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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Breathe the blues into your harmonica! Blues harmonica is the most popular and influential style of harmonica playing, and it forms the basis for playing harmonica in other styles such as rock and country. Blues Harmonica for Dummies gives you a wealth of content devoted to the blues approach--specific techniques and applications, including bending and making your notes sound richer and fuller with tongue-blocked enhancements; use of amplification to develop a blues sound; blues licks and riffs; constructing a blues harmonica solo; accompanying singers; historical development of blues styles; and important blues players and recordings. The accompanying website features all the musical examples from the book, plus play-along exercises and songs that let you hear the sound you're striving for. * In-depth coverage of major blues harmonica techniques * Blues song forms, improvisation, and accompanying singers * Information on blues history and personalities If you're intrigued by the idea of understanding and mastering the compelling (yet mysterious) art of playing blues on the harmonica, Blues Harmonica For Dummies has you covered. P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you're probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Blues Harmonica For Dummies (9781118252697). The book you see here shouldn't be considered a new or updated product. But if you're in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We're always writing about new topics!
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Blues Harmonica For Dummies®
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931540
ISBN 978-1-119-69451-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-74888-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-74892-2 (ebk)
Blues Harmonica For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Blues Harmonica For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: So You Wanna Play Blues Harmonica?
Chapter 1: Connecting with the Blues
What the Blues Is All About
Why the Harmonica Is Cool All on Its Own
What It Takes to Get Started
Digging in on Blues Harmonica: Getting Your Playing Going
Chapter 2: Getting Your Harmonicas Together
Finding Good Harmonicas for Playing Blues
Acquiring the Most Useful Keys and Types of Harmonica
Organizing and Protecting Your Harmonicas
Keeping Your Harmonicas in Good Working Order
Chapter 3: Deciphering the Code: A Blues Guide to Music Symbols
Getting to Know the Shorthand of Harmonica Tab
Understanding Musical Time
The ABCs of Melody and Harmony
Shaping Musical Statements
Communicating with Other Musicians
Part 2: Doin’ the Crawl: Your First Harmonica Moves
Chapter 4: Breathing Life into the Harmonica
Preparing Your Body and Your Mind
Adding the Harmonica
Making Your First Musical Sounds
Chapter 5: Moving Around with Single Notes
Isolating a Single Note with Your Lips
Singling Out a Note with Your Tongue
Making Your First Moves
Playing Your First Blues Phrases
Chapter 6: Creating Blues Harmonica Licks and Riffs
Combining Breath Changes and Hole Changes
Getting Acquainted with Licks and Riffs
Building Licks and Riffs with Pathways
Chapter 7: Progressing Through the 12-Bar Blues
The Three Parts of 12-Bar Blues
Relating Each Part of the Verse to the Harmonica’s Chords
Shaping Your Statements in 12-Bar Blues
Part 3: Beyond the Basics: Getting Bluesy
Chapter 8: Working with the Low and High Registers of the Harmonica
Getting Low and High Notes to Sound Clearly
Unlocking the Power of the Low Register
Demystifying the High Register
Chapter 9: Modulating and Punctuating Your Sound
Starting and Stopping Notes with Articulation
Making Vowel Sounds
Undulating Your Sound with Vibrato
Chapter 10: Enriching Your Sound with Textures
Playing Warbles and Shakes
Mastering Tongue Action
Chapter 11: Bending Notes: A Classic Part of the Blues Sound
Acquiring the Knack
Moving to and from Bent Notes
Mapping All the Bends
Playing Your Bends in Tune
Bending in the Low Register
Bending in the High Register
Bending on the Chromatic
Bending Notes Up with Overblows and Overdraws
Part 4: Developing Your Style
Chapter 12: Playing in Different Keys on a Single Harmonica
Introducing the Position Concept
An Overview of First, Second, and Third Positions
Chapter 13: Working Your Blues Chops in First Position
Relating First Position to the Three Chords of the Blues
Navigating the Three Registers in First Position
Bearing Down on Blue Notes and Bendable Notes in First Position
Exploring Pathways to First-Position Licks and Riffs
Three First-Position Study Tunes
Chapter 14: Accelerating the Blues with Third Position
Relating Third Position to the Three Chords of the Blues
The Three Registers in Third Position
Blue Notes and Bendable Notes in Third Position
Exploring Pathways to Third-Position Licks and Riffs
Three Third-Position Study Tunes
Chapter 15: Playing Blues Chromatic Harmonica in Third and First Positions
Why Play Chromatic? Getting Accustomed to Its Face
Third Position Blues Chromatic: Tongue Blocking Is King
Using the Slide
First Position Blues Chromatic
Chapter 16: Playing Blues in Minor Keys
What Is a Minor Key?
