Tip of the Day

If you do have the opportunity to work with a private music instructor, I highly recommend you record your lessons. I record the lessons for my students (using the Tascam DR-40) at School of the Blues. A student asked me to give him some thoughts of how to best use his recorded tracks from his lessons. I thought you might like to see this as well.

Purpose continue reading...

I was playing to a slow blues jam track many years ago and was frustrated at the way I sounded.

I went to my well of inspiration and listened to slow blues solos performed by Gary Smith. I noticed that the last note of each of his phrases was held (with a vibrato commonly) and the volume decayed slowly until the next phrase. It didn’t sound as if he actually stopped any of his last notes… they either disappeared into the mist of the noise floor of the band (maybe he was still playing, but I couldn’t hear it?) or he decayed to the point of almost stopping and he started his next phrase. continue reading...

I'm interviewing Magic Dick this weekend for BluesHarmonica.com. If you would like me to ask him a question, go to http://www.bluesharmonica.com/forums/ask_david_barrett and reply to the "ask Magic Dick" thread. My time will be limited to ask these questions, but I'll do my best to get as many in as possible.

A great speed lick should still sound musical when slowed down.

Today's tip comes from Gary Smith in his latest submission videos (Submission 44). Gary's tip is that you set your delay repeats to that of triplets relative to the song you're performing. In this lesson

It can be a great challenge to study an artist's song and remember the order of the choruses and the fine elements they contain. It's common to hear complaints by students that songs take a tremendous amount of time to memorize well enough not to have a simple mistake lead them astray and cause a wreck. continue reading...

Here's my personal approach to playing the harmonica...

1) Tilt face of harmonica slightly downward (around 30 degrees)

2) Open mouth

3) Insert harmonica, bringing the harmonica to the tongue (not the tongue to the harmonica)

4) For a standard tongue block (single note at right, with lips over four holes and tongue blocking three holes to the left), the tongue moves just one click to the left (11 O'clock)

5) To tongue switch, move to the right to 1 O'clock

6) To play an octave, center the tongue and use a lighter touch continue reading...

Your tongue blocks two holes in the center, leaving the left and right holes open when performing an octave (1+ C and 4+ C for example). You can either use the tip of your tongue to block those two holes or use the tip-top of the tongue (called the blade), by using an ultra-light touch so that the natural convex shape of the tongue doesn't flatten out and cover too many holes. Give this light touch a try and I'll discuss some other interesting advantages of this light touch technique tomorrow.

Knowing that we use the top of the tongue for our tongue blocking, and we commonly cover four holes with our tongue (the pull articulation for example) and even at times five holes (5-hole octave pulls and pull-slaps), it makes sense to tilt the face if the harmonica (the hole side, what faces you) downward. This downward tilt (10 degrees to as much as 45 degrees) allows the harmonica to match the angle of your tongue, instead of raising the middle of your tongue and pushing it outward towards the harmonica. Experiment with your tongue blocking while using this tilt, you may like it.

Simply stated, the more holes you need to block for a tongue block technique, the further back you'll use of the top of your tongue (your tongue is more narrow at the tip and wider at its base). This is achieved by either placing the harmonica deeper in your mouth, to access more of the back of your tongue, or by arching and sticking your tongue out towards the harmonica... and of course, there can be a combination of both.