Hey guys this is my first ever post here so be nice.
I started playing the harp about 6 months ago. Everything was working out and i was progressing quickly, but now i have a serious series of problems.
1) I can't lock in my 3 bends. I was chatting with one of my harp buddies and he thinks this may be due to my almost exclusive use of thoat bending, never quite got down the tounge bending thing.
2) I get lost on the instrument. you know cant play what i hear in my head.
3) can choke the 6 blow but no ringing in the overblow.
4) chords / rythm playing is a complete road block for me.
So my question is this. With all of your gathered harp experience, is there some exercises i can do to overcome these challenges? I'd really like to master this instrument but right now it's laughing in my face.
1) I think he's talking total crap. Throat bending gives you more control not less.
2) Not getting lost is part of the learning curve. It comes with time. The more you do it the better you get.
3) I'd say the gapping on your harps are not set up for overblows.
4) Study Sonny Terry.
My advice is to join www.bluesharmonica.com, David Barrett is one of the best (if not the best) teachers around. If you can't afford that then follow all the free lessons on YouTube by people like Adam Gussow, Dan Gage, Ronnie Shellist, Ben Hewlett, Paul Lamb, etc. I'd also recommend watching Joe Spiers superb series of gapping videos on YouTube. That will help you set up your harps for overblows if that's your thing. For learning chordal / rhythm playing just watch all the lessons on YouTube about Sonny Terry style harp.
Other than that. Just practice, practice, practice and practice some more.
you seem smarter than me all i did was learn negro spirituals in first then listen to sonny boy for 9 months without bending notes. a bad trip, devils face in the mirror, a broken heart, walkin down the street started playing and singing help me like i been doing it my whole life, could always bend after that, could never play in 1st again. oh yeah ram dass said the more you want something the more it will never happen, desire is a trap. look at the harp as a freind like cigarettes or booze. not an instrument or a tool to pull chicks. its magical personal, concealed, secret. keep it like that till you make it to hell and back.
you can also mess about in harmonica boogie.com, if your trying to climb mountains too early settle back a little and practice some easy stuff and go from there, 6 months of playing, lol......4 yeas for me and still have prob's.
4) check this lesson and the next one, if you havent already. This is great practice material.
3) fool around with you tongue and mouth position, while keeping the reed chocked. There is a sweet spot you need to find. Focus on applying more (or less) presure may help too.
@bluesheart The 3 draw bends are a challenge to any beginner player, especially for playing cross harp blues where a lot of the expressiveness is based around the blue third and the micro-tonal subtleties.
I've certainly heard many harp players in bands that aren't strong in this technique - I can recall Jason Ricci in one of his YT clips saying that the 3 draw bends are more difficult to master than overblows.
For getting lost, try to develop a few "building blocks", i.e. two or three note riffs that you can fall back on and build riffs and variations off. Repetition with variations is very effective in blues music
If you're lost, don't be afraid to step out for a few beats or bars until you have your bearings - you don't need to fill all the space anyway. And make sure you're stamping your foot and feeling the groove (especially the triplet feel in most blues) all the time.
Six months isn't very long in a quest for mastery. Work on breathing, work on bends, learn tunes and try to play them in different octaves and in different positions.
Above all, just try to enjoy the journey and don't stress too much about what isn't working yet. I've found that a lot of things on the harmonica will just come for no discernible reason after months of unsuccessful attempts.
1- Use another instrument to play each note of the 3 draw (B, Bb, A, AB on a C harp) alone or in series (top to bottom or bottom to top) and then play them back on your harp. Using your ears and practicing is the best way to work on hitting bends accurately. Using either your tongue or your throat will affect the tone. Don't worry about tone until you can hit each bend cleanly. Your tone will stink until you can hit the notes cleanly anyway. Once you are there, your tone will improve naturally as you practice more and if you are attentive - if you can hear that you have weak tone, it will fix itself over time...
2- Getting lost is one thing. Not playing what you hear in your head is another.
If you stick with the blues, the 12-bar blues format is easy to memorize and that will help you avoid getting lost. You can start by learning the root notes for each chord and with every change, if you go back to the root note, you will avoid getting lost. You can then branch out and learn where the other chord tones are and use them for changes.
To play what you hear in your head is a lifelong process. No matter how well you play, there will always be distance between what is in your head and what sounds you can make.
3- Take the coverplates off your harp and put your finger on the 6 hole top slot. This isolates the draw reed and allows you to sound the overblow without having to choke the blow reed. You learn if your harp can sound the overblow cleanly and what mouth position to use by doing this. If everything is working properly that way, you need to address leaks - either your harp is substandard or your gaps are too wide. Your reeds may be mishapen too, but I would not suggest you try to adjust reed curves unless you have someone show you what to look for. Or want to wreck a few harps and get frustrated for a few months...
4- Do a solid five minutes per day of chugging. Seriously. You will get bored and play around naturally - it will probably become fun at some point. Keep at it.