Making Minor Keys Easy with Minor Keyed Harmonicas
Using Familiar Positions to Play in Minor Keys
Getting Hip to Minor Positions
Chapter 17: Groovin’ with Non-12-Bar Blues
Strategies for Adapting to Different Song Forms
The 8-Bar Blues Form
Saints Go Marching In Form
Part 5: Taking It to the Streets: Sharing Your Music
Chapter 18: Developing Your Blues Repertoire
Learning by Ear from Blues Records
Improvising a Blues Solo with Licks and Riffs
Adding a New Harmonica Part to a Song
Blues Harmonica Songs to Get in Your Ears
Chapter 19: Blues Harmonica Amplification: Making a Big Noise with a Tiny Little Thang
Two Major Approaches to Amplification
Using Distortion and Avoiding Feedback
Piecing Together the Amplification Chain
Part 6: The Part of Tens
Chapter 20: Ten Things to Know about Sharing Your Music with Others
Five Ways to Collaborate with Other Musicians
Five Tips for Delivering a Polished Performance
Chapter 21: Ten Important Periods and Styles in Blues Harmonica History
Early Harmonica History in the United States
Prewar Rural Blues Harmonica
Traveling Life and the Migration North
Memphis and Early Urban Blues
The Prewar Chicago Style
The Rise of Amplified Blues Harmonica
The Postwar Chicago Style
Regional Harmonica Styles
Rock, Blues, and the 1960s
Modern Blues
Part 7: Appendixes
Appendix A: Tuning Layouts for All Keys
Appendix B: About the Website
Relating the Text to the Website Files
System Requirements
The Tracks on the Web page
Troubleshooting
Index
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
TABLE 3-1 Interval Sizes and Qualities
Chapter 18
TABLE 18-1 Prewar, Jug Band, and Early Chicago
TABLE 18-2 Chicago Blues from the Classic Period
TABLE 18-3 Southern Postwar
TABLE 18-4 Continuing the Chicago Tradition
TABLE 18-5 West Coast
TABLE 18-6 Modern Stylists
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2-1: Diatonic and chromatic harmonicas.
FIGURE 2-2: Harmonica cases and pouches.
FIGURE 2-3: Reedplate and reeds from a 10-hole diatonic harmonica.
FIGURE 2-4: The five layers of a harmonica.
FIGURE 2-5: Parts of a chromatic harmonica mouthpiece assembly, with the outerm...
Chapter 3
FIGURE 3-1: Basic harmonica tab.
FIGURE 3-2: Tab showing notes bent down and up in pitch.
FIGURE 3-3: Time values.
FIGURE 3-4: Ties, dots, and triplets.
FIGURE 3-5: Time signatures and bar lines.
FIGURE 3-6: Three octaves of a piano keyboard.
FIGURE 3-7: Construction of a major scale.
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4-1: Holding the harmonica in your left hand and forming a basic hand cu...
TAB 4-1: Alternating draw and blow breaths for two beats each.
TAB 4-2: Alternating draw and blow breaths for four beats each.
TAB 4-3: Alternating draw and blow breaths for one beat each.
TAB 4-4: Articulating repeated notes with a “k.”
TAB 4-5: Dividing the beat in two.
TAB 4-6: Sneaking a breath with the jaw-drop breathing move.
TAB 4-7: Venting air by exhaling through your nose.
TAB 4-8: Four train rhythms.
TAB 4-9: Replacing a blow note with a whoop.
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5-1: Lips configured to play a puckered single note.
FIGURE 5-2: Position of lips and tongue to play a tongue-blocked single note.
TAB 5-1: “I Wanna Get Close to You.”
TAB 5-2: Two-bar phrases with hole changes.
TAB 5-3: A 12-bar blues verse with question-and-answer phrases.
Chapter 6
TAB 6-1: Combining a breath change and a hole change.
TAB 6-2: Extending the hole change–breath change pattern in “Pent-up Demand.”
TAB 6-3: “Easy Strides.”
TAB 6-4: Five common blues riffs.
TAB 6-5: Pathway No. 1.
TAB 6-6: Pathway No. 2.
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7-1: Chord chart for a 12-bar blues verse.
FIGURE 7-2: The notes of the home chord in second position.
FIGURE 7-3: The home chord with cheerful added notes (the major pentatonic scal...
TAB 7-1: Licks and riffs using the major pentatonic scale.
FIGURE 7-4: The blues scale.
TAB 7-2: Licks and riffs focusing on the blue notes over the I chord.
FIGURE 7-5: Home chord notes inflected to fit the IV chord.
TAB 7-3: Inflecting licks over the IV chord.
TAB 7-4: Playing the notes of the IV chord.
TAB 7-5: Playing blue notes over the IV chord.
FIGURE 7-6: Inflecting the notes of the home chord to fit with the V chord.
TAB 7-6: Inflecting the notes of the home chord over the V chord.
FIGURE 7-7: Blue notes against the V chord.
TAB 7-7: Blue notes against the V chord.
TAB 7-8: Exploring the notes of the V chord.
TAB 7-9: Shooting the rapids on the home stretch.
TAB 7-10: Staying on the home chord through a 12-bar blues in “The Denver Coast...
TAB 7-11: Following the chords through a 12-bar blues in “Boppin’ the Beat.”
TAB 7-12: Inflecting the home chord through a 12-bar blues in “White on Rice.”
TAB 7-13: Leaning on the blue notes through a 12-bar blues in “Mud Crawl.”
TAB 7-14: Using a pickup to the first beat.
TAB 7-15: Starting after the first beat.
TAB 7-16: Riff-and-vocal phrasing in “Are you Lyin’?”
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8-1: The three registers of the diatonic harmonica (C-harp).
TAB 8-1: Licks that use Blow 3.
FIGURE 8-2: The unique note layout of the high register.
TAB 8-2: Five-note scale in the high register.
TAB 8-3: The complete scale in the high register.
TAB 8-4: Hard-edged five-note scale from low to high and back.
TAB 8-5: “Piping Blues, Part 1.”
