It doesn't look like you mention that most lessons are in C until after you have them buying the first harmonica. That could be a problem.
As for the way you insert your site's links into it, I'd be a little more upfront about that. There is no problem with posting lessons and plugging your own site at the same time, but you should disclose that up front so your customers come to think of you as a stand up guy.
As for the basic lessons, pretty straight forward. Personally, I spent the first couple months just making noise with the idea that I wasn't going to try to play anything. It taught me to recognize intervals and made a big difference in my ear training. I still can't read tab in real time, but I can pick most things out by ear after a couple tries. :)
It's hard to have a one size fits all intro to harp. If people have enough music theory to know about keys already explaining positions is much easier. At that point they might be ready for the circle of fifths, but if you throw the circle at people who don't understand at least the concept of keys their heads explode.
I think working on tongue blocking early on is important. Split octaves are a great way to introduce a neat sound to a starting player that will keep them interested in tongue blocking.
Say something about getting the harmonica as deep into the mouth as possible. It gives you better tone.
I only gave it a very quick read, so forgive me if I'm not quite being fair.
Your guide did something that I find to be the cardinal sin of most instrumental tutors: it stipulates a particular way of doing a given technique without pointing out the alternatives, which, for one reason or another, some people are going to find a lot more natural.
For example, you describe the pucker method in a similar way that Barrett and J P Allen describe it, i.e., with the harp tilted up at the back. That is an excellent way of doing it, but it's not the only way, neither is it really a pucker at all; rather, the sound-hole is formed by a 'v' using the bottom lip. Allen goes so far as to describe the pucker as a bad method that leads to a lot of tension, or words to that effect. He is only half correct: it can lead to tension in beginners who are not used to learning how to relax the muscles they're not using. I know that's true because it happened to me, long ago.
I hope that's not being too picky.
A couple of other points in brief:
1) You don't actually describe how to hold the instrument. A proper description of this is vital to teaching a good seal for hand wahs.
2) Any description of tongue blocking will prevent hours of torture if it mentions that the tongue should rest lightly on the comb. Also, 100% of players will be playing the note on the right side of their mouth for the vast majority of passages. A beginner could well be thrown by your description.
3) Your recommendation for which harp to buy should be in a general price bracket, as opposed to just mentioning Lee Oskars. Just about any harp in that price range will be passable.
4) Your book recommentations are top notch. I don't know Byrne's book, but Barry's and Yerxa's are both excellent.
I appreciate the advice both of you have given me....I found it tremendously valuable and will be updating the lens with your recommendations in mind. Thanks again...I will post back today or tomorrow when the changes have been updated.
As soon as I realise you are being friendly and joking around with me in order to sell me your harmonica, I am outta there. "I'm sick of these sideshow hawkers wastin my time with their internet clutter trying to sell me they're junk." Kinda thing. ----------
Wait, I did some digging around and you're NOT actually the one selling them, right? the way it is written sure makes it look like you are, but with a little investigative reporting, it looks like you aren't. In that case, why do you want them to buy a particular harmonica from a particular retailer? You drive it so hard, that they need to buy this one harmonica from this one retailer, it makes it look like you're trying to sell your own stuff. Is the retailer owned by a relative? If not, tone it down for sure. Just say I got mine here and am not affiliated with them.
Yea I see where you are coming from Elkriver I am going to tone it down and make it less pushy and offer more options regarding which harmonicas are good for beginners (and by good for beginners I mean harmonicas that the musician wont outgrow but will grow with the musician, if that makes sense.)
I pretty much always recommend Lee Oskar but I would like to recommend others that people here on the forum think are also good harmonicas for beginners based on their experiences with them.
I have tried a few differnt types of harp including Lee Oscar. If I were to advise someone on what to start out with I would recommend a Suzuki Bluesmaster or a Hohner Golden melody. These just seem to me to be easier to get started with. I suspect that this is not because they are good for beginners but because they suit me. These harps are thin which I think makes putting in deeper in the mouth a litttle easier.
Buying a harp is like buying a mouthpiece for a brass instrument. What works for you is very personal. THe frustrating difference is, you can try a few mouthpieces to see what works and they can be easily cleaned and sanitized if you dont select it. Once you put the harp to your lips, its yours, like it or not.
I have tried a few differnt types of harp including Lee Oscar. If I were to advise someone on what to start out with I would recommend a Suzuki Bluesmaster or a Hohner Golden melody. These just seem to me to be easier to get started with. I suspect that this is not because they are good for beginners but because they suit me. These harps are thin which I think makes putting in deeper in the mouth a litttle easier.
Buying a harp is like buying a mouthpiece for a brass instrument. What works for you is very personal. THe frustrating difference is, you can try a few mouthpieces to see what works and they can be easily cleaned and sanitized if you dont select it. Once you put the harp to your lips, its yours, like it or not.
STME58, yeah, they are real personal. I like the sound of Golden Melodies, but the spot where the reed plate and the comb meet in the front rips up my lip. With sanding it's possible to fix, but it's one of the reasons my case is filled mostly with LO's instead of Golden Melodies (that and the fact that I mostly have shopped locally and that means either LO's or so flavor of Hohner.)
On a side note, I've got a trumpet. I wanted to learn to play it, but I've got a chipped front tooth. The tooth doesn't bother me doing anything else, but the trumpet hits it just the wrong way. :(
Nacroran, Don't give up on the trumpet. You may have a natural training aid against the begining brass players nemesis, too much mouthpiece pressure. ;-)
I have to say that offers very little actual instruction. it talks about a lot of things but offers no examples, or any type of measure of when you are or are not doing it correctly. Not even a basic tab for a simple song? this seems to be all flash and no substance.