There is a program called Bend-o-meter that is pretty good for working on nailing your bends. There is a short free trial (a couple weeks), then a $25/year license. I used the free trial and saw marked improvement. It works kind of like a tuner, but the read out is on a picture of a harmonica. (I'd buy it if you actually owned it, but I don't want to pay a licence fee for something that I'd eventually have to re-up on. It's a principle thing for me, but it really is a useful product.)
Go to Sonic Junction and sign up for Jerry Portnoy's Masterclass series. He starts with basic techniques and them moves on to applying those to specific tunes. Pay particular attention to what he says about singing the part to yourself to hear it. Then practice each lesson, starting from the very beginning, at least an hour a day every day. Do not move on until you have gotten comfortable with the last lesson no matter how long it takes.
In between, listen to any and all of the great old school harp players you can lay your hands on. When you hear a lick, try and apply what you learned to getting it.
Do not make the mistake of thinking you can buy tone or ability on the instrument at Guitar Center or Ebay. Nor are there any "easy" routes or shortcuts.
Always remember the question to ask is not, "How much did I practice today?" but "When was the last time I picked up the instrument?" In other words, play, play, play, then play some more but stop when it stops being fun. Killing the fun kills all chance.
And finally, I've always thought the brain does this weird thing where it's almost like it needs a little time to grow the synapses to make the connections. Often one can work one's ass off on something but still not quite get it. Then you put it down for a day or so, work on something else and next time you try that lick or technique you struggled with it's suddenly there and you wonder, "Why the hell did I think that was so hard?" But once you start to get it that is the time to work the hell out of it to get it locked into the muscle memory. ---------- LSC
Last Edited by on Mar 24, 2012 10:50 AM
Here's an exercise you can try. It should help with 3d bends and with your sense of structure in 12 bar blues.
Try to imply the 12 bar blues using the 3 draw. Heres an example:
I chord - 2d 3d' 3d (so resolve to 3d over I chord)
IV- 2d 3d'' 3d'. ( resolving to 3d' )
V- 2d 3d''' 3d'' ( resolving to 3d'')
If you can hit these cleanly then you will hear the chord changes using only the 3 draw to resolve to. After you hit that clean you can take the same riff for each chord and play it backwards.
Well at 6 mos, you're just getting started. Way cool. Check out Youtube stuff, definitely.
Find a teacher you like, online or in person.
There are many sources for good lesson material and exercises, including the originator and host of this forum.
I can personally recommend Dave Barrett. His material can give you a great foundation, and if you work on the exercises, you will get up to speed very rapidly.
You could also try Howard Levy's Harmonica School.
Remember to enjoy the process. I don't think there any shortcuts to mastery, but there is a lot of really good instructors and materials available to help you.
thanks for all the help guys. the main reason why i thought i was going slowly was because i picked up the instrument with a buddy of mine and he's miles ahead of me now. But from what you guys are saying it's prolly because he just practiced way more than i did. Looks like imma just have to do some practicing. Anyone know where I can find a playlist of gusso's lessons in order (so i can start from the begining)? I went on his youtube channel and they're all there but in no real order (or thier most recent to earliest).
" I went on his youtube channel and they're all there but in no real order (or thier most recent to earliest)."
bluesheart - If you go on YouTube, to Adam's channel (Kudzurunner). Then you can choose to arrange the video by "oldest to newest" by using the drop down menu (see attached image). This will put all the videos in order for you. I should note though that video .001 has been removed by YouTube for some reason. Other than that though they should be ok.
6 months and you havent nailed the 3 draw bends and still cant play what you hear in your head? far out! whats wrong wit chew?
seriously...expect to struggle with this stuff forever...well, maybe not 'struggle', but ...you get better at it by doing it and theres a critical interval of practice you need to keep up to get better... maybe your friend is a freak talent, maybe they have a better practice routine or better resources...i understand you are concerned your progress is not as good...i would feel the same probably, but its not about your friend, so dont worry whether your as good as them, just focus on what you are doing, what you want to do better, track down some instruction, narrow down what the thing is you need to do some of this is progressive...learning to blow bend for instance...it seems to me that it really helps if you work on the 6 draw bend before worrying about blow bends...Others May Disagree, this is just what seems to have been the case or me...but seems my embouchure was strengthened by working on controlling draw bend intonation...work with a tuner or some sort of pitch reference...and work on holding the bend at the right pitch..for me 6 draw is hard, i always go too deep (he said "too deep")..but anyway, once that started to work i moved to the blow bends on the A harp and they began to work much better..i could lock them in...and so on up the keys.. what i'm saying is just that you gotta crawl before you can work...you gotta build technique...and i also agree Dave Barrett has a really good handle on this, for one...but i expect any good teacher will lead you through the acquisition of skills in a logical way IMHO
theres heaps of good advice in the posts above...
and as rick estrin and others say, the real secret is to keep it in your mouth ----------
Last Edited by on Mar 25, 2012 2:28 PM
chuck berry, bo diddley, john lee hooker, elmore james were one trick ponies. pick up one original trick explore its depths and do that forever it can make you a god.
Last Edited by on Mar 25, 2012 2:28 PM