TAB 8-6: “Piping Blues, Part 2.”
Chapter 9
TAB 9-1: Using tongued P.
TAB 9-2: “T” and “t-l” articulations in “Diddley Blues.”
Chapter 10
TAB 10-1: “Walkin’ and Warblin’.”
FIGURE 10-1: Alternating between a tongue-blocked single note and a chord.
FIGURE 10-2: Tongue blocking to play Hole 1.
TAB 10-2: “The Tongue Vamp.”
TAB 10-3: “Pull-off Blues.”
FIGURE 10-3: Tongue slap sequence.
TAB 10-4: “Tongue Slap Blues.”
TAB 10-5: “Hammer Blues.”
FIGURE 10-4: Moving your tongue to play a rake.
TAB 10-6: “Rake Blues.”
FIGURE 10-5: The split (a) and the locked split (both a and b).
TAB 10-7: “Blues with a Locked Split.”
FIGURE 10-6: The hammered split.
FIGURE 10-7: Corner switching.
TAB 10-8: “Corner Switching Blues.”
Chapter 11
FIGURE 11-1: The contour of the roof of the mouth.
FIGURE 11-2: Placing your K-spot on the back porch.
FIGURE 11-3: Moving your K-spot into the backyard.
FIGURE 11-4: Moving your K-spot to the front porch.
FIGURE 11-5: Bending midrange notes with your tongue on the harp.
TAB 11-1: “Fishing Line Blues.”
TAB 11-2: Stopping a bent note and starting it again.
TAB 11-3: Stopping a bend and moving on.
TAB 11-4: “All Choked Up.”
FIGURE 11-6: The note layout of a diatonic harmonica in C.
FIGURE 11-7: A piano keyboard with all the notes in all possible scales.
FIGURE 11-8: The notes you can create by bending down.
FIGURE 11-9: The notes you can get by bending up.
FIGURE 11-10: Bending low notes with your tongue on the harp.
TAB 11-5: Draw bends in Hole 2.
TAB 11-6: Draw bends in Hole 1.
TAB 11-7: One-semitone draw bend in Hole 3.
TAB 11-8: Three-semitone draw bend in Hole 3.
TAB 11-9: Two-semitone draw bend in Hole 3.
TAB 11-10: “Tearing and Swearing.”
FIGURE 11-11: Bending high notes with your tongue on the harp.
TAB 11-11: Hole 7 blow bends.
TAB 11-12: Hole 8 and 9 blow bends.
TAB 11-13: Blow bends in Hole 10.
TAB 11-14: “Wailin’ High.”
TAB 11-15: “Blue Blossoms.”
TAB 11-16: “Sass.”
Chapter 12
TAB 12-1: The first phrase of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in first position...
TAB 12-2: The first phrase of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in second positio...
FIGURE 12-1: The circle of fifths.
Chapter 13
FIGURE 13-1: The home chord in first position, with blue notes.
FIGURE 13-2: Notes of the IV chord in first position.
FIGURE 13-3: Notes of the V chord in first position, with second-position blue ...
TAB 13-1: Blue notes in all three registers.
TAB 13-2: Pathways for the I chord in first position.
TAB 13-3: Pathways for the IV chord in first position.
TAB 13-4: Pathways for the V chord in first position.
TAB 13-5: “Jimmy’s Boogie.”
TAB 13-6: “Madge in the Middle.”
TAB 13-7: “Tear It Down.”
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14-1: The home chord in third position.
FIGURE 14-2: Notes of the IV chord in third position.
FIGURE 14-3: Notes of the V chord in third position, with extension notes that ...
TAB 14-1: Pathways for playing over the I chord in third position.
TAB 14-2: Pathways through the V chord in third position.
TAB 14-3: “Blue Cinnamon.”
TAB 14-4: “Sizzlin’ Ice.”
TAB 14-5: “Low Kicks.”
Chapter 15
FIGURE 15-1: Note layouts of diatonic and chromatic harmonicas.
FIGURE 15-2: Holding a chromatic harmonica.
TAB 15-1: Locked splits on the draw chord.
FIGURE 15-3: Changing your split as you move to and from Draw 7.
TAB 15-2: Melodic pathways for third position chromatic.
TAB 15-3: “Grits and Grease.”
TAB 15-4: Using the slide for blue notes and chromatic notes.
TAB 15-5: Slide ornaments.
TAB 15-6: “Blue Bling.”
TAB 15-7: First position scale with blue notes.
TAB 15-8: “Bumping the Slide.”
TAB 15-9: First position splits.
TAB 15-10: “Splitsville.”
Chapter 16
FIGURE 16-1: Note layouts in standard tuning and natural minor tuning.
TAB 16-1: “Fuzzy Dice.”
FIGURE 16-2: Notes of minor I, IV, and V in third position.
TAB 16-2: “Dark Stretch.”
FIGURE 16-3: Notes of minor I, IV, and V in second position.
TAB 16-3: “Junior’s Jive.”
FIGURE 16-4: Notes of minor I, IV, and V in first position.
TAB 16-4: “Bubber’s Blues.”
FIGURE 16-5: Notes of minor I, IV, and V in fourth position.
TAB 16-5: “Hot Club Two-Beat.”
FIGURE 16-6: Notes of minor I, IV, and V in fifth position.
TAB 16-6: “Tumbleweed Crawl.”
