Harmonica For Dummies
Overview
Wail on your harmonica!
The harmonica is one of the most popular and versatile instruments in the world. There are several reasons harmonicas are awesome—you can play them anywhere, they’re inexpensive, and you can show off in dozens of musical styles. The friendly and pleasingly tuneful Harmonica For Dummies is the fastest and best way to learn for yourself!
You’ll find an easy-to-follow format that takes you from the basics to specialized techniques, with accompanying audio and video content included to make learning even more simple and fun. Before you know it, you’ll be playing jazz in your living room and the blues on your way to work or school—and that’s just the prelude to mastering classical riffs. That’s right, the humble harmonica has graced some of the grandest concert halls on planet Earth!
- Choose the right harmonica
- Enhance your sound with tongue technique
- Develop your own style
- Perfect your live performance
The harmonica is awesome to learn, but even more awesome to&nlearn well, and Harmonica For Dummies will get you on the road from being an occasional entertainer to becoming an accomplished live performer.
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 Harmonica For Dummies (9781118880760). 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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About The Author
Winslow Yerxa (San Francisco, CA) is a widely known and respected harmonica player, teacher, and author. He has written, produced, and starred in many harmonica book and video projects, and provides harmonica instruction worldwide. He's also a contributor to popular online harmonica sites such as HarmonicaSessions.com, bluesharmonica.com, and howardlevyharmonicaschool.com.
Sample Chapters
harmonica for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Learning to play the harmonica starts with playing a single melody with either a pucker or tongue block — and knowing how to read harmonica tablature (tab), how to play a harmonica in position, and knowing the positions for the 12 harmonica keys.
How to Play a Single Note on the HarmonicaTo play a single melody note on the harmonica, use your mouth to isolate a single hole.
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Harmonica players, even top professionals, are amazingly generous and enthusiastic about this odd little instrument. Finding other harmonica players to jam with, learn from, and just hang out with used to be difficult. Now it’s ridiculously easy to connect with like-minded parties. You have tons of options.
Take lessons from a pro
A teacher can quickly show you something that may take pages of an instructional book to describe.
Harmonica
Even if your new harp is working okay, manufacturing processes often miss some of the finer points, and parts can rattle loose during long sea voyages. Here, you will find three simple improvements you can make to a harmonica that will make it more responsive and more pleasant to hold and play.
Disassembling and reassembling a harp
For a harmonica that is bolted together, the easiest thing you can do to make it play better is to take it apart and put it back together!
Harmonica
Early in the 19th century, builders in Germany and Austria developed the harmonica to play songs and dance tunes popular in the German-speaking parts of Europe. They never dreamed that Americans in the rural South would find ways to make the harmonica slur, cry, and wail with bent notes.
Harmonicas became widely available in North America in the 1870s, and soon harmonica instruction books were being published in Chicago and other northern cities.
When you move air through the harmonica, you get the best results when you breathe gently and deeply through a wide air conduit with no obstructions and no leakage. Here’s a few ways to accomplish these goals.
You can see these three breathing techniques for harmonica players in action in Chapter 3, Video Clip 0302.
When you learn a new tune, what key of harp do you use? The key of the tune is just the beginning because the scale may not be the major scale. The first thing to figure out is the tune’s key. This may be written down somewhere.
You may have to look at a piece of sheet music or a chord chart. Or you may have to just listen and try to identify the key note intuitively.
The chords played on guitar and piano that accompany a melody are built from intervals. As a harmonica player, knowing a little about chords can help you understand how the notes you play relate to the chord sequences used in the songs you play and can also help you understand written music.
The simplest type of chord has three notes and is called a triad.
With the following information, you can become a harp surgeon (though you may not get to play one on TV). The following list outlines the symptoms and gives you the most likely diagnoses to bring a harp back to good health.
The note won’t play at all. When a note just won’t play, one of four causes may be to blame.
Repairing your harmonica can be tough. Keeping track of tiny parts in a grassy, wind-blown field in the middle of the night while trying to pry apart a small, delicate object with twigs, pebbles, and bits of scrap metal probably isn’t your idea of fun. It’s not mine, either, so here are some simple practices that will save you time and aggravation when you work on your harps:
Use reed-safe tools.