I am honestly not sure what you are trying to accomplish here. Seems more of a read this and if it sounds good then you will want to look elsewhere to actually learn to play anything. This seems like the front sales pitch page of all those Learn To Play Instantly sites.
Soz, I deleted my earlier post because I thought it was probably heading down a slightly cynical track, or at least had a tone of cynicism about it. So what I really mean is: FR, I'm gonna assume you mean well. My honest view of your article is that it isn't any improvement over a whole bunch of stuff which is already available. I feel it's a reinvention of something already done by numerous people to a much higher standard. It's not bad, but it doesn't bring anything new to the field. On its own merits, as instruction or information I think it is redundant. As a marketing tool, I can see a reason for it. Regarding asking folks here about which harps they like, I think you shouldn't need to go there. Just look up harmonicas on the web and work out which are the big names, then type them into the forum search tool. You can link to it from the left hand sidebar in the homepage. You'll soon see what a fruitless topic it is. There is no conscensus. It depends what style you play, what techniques you use, whether you like bright or dark sounds, whether you somehow manage to injure yourself with blunt objects, whether you're in the habit of playing while eating, whether you can't open your mouth without dribbling, whether you are rich or poor, whether your can use a screwdriver, whether you can set a gap, whether you can tell when your arse catches fire, whether you had a bad experience sometime, whether you like to argue. And whether you have learned to breathe yet. About 100 people here can't help but have their say on the topic even though we all know it's BS and we have all been through it. I'm really pretty surprised it hasn't started yet. Maybe there's hope.
Superbee is right on the money. I've said this before, Harmonicas are like sex, anyway you can think of making it, somebody's gonna be crazy about it and somebody else will think its either the most boring or vile thing they've ever seen. I think Lee Oskars are the leakiest things on earth. You don't. See what I mean? There can be no consensus. ---------- David Elk River Harmonicas
Thank you Nate. ;) When I die, make sure that goes in the R.I.P. David Payne thread, OK? lol...
@ Folk, I know there's been some talk in this thread that there wasn't any actual original info in it. That's true, but it is not your fault. There's a reason or two I didn't mention that. Anything with the word "beginner" in the title will have already been done and it is impossible to work anything original into the confines of what the publisher wants. More importantly, those articles aren't supposed to be original. There's this joke among freelance writers that there are only 100 magazine stories, they just keep getting rewritten over and over. If that's true, there's only like six stories on these internet info things. I remember querying Game and Fish magazine with this really original stuff and they said they weren't interested, "but how about six hot spots for bass this summer." I sware they said that. People probably get tired of me mentioning this, but I'm a professional writer. I've written for these things before. Most of mine were for EHOW, which quit accepting new stuff. Now, EHOW was about making money. It was a little job. I wrote like 5 or 6 of their little stories in a two week period, then stopped because the money came in very, very slowly. For that two weeks' writing, I got a check for $17 every other month for about three years, everytime somebody clicked on an ad, I got a fifth of a half penny or something. Then finally last year, they said they'd buy all the rights to those stories and gave me like $400 to buy them outright (that was the point I wish I'd written more!) When they bought all rights, they took my name off them, took down my awesome pics and put some crappy stock photos up. but that's OK, they own it now. Here's one of the harmonica ones that was pretty successful and very original (although since they bought it, they've done some choppy editing, my writing flows better than that): How to play bluegrass harmonica and fit in with bluegrass musicians I never did write one for beginners. Reason: there were already 50 million of them on Ehow. It's impossible to write a short "how to play harmonica" that is particularly unique.
I hope that there is some kind of revenue share on this and that you get your 1/17th of a halfpenny or whatever. Everytime somebody clicks on one of those little ads, Squidoo gets a whole penny or something. If there is no revenue share, somebody is raking in cash based on your hard work... people don't realize how much work writing is... and as a writer, I hate to see people's writing exploited.
I once ran across an eHow article on harmonica. It was clearly written by someone who had never even held a harmonica. I wish I could find it now. I left a really long rant explaining everything the writer had gotten wrong and I think I might have even suggested that they try to get their money back from him. :)
I wish I could find the link. I think I was in pretty good ranting form. A group of us tried to make a blues harmonica portal on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is great for getting contributions from people who know their subject, but you run into the other end of the spectrum with people getting very territorial about the content. We ended up being deleted because someone with more influence didn't think blues harmonica is an important enough subject to have it's own portal.
It really turned me off of trying to do anything with Wikipedia besides occasionally correcting spelling mistakes I catch while reading articles. It really was a shame too, because in the grand scheme of things, having a page for a topic doesn't really hurt anything. If you don't generate enough traffic, it doesn't consume much bandwidth, and if it generates a lot of traffic, well, then, that's kind of the point. Forums are great, but their big drawback is easy access to whats already been shared. It generates traffic, sure, but there are probably dozens of threads just on MBH about what brand of harmonica to buy, and each new thread starts from scratch instead of building on the collective information from previous threads, and can take time away from getting deeper into the subject.
Me personally, of all the harps I've held in my hand, I like the feel of long covers best. I can't really compare how they play with other harps though. The only long cover harp I have is a LLF. My next lowest harp is a LF, and there is such a difference between how low harps play and higher harps that it's really apples to oranges. I like how my LLF plays, but I wouldn't want to try to play a fast Irish reel on it.
Hey everyone just wanted to thank you for the outstanding feedback. I really appreciated the honesty and great information. I'm going to try to write something a little more original...maybe how choosing a harmonica can be likened to ones sexual preferences behind closed doors.... ---------- Folk Music Instruments
