online harmonica lessons

Shuffle King - All judges have reviewed the Shuffle King submissions, visit the link below to see their comments. Winners will be announced on the 15th!
http://www.bluesharmonica.com/shuffle_king_contest

Here's more insight into yesterday's Tip of the Day...

1) Listen - No playing... no humming... just listen to what's being played.

2) Hum - This personalizes and internalizes the lick... learning the rhythm and contour of the lick before you pick up your machine (the harmonica) is imperative.

3) Practice - Stop the loop and practice on the harp. With the provided music work on the blows, draws, bends, movement... everything related to performing that lick on your machine. Do this until you can get close to the rhythm of the lick in your memory. continue reading...

Every now and again we get tape goo on our equipment from either labeling it (gear) or taping it to the floor (cables). Goof Off is a great product to remove sticky substances.

Let's now take a lick that uses only root notes for its construction... an accompaniment lick. Play the following lick to a jam track or favorite blues artist track in the Charleston rhythm (fist note on beat 1 and the second note on the & of 2). The lick below represents one measure of that chord change... follow the 12 bar blues progression when playing.

I7 = 2 2
IV7 = 1+ 1+
V7 = 1 1

Now play a lick that starts on 2 draw... your root note of the I7 Chord. Play it a couple times until you feel comfortable with this lick. Write the lick down. Reference http://www.bluesharmonica.com/sites/bluesharmonica.com/files/private/Harmonica%20Chart%20[All%20Keys]_1.pdf and move the lick up one octave... hole for hole... note for note. Experiment with the new lick and learn how to play it as well as you did the lower octave version. You did a basic theory concept called octave substitution.

Today's tip of the day comes from student Eddy, "Far be it from me to contradict you but my viewpoint is that the software program with the same title is more pleasant to use. I bought both and the content is exactly the same. You haven't to choose between Mac and Windows, the cd-rom works for both. There are two ISBN on the box. Here are they: ISBN-10 : 0-7390-6861-X and ISBN-13 : 978-0-7390-6861-8. Hope that can help." Thanks Eddy, this looks like a great option.