Chapter 17
FIGURE 17-1: Chord chart for 8-bar blues.
TAB 17-1: “Blue Eight.”
TAB 17-2: “Five Roads Blues.”
FIGURE 17-2: Chord chart for Saints form.
TAB 17-3: “High Water Strut.”
TAB 17-4: “All I Want.”
Chapter 19
FIGURE 19-1: Top from left to right: BlowsMe- Away Ultimate 57 with Bulletizer,...
FIGURE 19-2: Gripping a microphone for distortion.
FIGURE 19-3: Sealing the harmonica against your cheek.
Chapter 22
FIGURE A-1: Harmonica in the key of C.
FIGURE A-2: Harmonica in the key of D♭.
FIGURE A-3: Harmonica in the key of D.
FIGURE A-4: Harmonica in the key of E♭.
FIGURE A-5: Harmonica in the key of E.
FIGURE A-6: Harmonica in the key of F.
FIGURE A-7: Harmonica in the key of F♯.
FIGURE A-8: Harmonica in the key of G.
FIGURE A-9: Harmonica in the key of A♭.
FIGURE A-10: Harmonica in the key of A.
FIGURE A-11: Harmonica in the key of B♭.
FIGURE A-12: Harmonica in the key of B.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Introduction
The harmonica is a mysterious instrument — you can’t tell much about how to play it from looking. It has no keys or strings so you won’t see any hands or fingers moving around on them. All you see is someone’s hands pressed to his face and maybe cheeks puffing in and out. Yet the harmonica exerts a fascination for everyone who hears it. It’s tiny but can make a big sound, and it makes such a pretty yet plaintive, voice-like sound.
When you try to play the harmonica, though, you can get frustrated easily. Harmonicas come in a dizzying array of sizes and types, and if you get one and just try breathing through it, you’ll get musical sounds but not like what you hear from the players whose expressive sounds you find so compelling.
Fortunately, you have Blues Harmonica For Dummies in your hands. Whether you’re just beginning to act on your curiosity or you’re a seasoned player looking for the next stage in your musical growth, this book offers solid information and advice.
About This Book
Blues Harmonica For Dummies gives you all the information you need to get started playing the blues on the harmonica. But you don’t need to sneak down a dark alley and give a secret password to get at this stash of essential knowledge. All that treasure is in broad daylight, with plenty of easy ways to help yourself to whatever you need, including
Step-by-step descriptions:
I break every action and task into a series of numbered steps that you can master one at a time.
Pictures and diagrams:
I illustrate the internal actions that you perform with your tongue and throat and the external actions of using your hands and lips on the harmonica.
Tablature:
I include tab that shows the actions you use to play each note of a song or segment of music.
A Companion Website:
You can visit the website at
www.dummies.com/go/bluesharmonicafd
.
Conventions Used in This Book
Throughout the book, I use the following conventions consistently to make the text easy to understand:
Italics
mark a new term, and I follow with a simple explanation and then use the term again in context.
I highlight in
bold
the keywords in bulleted lists and the action parts of numbered steps.
All web addresses appear in
monofont
.
I use the terms harmonica and harp interchangeably. These are only two of the many colorful monikers the harmonica enjoys, including French harp, Mississippi saxophone, mouth organ, and several others. I managed to limit myself to only the two most common names.
What You’re Not to Read
Ultimately, you become a blues harmonica player by listening, imitating, and then letting your own imagination come up with ways to express yourself. This book is here to help you through that process, and you can skip anything that doesn’t seem to help you right now. Later on you may come back and look for something when you feel that it will help you.
You can ignore the written music, though you may find the arrow-and-number tablature helpful because it tells you what holes, breaths, and bends to play.
You can skip paragraphs that have a Technical Stuff icon attached to them, though I’ve tried to keep those to a minimum.
Harmonica lore is one of the great pleasures of knowing about the instrument and its traditions, but you don’t need it to get down to the nuts and bolts of playing, so you can skip any sidebars, those gray boxes sprinkled throughout the book.
Foolish Assumptions
I assume that you’ve never played music before and don’t know a beat from a Bf or an octave from an ocarina. That’s okay. What’s important is that you have the desire, the curiosity, and the motivation to express yourself by playing blues on the harmonica.
Still, I know that you may already play the harmonica and are looking to sharpen your skills. If so, I include enough information to take you to the next stage in your playing.
I also assume that you’re interested in playing the most popular type of harmonica, the 10-hole diatonic harmonica (often called the blues harp) — the same type of harmonica that’s used by every blues player, in addition to rock and country musicians. You can play almost everything in this book on a single diatonic harmonica tuned to the key of C. As you develop your playing skills, you’ll want to get harmonicas in other keys, but to get started, and for easy reference, a C-harp (harmonica in C) is all you need.
However, I also assume that you’ll get curious about the chromatic harmonica, a larger type of harmonica that’s designed to play in every key. The chromatic has a unique sound and is an important part of the modern blues harmonica player’s kit, or set of harmonicas, so I cover the basics of blues chromatic as well.
How This Book Is Organized
Blues Harmonica For Dummies is organized to give you easy, direct access to the information you’re looking for. You can read the book from beginning to end or you can browse and skip around to find the most interesting topics or helpful information. The chapters are clustered in six parts, each focusing on a different stage of your growth as a player, and I also include two appendixes with handy information you’ll need.
Part 1: So You Wanna Play Blues Harmonica?
