7 (one-seven chord) = G B D F (G is the Root of the chord, B the third [third note from the root in the basic scale... G A B], D the fifth and F the flat-7th [the 7th in the Key of G is F#, so F being lowered a half step is the flat-7th)
IV7 = C E G Bb
V7 Chord = D F# A C continue reading...

I'm heading to the Harmonica Masters Workshops (http://www.harmonica-masters.de/en/) and will be out of communication for the next 10 days as I travel and become deeply immersed in teaching harmonica players from all around Europe (some of which are you, from this site!... very cool). My favorite thing to do on long flights is to bring a notepad and pen (one that won't explode at altitude!) and make note of my short, mid and long-term musical goals. Doing this helps to steer my ship towards areas of interest, growth and a more intelligent plan on how I'm spending my valuable time. continue reading...

Thanks to fellow student Mad_Traveler for sharing this cool video...

Robbie Robertson Talks About Sonny Boy Williamson
http://youtu.be/90-O6c20PLk