Here is a good list of albums listed by major style groups that harmonica players can use to hear some exemplary music. This list is way shorter than it could be — there’s just so much good harmonica music and so many great players to hear.
Blues
The harmonica has always been welcome in the blues, and hundreds of great harmonica records have been made in all the varied regional and historical blues styles.
Learning to play the harmonica starts with playing a single melody with either a pucker or tongue block — and knowing how to read harmonica tablature (tab), how to play a harmonica in position, and knowing the positions for the 12 harmonica keys.
How to Play a Single Note on the HarmonicaTo play a single melody note on the harmonica, use your mouth to isolate a single hole.
You can have some fun and draw attention to your harmonica playing by picking up some of the tried-and-true harmonica tricks, which can be fun to play, fun to watch, and even fun to hear. Here are some of the best-known and loved:
The talking baby. Say, "I want my ma-maaa." Now pick up the harp and try to say the words while playing Draw 3 or Draw 4.
A harmonica can seem like a small, mysterious box — you breathe through it and music comes out. Knowing what goes on inside that little box can help you understand how to play it. Here’s a brief tour of the hidden workings of the harmonica.
Making a five-layer tin sandwich
A harmonica has five layers.
The center layer of the harmonica sandwich is a slab of wood, metal, or plastic called the comb.
Harmonica
Ornaments are decorations you add to a melody. Sometimes you use ornaments on the harmonica to emphasize certain notes and outline the melody more clearly. Sometimes you use ornaments to make a simple line more elaborate and create interesting patterns. And sometimes you use ornaments simply for special effects.
When you play through amplification, whether you cup the mic or not, you can use several effects that enhance your amplified harmonica. Some effects enhance the natural sound of the harmonica, while others are designed to actually alter the instrument’s sound. Here, in Chapter 17, Audio Track 1701, are the most useful effects for harmonica:
Equalization (EQ): With EQ you can boost some parts of the sound spectrum and de-emphasize others to make your overall tone darker, brighter, or warmer.
Harmonica
One way to vary your sound on the harmonica is to alter a scale with sharps and flats. To create a major scale in a key other than C, you need to figure out what notes to include. You do this by following these steps:
Take the new tonic note as the starting point from the scale.
Start the TTS TTTS pattern on the new tonic note.
Harmonica
The first time you play harmonica with amplification, you’ll probably play into a microphone that’s connected to a sound system. Usually the mic will be a vocal mic — a mic you would use for singing. And that’s fine; mics that work well for vocals usually work well for harmonica.
Playing into a microphone on a stand
When you play harmonica through a sound system, the microphone is usually on a stand, ready to amplify the voice of someone speaking or singing (or playing harmonica).
When you arrange a tune on the harmonica, you work out the details of how you’ll present the tune to an audience to make it interesting and create the effect you want. Even a solo harmonica tune can benefit from arranging. The following points are all important elements to consider when you arrange a tune:
Picking a tempo: Should the tune be played fast or slow?
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Your diaphragm can help you articulate notes on the harmonica. Like your heart, your diaphragm is always working by gently propelling your lungs to inhale and exhale each breath. When you use your diaphragm to start, stop, and pulsate notes, you’re moving the entire air column so you have a huge amount of power supporting every diaphragm movement.
Harmonica
You can articulate notes on the harmonica with your throat. Your throat is positioned in the gateway between your lungs in the lower part of the air column and your mouth in the upper part. Your throat can couple with both parts to influence the harmonica’s sound.
The throat does its work with the glottis, which is the opening between your vocal cords.
Harmonica
When you articulate a note, you give it a definite beginning, or attack. On the harmonica, your tongue can articulate at least three different ways, and you can combine the different tongue sounds for rapid, crisp articulation.
The tongued T and L sounds
Try saying, “Aaaaaaaa,” simply sustaining a long “ah” sound.
Harmonica
Holes 7, 8, 9, and 10 make up the high range of the harmonica. In each of these holes, the highest note is the blow note. So, in these holes, the blow notes are the ones that bend. The blow note in Hole 7 gives a microtonal bend, while Blow 8 and Blow 9 each bend one semitone.Blow 10 bends two full semitones, but it’s at the high extreme.