In this part, you find out what you need to prepare for your adventure. You get some background on the blues, not only as a musical style, but also as an attitude for communicating and sharing with others. Just as important, you discover how the harmonica contributes and fits into the music. Then you survey the types of harmonicas available — which ones to start with, which are the best values, where to shop, and how to add to your collection as you advance. You also get an orientation on some music fundamentals, including how to read the harmonica tab — the symbols that tell you what actions to perform to play melodies and rhythms on the harmonica.
Part 2: Doin’ the Crawl: Your First Harmonica Moves
This is the part where you start to play the harmonica. You pick it up and hold it, breathe through it, and make rhythmic sounds. Then you start to move around and play melodies along with licks and riffs, those nuggets of bluesy melody that make up the building blocks of blues harmonica playing. Finally, you start using those licks and riffs to fill up the container of the blues song — the 12-bar blues.
Part 3: Beyond the Basics: Getting Bluesy
Part 3 takes you into the territory where you find the real gold of harmonica expressiveness. You start ranging all over the harmonica and discovering how to get around its entire range. You start making the harmonica sound more like a human voice by using your hands, lips, tongue, throat, and lungs to shape your sound and create sonic texture. Finally — the pièce de résistance — you start bending notes to make that classic wailing, slithering sound of blues harmonica.
Part 4: Developing Your Style
Blues harmonica is surprisingly versatile, and in this part you start to explore how to play in different keys, play dark-sounding minor blues, use the chromatic harmonica, and play blues songs that have unusual formats.
Part 5: Taking It to the Streets: Sharing Your Music
When you express yourself, you probably want to start sharing your passion at some point. When you’re ready (or just eager — sometimes doing it is more important than being ready), you can use this part of the book to help you put together a repertoire of tunes to play, to amplify your playing with electronic equipment to sound even cooler and to be heard in a noisy world, and to connect with the larger world in two important ways: by finding other musicians to collaborate with and by playing for audiences other than your dog and the goldfish in your aquarium.
Part 6: The Part of Tens
Would you eat a hot dog without mustard? (Hey, even a tofu dog needs the proper presentation!) Would a For Dummies book be complete without its Part of Tens? I think you know the answer to both questions. In this part I share ten important points about blues harmonica history.
Part 7: Appendixes
At some point you may want to know what notes are in what holes in every key of harmonica. You may need this as much as you need the handshake protocols for communications satellites (apologies to any telecom geeks out there!), but this information may just come in handy, so I include it in Appendix A. Appendix B gives you the complete list of tracks on the website including where you can find and hear the tabs, or musical examples, that are scattered throughout the book.
Icons Used in This Book
The icons in the margins of this book may look like whimsical decorations, but they’re more than eye candy. Each icon is a signpost that tips you off to something that’s either important enough to read carefully or dull enough to skip if you’re not interested in too much detail.
This icon highlights information that you want to keep in mind to help you as you acquire a skill or understanding.
Every now and then, I can offer a little insight or useful bit of information that makes an idea easier to understand or a task easier to accomplish. This icon helps you spot those little nuggets.
Sometimes you want to skip the why and just get to the how. Technical talk can be helpful to your understanding, but if you just want to cut to the chase, you can safely skip the text near this icon without compromising your understanding of the subject at hand.
The Warning icon alerts you to things that you shouldn’t touch, swallow, or even think about trying if you value life, limb, and the continued ability to pursue happiness (or maybe if you just want to avoid bruising your ego).
When you see this icon, you know that you can go to a specific track on the website to hear and play along with the musical examples and songs in the book. If you are reading this text in an electronic format, The website where you will find the audio tracks is www.dummies.com/go/bluesharmonicafd.
Where to Go from Here
You can dive into this book at any point, but you may want to target a specific area to suit your interest and your level of experience. Here are a few possibilities:
If you’re at the beginning of your journey and still don’t have a harmonica or know much except that you like the blues, check out
Chapters 1
and
2
. After you get a harmonica,
Chapters 2
through
7
get you up and running.
If you just want to learn how to bend notes, you can jump directly to
Chapter 11
, though you may benefit from first spending some time with
Chapter 9
.
If you can play already but want to get more expression into your playing, flip to
Chapters 9
and
10
.
If you’re finding that the covers of the harp are turning blue on the left side while the right side stays gleaming and pristine, turn to
Chapter 8
to get you playing through the entire range of the harmonica.
If you want to try new approaches to get more variety out of your playing, have a look at
Chapters 12
,
13
, and
14
to start playing in different keys, or
positions,
on the harmonica. You can also check out
Chapter 15
to get acquainted with adding chromatic harmonica to your bag of tricks for a whole new sound or
Chapter 16
to start playing in minor keys.
If you want to sound loud and proud and start getting that distorted, amplified blues sound, see
Chapter 19
, which covers using microphones, amplifiers, and effects to beef up your sound and broadcast it to the world.
If you want to develop your blues repertoire, flip to
Chapter 18
, which has lists of important harmonica recordings in a broad range of historical periods and blues styles.
If none of these suggestions are quite what you have in mind, take a look at the index or table of contents to find what you’re looking for — or just open the book and see what you stumble across.
Part 1
So You Wanna Play Blues Harmonica?
IN THIS PART …
You discover the strong bond between blues and the harmonica, find out which harmonicas to get and how to care for them, pick up on some essential musician’s lingo, and then get started with the basics of playing blues on the harmonica.
