harmonica

Join Joe Filisko for his latest lesson on the Fox Chase/Lost John. In this lesson Joe shares his guidelines and tips.

The listener wants more repetition than the player is usually willing to give.

The chromatic harmonica has more moving parts than a diatonic (slide assembly, wind savers, etc.) and is more prone to needing adjustment now and again. If a reed goes bad on a diatonic harmonica we commonly weigh the cost of sending it out for repair, taking the time to learn how to repair them for ourselves or just buying a new one. Chromatic harmonicas are more of an investment and most chromatic players I know do their own repairs (unlike diatonic players... though more are doing it these days). 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/

For those of you wondering what changes have been made to our workhorse Special 20 Harmonica, Reedology.com has just published a good article on the subject: http://reedology.com/2015/01/30/is-the-special-20-different-than-it-used...

Mark Mumea of the Elgins has some two-guitar harmonica backing tracks available for download. Here's some samples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRiK9UTyjFM

Here's the website: http://www.devilstalemusic.com/product-category/cds/

Thanks to fellow students Mike and Dan for sharing this.

In our latest episode of the BluesHarmonica.com Recording Study series Gary Smith, Aki Kumar and I rehearse our harmony tunes together and I provide you with MP3 scratch tracks and PDF music/TAB for you to play along with.

My music instructor in college would often say for us to move our bodies while playing music, it helps with the rhythm. I sure have found this to be true through my years of playing and teaching. Though tapping your foot is a valuable tool, it's a fast muscle structure and can easily rush or drag without much indication to you while playing. When moving your body, the pendulum effect of the bodies large mass makes rushing or dragging less likely. Instead of your foot being influenced by your playing (faster/slower tapping), your body is influencing your playing (more consistent rhythm). continue reading...

And finally here's the fist line of "Rocker" using standard music notation: https://www.facebook.com/bluesharmonica

In our last handwritten TAB example I add standard rhythm notation. Most of the time this isn’t needed while learning by ear, but if you’re having difficulty with the rhythm of a particular passage it’s beneficial to take the time to figure it out (better to spend the time to own a rhythm than cower from it when it comes up in the music). Note that I’ve also changed the 1 and 2 draw chords found on upbeats to a “P,” which indicates the technique Walter is using to sound those chords, the tongue block Pull.

Visit https://www.facebook.com/bluesharmonica for this handwritten transcription.