harmonica

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'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.

Listening to Kim's "Hunch Rhythm" I'm sure you noticed that he didn't reserve dynamic change for only chord change, he also would...

1) Start a lick soft and then finish LOUD

2) Start a lick LOUD and then finish soft

3) Start a lick soft, then go LOUD and back to soft

4) Start a lick LOUD, then go soft and back to LOUD

5) Play punctuated note(s) VERY LOUD to surprise and excite you continue reading...

One of the many areas Kim Wilson excels at is in his use of dynamics. Take a listen to "Hunch Rhythm" from his Tiger Man release. The opening chorus is the AAA Chorus Form and then the 2nd Chorus is A B/A C and as he gets into the 3rd Chorus and onward he drops Chorus Form use and focuses heavily on dynamic and textural change. Listen carefully to this on a good sound system or headphones and notice how well he uses dynamics. After doing this, listen back to the track you recorded yesterday and see if you can add MORE dynamics... louder-louds and softer-softs.