Chapter 1
Connecting with the Blues
IN THIS CHAPTER
Expressing yourself through the blues
Understanding how the harmonica fits into the blues
Getting started playing blues harmonica
The blues is a uniquely American art form that got its start from the collision of African and European cultures in the American South. First documented around the beginning of the 20th century, blues has continued to expand in popularity ever since. Blues began with its original base of African Americans in the rural South and then migrated — first to regional population centers, then to the industrial North, then to the West Coast, and finally to Great Britain and Europe during the 1960s.
At the same time, as African Americans moved on to newer musical styles, middle-class Caucasian Americans took up the blues, both as listeners and players, making the blues a truly integrated style. But even before this passing of the cultural torch, blues exerted a profound influence on other American music styles, including jazz, country, and rock. And blues isn’t done extending its reach. I’ve heard musicians from Brazil creating new flavors of the blues by infusing it with their own traditions. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fur-clad Inuit in an igloo somewhere in the Canadian Arctic is whiling away the long winter nights by singing the blues in the Inuktitut language by the light of a whale oil lantern.
The harmonica has been an integral part of the blues odyssey from the beginning. During the golden age of Chicago blues, pianist Otis Spann once remarked, “Harmonica is the mother of the band.” (See Chapters 18 and 21 for more on the history and great players of blues harmonica.) Spann’s piano playing was beautiful, but that statement has also been sweet music to the ears of harmonica players ever since.
What the Blues Is All About
Blues seems to defy the standards of how notes fit together — a legacy of that cultural collision of African and European musical ideas. Wherever a clear, straight path leads to certainty about how the elements of music combine in a systematic way, blues finds a way around it or simply veers off on a tangent. If you try to relate the blues to that straight path, you can do it, but you have to come up with some sophisticated theories to make it all fit together. Jazz musicians do that, and they do it in a convincing way.
When they feel the need to do so, blues musicians can also come up with sophisticated explanations of how the blues works. But they seldom focus on such explanations because, ultimately, blues is about expressing yourself in a direct (though often sly and humorous) way by using the expressive tools of the blues. Who cares how your cellphone works? You can use it to communicate, and the same goes for the blues.
In Chapter 3 I discuss the basics of how notes fit together, and in Chapter 7 I relate some of the classic methods that blues harmonica players use to adapt the harmonica’s notes to the musical forms used in the blues.
Blues is about natural expression
Blues musicians often adapt their song lyrics to the immediate circumstance, commenting on current events or to people in the room by name. At the same time, blues is full of clichés. By having the clichés to fall back on, blues singers can feel free to add or change those clichés in a way that feels comfortable. They don’t have to stick to the program, but at the same time, they don’t have to come up with something totally original and new. They can change a few words or notes or phrase the rhythm differently and thereby express themselves more vitally in that moment than if they had to perform something locked down on a page. Audience members familiar with the clichés that blues singers draw on appreciate the singers’ skills in using the materials.
Playing blues harmonica also uses many clichés that you can alter at will. Short sequences of notes called licks are like little sayings that you can drop into a conversation wherever they seem to fit. Blues harmonica players often string together clichés that they may have heard and played many times, but they string them together in a new sequence, maybe change some notes, or alter the rhythm to make it fresh, just as singers do.
Blues gives you a safe kind of musical freedom
Like any art form, blues requires you to hone your craft in order to perform it well. But blues also offers you a lot of flexibility to express yourself without worrying whether you’ll fall off the tightrope or commit some terrible faux pas. If you’re a beginner, you can get started without fearing that glowering critics will be staring down their noses at you for transgressing some esoteric rule known only to the high mavens of the art. Consider some of the no-fault aspects of the blues:
Playing a wrong note in the blues actually takes a lot of effort and planning. Notes that shouldn’t fit according to traditional rules of music theory and harmony somehow always seem to work in the blues. I cover a little bit of music theory in
Chapter 3
.
The simplicity of the blues verse makes losing your way kind of hard because you can always tell where you are. Each blues verse is short, consisting of three segments that each begin with a different background chord. You’ll learn to identify those chords as you listen and play. You can even repeat the same melody fragment over all three segments of the verse if you want to. I cover this topic in
Chapter 7
and extend it in
Chapter 17
.
Repetition is a big part of blues, and so is playing short sequences of as few as three notes — as long as you do so rhythmically. This book is full of these short segments, called
licks
and
riffs.
I go into detail on blues harmonica licks and riffs in
Chapters 6
,
13
,
14
,
15
, and
18
.
Why the Harmonica Is Cool All on Its Own
The harmonica has been a part of the blues pretty much since the beginning. One reason for this is that the harmonica has always been inexpensive; another is that, no matter where you lived, you could buy harmonicas by mail order. But price and availability aren’t the only reasons the harmonica is attractive. The harmonica has a natural genius for the blues, which is remarkable when you consider that the people in Germany who designed the harmonica in the early 19th century were interested in playing cheerful, sprightly, German folk melodies. They never envisioned the moaning, wailing sounds that people now associate with the harmonica. (For more on blues harmonica history, have a look at Chapter 21.)
The sound of the blues, built right in
Two things about the blues immediately strike the ear of anyone whose main musical experience has been with the piano’s precise sound and European music’s do-re-mi scale:
Some of the notes sound flat compared to the do-re-mi scale.
