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johan d
12 posts
Jun 24, 2015
12:14 AM
Hello, I have a few beginner sheets of music. (can't help falling in Love E. Presley), and there are marking on the staff what hole to play and should I blow or draw with an arrow.

Is it wise to relay on the extra marking or learn the proper notes and corresponding holes instead?

What books - collections of fine, polular, easy music do you recommend to explore?

Is it allowed to ask for sheet music here?
Pistolcat
791 posts
Jun 24, 2015
1:48 AM
Excellent question, Johan. You describe them as sheet but it sounds as if they are tabbed out, too? That is, the hole and direction of breath is noted. Are the notes in the rightl place? The most widely used tabs are David Barretts system which treat the notes like you are always playing a C-harp even if you are not. Blow 2 (2+) are noted on the bottom line like an E even if you are on a, say, D harp and therefore should be F#.

This system is smart and easy, imho. Though, if you are competent at sight reading sheet it's a crutch that is not completely needed.

And you may become confused if you try to read "real" sheet music and play from there....

I'm in the process of making a video of a method one can use to tab out sheet music even if you have no music theory knowledge. I'll post it as soon as it's finished. (It probably needs to be revised a hundred times or more :D)


Check out David Barretts books and site for good tabbed sheet and his teaching system is top notch... You get a free month on his site for each Horner harp you buy.
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Pistolkatt - Pistolkatts youtube

Last Edited by Pistolcat on Jun 24, 2015 1:50 AM
johan d
13 posts
Jun 24, 2015
2:10 AM
Is this harptabs.com you mean by "his" site?

So your advise is, if you can sight read, don't use the numbers, but try to link a "C" to the "4th hole blow" instead of the "4+"?

Last Edited by johan d on Jun 24, 2015 2:13 AM
STME58
1355 posts
Jun 24, 2015
8:36 AM
johan, you had mentioned in another post that you are also playing piano so I expect you may be familiar with or are learning to read notes in standard western notation. I would start by reading pieces in C and playing them on a C harp. If there are no accidentals in the piece you can play it and you will learn quickly to just play what you read, just like any other instrument. The next step is to chose pieces in other keys that also have no accidentals, find the right harp and do the transposition necessary to play the piece. If you are looking at a piece in D major (2 Sharps) and using a D harp it is the D that is the 4 blow. It sounds complicated but, like anything else, you will get it with practice. I think you will find that piano and harp complement each other well in the learning process. Teh piano give you a great visual layout of the notes and the harp forces you to think about the relationships between keys. Here is a chart I used for learning where the notes are. layout spreadsheet I put a keyboard and a circle of fifths on the chart anlog with the harp layout, because I find myself referring to all three when reading or writing music.
Pistolcat
792 posts
Jun 24, 2015
10:31 AM
Tabs won't hurt you I think. What I meant was if one were trying to learn sheet reading from tabs, skipping the note name, you will be really fooled by Barretts system. Otherwise it's great as it deals with tempo, rythm and durations just like standard notation. If you google or spend just a few moments searching I bet you'll find "his" site. Hint: it is not harp tabs.
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Pistolkatt - Pistolkatts youtube

Last Edited by Pistolcat on Jun 24, 2015 10:33 AM
STME58
1356 posts
Jun 24, 2015
10:37 AM
I really like the books from Hal Leonard, Mel Bay and others that have the harp tabs under the standard music notation. Some of these have tabs for multiple positions.
WinslowYerxa
899 posts
Jun 24, 2015
11:28 AM
If your goal is to read notation, I'd try to work with it cold to the extent possible. Otherwise you'll either find your eye going to the tab line underneath or, in the absence of tab, translating to hole and breath in your head, which will slow you down.

To really read notation, why not see the note and play it with no intervening filter? Admittedly, that takes some work, and tab can assist you some, but unless you want to rely on tabs (and the tiny proportion of music out there that's tabbed for harmonica relative to what is notated) I'd focus on doing without them, at least when you're reading notation.

With my chromatic students who want to learn notation, I start them out with simple reading exercises that let them explore and find out where the notes are and what happens when you do x - xc being some combination of breath change, hole change, and slide change.

For diatonic you have a complicating factor: different keys of harmonica, with the result that any given note on the staff is found in a different place on each harmonica - different hole, different breath, maybe a bend or and overbend. I have some simple tricks to get oriented in any key on any key of harmonica, which I learned when playing a production of the musical Big River.
===========
Winslow

Check out my blog and other goodies at winslowyerxa.com
Harmonica For Dummies, Second Edition with tons of new stuff
Join us in Denver for a mile-high SPAH experience!

Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Jun 24, 2015 11:29 AM
WinslowYerxa
900 posts
Jun 24, 2015
11:33 AM
By the way - Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love with You" is actually an 18th-century French love song, "Plaisir d'amour" (Pleasure of love) with new words. Searching on both names might yield more resources.
===========
Winslow

Check out my blog and other goodies at winslowyerxa.com
Harmonica For Dummies, Second Edition with tons of new stuff
Join us in Denbver for a mile-high SPAH experience!
johan d
14 posts
Jun 24, 2015
12:07 PM
Does a chromatic harmonica comes also in different keys? Maybe a chromatic is better for someone who can sight read?

quote "WinslowYerxa"
"For diatonic you have a complicating factor: different keys of harmonica, with the result that any given note on the staff is found in a different place on each harmonica - different hole, different breath,"
barbequebob
2957 posts
Jun 24, 2015
1:18 PM
12 hole chromatics do come in keys other than C
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
WinslowYerxa
903 posts
Jun 24, 2015
1:45 PM
"maybe a chromatic is better for someone who can sight read."

That depends on your goals.

Many blues harmonica players play chromatic - though usually in only one or two key positions with little knowledge of scales or note names, let alone reading or sight reading (which are two distinct things).

Jazz harmonica players can usually read music - though sight reading, the ability to play something from a written part that they've never seen before, and to do it without rehearsal or review - is probably not a primary part of a jazz musician's skill set (though that can vary greatly from player to player). They focus on improvisation, which does require knowledge of scales and harmony, but reading obviously is not your main focus when you're making things up in the moment of playing.

If you goal is to play melodies or other musical materials that you'll learn mainly from written sources (as opposed to learning by ear), then yes, reading is a great skill to have.

However, I wouldn't choose to play one type of harmonica for that reason. Diatonic and chromatic harmonicas have different expressive abilities. Choose the harp that makes the kind of sound that motivates you play, and let the rest fall into place behind that decision.

===========
Winslow

Check out my blog and other goodies at winslowyerxa.com
Harmonica For Dummies, Second Edition with tons of new stuff
Join us in Denver for a mile-high SPAH experience!

Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Jun 24, 2015 1:47 PM
johan d
15 posts
Jun 24, 2015
11:09 PM
I can see that you have to learn each note again on another key diatonic harp - there in different positions each time, maybe that's even more difficult than learning to play piano :-). That's a big disadvantage of trusting on sight reading when playing diatonic in different keys.

I see playing harp as an addition to my piano playing. In my piano study I have covered Harmonicds and scale (still in progress).

I do like the sound of the blues harp, but I never played a chromatic, so...?

My main goal on harp would be to play nice melodies instead of accompaniment of a band.

Last Edited by johan d on Jun 24, 2015 11:11 PM
mlefree
322 posts
Jun 26, 2015
11:13 AM
I agree with Perfessor Yerxa. Best to bite the bullet, skip tabs and head to the woodshed and teach yourself to read standard notation from scratch with "nothing in between."

But there are those who find tablature an expedient stepping stone. For those folks or for folks who simply want to create tabbed versions of most any particular song there is an inexpensive software tool that may be of interest.

It's called Melody Assistant. It can take any MIDI file as its input and it can create tabs for it for a host of different instruments, including both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas. You can select several styles of tab notation to suit your preferences and then you can print out your results.

I haven't used it for a number of years since I abandoned chromatics to concentrate on diatonics but they still keep my version up to date. When I was using it the company kept it under constant improvement so I can imagine it has improved since then.

Anyway I found it useful for a number of reasons so some of y'all might also.

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/melody.htm

(For some reason the dash in the url prevents me from using this site's HTML interpreter to create a direct link; you'll have to cut and paste.)

FWIW, the same company has a related product called Omer that can read scanned page of standard notation into Melody Assistant. From there you can create tabs and/or a MIDI version. Pretty cool!

Michelle

(Usual disclaimer -- I'm only a satisfied user.)

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SilverWingLeather.com
email: mlefree@silverwingleather.com

Last Edited by mlefree on Jun 26, 2015 11:16 AM
Meaux Jeaux
86 posts
Jun 26, 2015
2:59 PM
FACE it, Every Girl Band Deserves Funding.
STME58
1362 posts
Jun 26, 2015
3:31 PM
Meaux Jeaux, Good mnemonic.

STME58
1363 posts
Jun 26, 2015
3:50 PM
If you learn to think in scale degree instead of notes, you don't have to memorize every harp. Instead of seeing the following as G,D,F,Bb,Eb,C, they are all tonic. I find this helpful when reading sheet music on a diatonic instrument. While it is not the tonic unless you are in a major key, I still find this learning device helps.


johan d
16 posts
Jun 28, 2015
1:40 AM
Well, I cannot sight read, although I am practicing it in my pianoplaying? I can read music.
I only have a diatonic C blues harp for the moment. If I understood correct the best way to go is to learn where the notes are on this instrument, learn to practice without tabs and maybe later on move to another key.


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