If a blues singer sang a song like “Do-Re-Mi” from
The Sound of Music,
the first thing you’d notice is that some of the notes sound different because they’re sung at a lower pitch. The lowered notes are called
blue notes.
Blue notes can sound dark, mean, and hard. They also conflict with the musical background, which breaks rules but is part of the characteristic sound of blues. To help create this effect, blues musicians often play the harmonica in the “wrong” key — a key different from the key that the harmonica is tuned to. Because the scale isn’t right for the key, it includes some notes that don’t belong, and they just happen to be some of the blue notes. (For more on how notes fit together, see
Chapter 3
.)
Notes often slide from one to the other.
This slurring sound is called
bending notes.
You start playing a note and then you bend, or slide, away from it, creating a wailing, slithering sound. The harmonica bends notes in a way that creates a strong impression on listeners. (I show you how to bend notes in
Chapter 11
.)
A third aspect of the harmonica is also very conducive to playing the blues. Playing chords (several notes at once) with catchy rhythms is a big part of the blues. The harmonica is built to play chords and works really well for playing chord rhythms, which is also a lot of fun.
The harmonica goes everywhere
The harmonica is one of the most portable instruments in existence. It was the first musical instrument played in outer space, during the early days of space travel, when even an extra ounce of weight was critically important. You can carry one or more harmonicas in your car, purse, backpack, or pocket and play during those odd moments when you have an opportunity. I first started playing by noodling on a harmonica as I walked from class to class during high school. If you play whenever you have an extra few moments, you’ll start to get good at it really quickly.
What It Takes to Get Started
Anytime you take up something new, you develop a feel for the style and attitude of doing it. You pick up some of the special lingo, you get acquainted with some of the history and lore, and, most important, you master the specific skills that you use to participate. This is true for golf, quilting, rock climbing, and playing blues harmonica.
Getting the blues in your ears
No one can learn to play blues solely from reading a book (even a book as well written as this one). You get to know the blues only by hearing it. Chapter 18 lists blues harmonica recordings in several styles that will get the sound and the glory of blues harmonica in your ears. Of course, the blues isn’t played exclusively on the harmonica. To really broaden the base of your understanding and appreciation, listen to great singers, guitarists, saxophonists, and piano players who may not have played with harmonica players. You might start by listening to classic blues on your favorite alternative radio station or online music channel and letting the sound seep into your ears and your consciousness.
Knowing the story of the blues
The history of the blues is fascinating all by itself, starting as it does in a place and time that is deeply American and yet is almost exotic to most Americans. When you’re starting to play the blues, knowing its story enriches your appreciation of the art form. I sketch out this history from a harmonica perspective in Chapter 21, but you can deepen your understanding with some good blues history books written for the general public and also by reading biographies of such blues icons as Little Walter, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, and anyone else whose story has been told in print.
Digging in on Blues Harmonica: Getting Your Playing Going
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just buy a harmonica, pick it up, and instantly express your feelings with astonishing fluency, wit, and beauty? I’d love to design the harmonica that would do that. But until I do (or someone beats me to it), I can offer a few recommendations to help you develop your harmonica-playing abilities.
Taking the time to make it happen
Rome wasn’t built in a day or, as it turns out, even in a thousand years. Am I trying to tell you that you’ll be in a nursing home before you develop any harmonica chops (ability)? No, of course not. But skills don’t happen by magic. If you’re determined, you can become good enough to play in public as a fully fluent musician within about two years. Chapters 18 and 20 can help you develop the skills you’ll need as a performing musician.
Maybe you’re not looking to become a professional musician. Maybe you just want to take the trip and enjoy the ride but also want to experience a noticeable development in your abilities. The key is to find the time and opportunity to play on a regular basis. A few minutes every day does more for your progress than a marathon three-hour session once every couple of months.
If you really look at your daily activities, you may find some opportunities to play regularly. A few examples:
Can you play in your car for a few minutes, before you start for your destination, after you arrive, or in the evening, when you don’t want to disturb anyone or be heard making awful noises?
Can you find a quiet spot to be alone and practice during your lunch hour?
Do you sometimes just kill time channel-surfing or doing something equally fascinating? Maybe you can use that time to play your harmonica instead.
Working with a teacher or coach, whether in person or online, can help you assess your progress, identify what you need to work on, and set goals. Having that person expecting work from you also motivates you to find time to practice. And if you work with a really good player, you’ll also gain inspiration by hearing him or her play.
Becoming fluent in the language of blues harmonica
Ever notice how a 3-year-old boy walks almost exactly like his dad? He doesn’t study this consciously; he just does it. If you listen to enough blues harmonica, you’ll start to absorb and emulate the characteristic approaches to rhythm, phrasing, and many other details that you hear in the playing of others. Chapter 18 lists some great harmonica recordings that can give you a starting point for feeding your blues ear.
However, you won’t pick up everything automatically. The only way to know what you’re doing (as opposed to what you may think you’re doing) is to record yourself and listen back. You’ll experience some good surprises (“Wow, I had no idea that sounded so good!”) and some not-so-good ones (“Yeesh, that sucks more than I realized!”). Armed with that feedback, you can then strengthen the good stuff, work on improving the bad stuff, and fill in the blanks — the parts of your playing that just sound sort of bland or flavorless.
After you become aware of your playing details, you’ll start to develop a keener awareness of what the best players do. At first you’ll just want to enjoy the greatness of these artists, but as you become aware of your own playing, you’ll want to take out your pencil and clipboard, put on the white lab coat (at least virtually), knit your eyebrows together in a determined and focused way, and say, “Okay, just precisely what is he or she doing that makes that sound so good?” You’ll begin to notice several of the nuances that I discuss in Part 2, such as articulation (how you start and end notes and sequences of notes) and sound textures that you create with your tongue and hands.
As you start playing with the techniques I describe, you’ll get to know what they sound like, and you’ll start noticing and identifying those techniques in the players you listen to. Instead of going, “Wow, what is that he’s doing?” you’ll start saying, “Wow, that’s a great use of tongue slaps!” Listening and doing will chase each other in a spiral, spurring your development as a player to improve faster and faster.
Getting in the blues harmonica groove
When you’re in the groove, you’re traveling in a way that feels natural and good. Everything seems to move at exactly the right pace and rhythm and falls into place at the right time without strain or effort.
To find your groove when you play the harmonica, first work on the absolute foundations, such as the ones in Part 2 of this book. No matter what your playing level is, you can always benefit by working the fundamentals, and many advanced players do this regularly. They know from experience that a tiny improvement in the basics magnifies your abilities at every level that’s built on those foundations. The more mastery you have over the basics, the easier your groove is to find.
Another thing you can do to find your groove is to listen to as many players and styles as possible and find the ones that really inspire you. When you have something that moves you enough to want to do it, your motivation helps lock you into a groove.
Finally, having fun is a huge element in finding your groove. Some folks believe that the blues is all about heartbreak and misery. It’s true that the blues, just like country music and the tabloids in the supermarket, tends to deal in stories of strong emotions and extreme actions and circumstances. But a central message of the blues is to rise above it all and have a good time. Listen for the relaxed humor and the catchy, bouncy grooves that inform a lot of blues tunes. When you feel that groove, hitch your wagon to a goal that inspires you, and focus on the fundamentals, you’ll have a powerful combination that will pull everything you need into place as you move along.
Chapter 2
Getting Your Harmonicas Together
IN THIS CHAPTER
Identifying the types of harmonica you need
Keeping your harmonicas organized
Cleaning, protecting, and repairing your harmonicas
You can play the blues on any musical instrument. Heck, you can even play down-home music on washtubs and other household items. But to find harmonicas that are well suited to playing blues, that deliver solid quality at a reasonable cost, and that project a cool blues image, you can benefit from a few tips from an expert who’s wiser — but not always sadder. By “expert,” of course, I mean someone who knows what doesn’t work because he’s tried it all!
Finding Good Harmonicas for Playing Blues
Some harmonicas have names like Blues Harp or Blues Session or Bluesmaster. But what’s in a name? You could get a Hot Pink Harp or even a Fluffy Bunny Harp and still play blues, if you could keep from getting laughed out of jam sessions. The fact is, people were playing blues harmonica long before some marketing genius decided to add Blues to the model name.
The really important things about a harmonica are that it be airtight, in tune, and not likely to make you bleed, turn green, or otherwise endanger your health. If it also plays easily, makes a big sound, looks cool, lasts a long time, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, then it’s a winner.
But if you look at a harmonica catalog, you’ll find a dizzying array of types, models, and brands that cost as little as a sandwich or as much as a car. Which types are the best for playing blues?
Blues is mostly played on two types of harmonica, and I recommend that you focus on them:
The
diatonic
harmonica:
Most of the time you’ll use this type of harmonica (often referred to simply as the
diatonic
). It has a few important characteristics, including
Being tuned to a single key:
The word
diatonic
is musical lingo meaning “only in one key.” Each diatonic harmonica includes the notes that belong to just one key, such as the key of C, G, or B♭. So you’ll eventually own several diatonics to play in several keys.
Having a single reed for each note:
The diatonic is a
single reed
harmonica, with only one reed to play each note.
Double reed
harmonicas, with two reeds per note, such as tremolos, are very common, but they’re almost never used in blues.
Having 10 holes:
You can get diatonics with 4, 6, 10, 12, or 14 holes, and you can use any of them to play blues. But most of the time, you’ll use the 10-hole diatonic.
The
chromatic
harmonica:
This type of harmonica is bigger and more expensive than the diatonic, and you may use it for one song out of ten. Yet its distinctive sound is an important element in urban blues harmonica.
Other types of harmonicas — such as bass harmonicas, chord harmonicas, tremolo harmonicas, and octave harmonicas — are seldom if ever used in blues. With ingenuity you could probably coax blues out of just about any kind of harmonica. However, the core repertoire and techniques of the blues style focus mainly on the diatonic, with the chromatic running a distant second.
What harmonica you need to study this book
This book was written for a 10-hole diatonic harmonica in the key of C. That said, you can play the songs, licks, and other music on any key of harmonica. However, the note names will be different (but that won’t be your focus anyway). More important, you’ll be in the wrong key to work with the accompanying audio tracks. The examples will sound different when you play them, and you won’t be able to play along with the recorded tracks.
If you want to develop your chromatic harmonica skills with Chapter 15, you’ll need a chromatic harmonica in the key of C. I discuss this further in the section on chromatics.
Figure 2-1 shows a 10-hole diatonic, as well as two chromatics — a 12-holer and a 16-holer.
Illustration by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics
FIGURE 2-1: Diatonic and chromatic harmonicas.