Harmonica
The bends in the harmonica’s middle range — Holes 4, 5, and 6 — are shallow and not too difficult to control, so this is a good place to start. When you bend a note, you can isolate a single note either with a pucker (with your tongue off the harp) or with a tongue block (with your tongue on the harp).
Each of the following licks has three versions — one for each of the draw bends in Holes 4, 5, and 6.
Harmonica
Initially, your harmonica overblows and overdraws may not start as soon as you want them to sound, and they may begin with a burst of squeals or sound shrill and weak. When you precede your overbend with an approach note or follow it with a follow-on note, playing a successful overbend can be even harder. Here are some guidelines to help strengthen your overbends and integrate them into your playing.
The better you care for your harps, the longer they’ll last and the better they’ll work. Some players feel the need to break in a new harmonica by playing it extra gently for a few days, but in fact, a new harp is ready to rock. That said, harmonicas last longer and work better if you follow these tips to keep your harps in good shape:
Warm your harp before you play.
When a reed on your harmonica won’t play or makes some kind of sound other than a beautiful, clear note, it’s usually obstructed for one of the following simple reasons:
Gunk (such as lint, hair, breakfast remnants, or something else that doesn’t belong) has lodged between the reed and its slot.
Burrs have been created by something hard or sharp nicking the edge of the reed or the slot.
Harmonica
Vocal mics and sound systems are made to work together, but harmonica players often use equipment that isn’t designed to work with modern sound systems. For instance, they often use archaic bullet mics as well as amplifiers and special effects units that are designed to work with electric guitars.
To make all this stuff work together, a harmonica player has to match up the different types of physical connecters and also match an electrical value called impedance.
Harmonica
When you play a chord on the harmonica, you can use your tongue to add texture — sort of like a guitar player does when he plays a fancy strum pattern instead of just hitting the notes of a chord once. You can use several different chord textures, including the chord rake, the chord hammer, the hammered split, and the shimmer.
Use your fingertips to pick up the harp by its ends. Doing this allows you to perform the essential task of getting the harmonica in your mouth. However, your hands perform two additional functions:
Finding the hole you want to play without looking: Why go cross-eyed peering down at the little numbers on the covers?
Learning to play the harmonica fast is a little like learning to talk. First you learn to mouth sounds. Then you learn to shape the sounds into words, connect the words into simple sentences, and have conversations. At that point, you become fluent — and your language can flow.
When you learn to play the harp fluently, you start with individual notes.
Harmonica
Whether playing clean or distorted, some harmonica players usually favor small speakers — either 8 or 10 inches in diameter — that are configured in pairs or in fours. Why? The harmonica is a high-pitched instrument, and smaller speakers deliver high-pitched sound most efficiently. They also respond rapidly — they bark, as harmonica players like to say.
Harmonica
Positions on a harmonica are numbered 1 through 12. Each time you count up five scale steps from the key of the harp, you’ve reached the next position. The blow chord (C on a C-harmonica) is designed to be the harp’s home chord. When players use the blow chord as home base, they call it straight harp, or first position.
Harmonica
Intervals are the building blocks of scales, melodies, and chords when you are playing the harmonica. However, before delving into them, you need to understand the principle that organizes them all around one central note, the key note, or tonic.
When musicians say something like, “Let’s play in the key of E major” or “Was that really played in the key of B♭ minor?
Harmonica
Even if you’re just playing single notes on the harmonica with no special effects, tongue blocking, as you can watch in Chapter 5, Video Clip 0502, has one advantage: It configures your mouth to promote a full, rich tone. Sure, you can get a good tone with puckering, but tongue blocking makes it almost automatic.
Harmonica
There are a few different ways that you can play the harmonica. It’s a good idea to learn the pucker embouchure, seen in Chapter 5, Video Clip 0501, if you’re getting started because it’s easy and straightforward. Here’s how you do it:
Open your mouth wide, leaving your lips relaxed.
Place the harmonica between your lips so that the front of the harmonica touches the right and left corners of your mouth, where your upper and lower lips meet.
Harmonica
Like high blow bends, overdraws are in the highest register of the harp, where tiny movements of your K-spot make the difference between getting the note and not getting it. Most harmonicas can benefit from reed adjustment so that overdraws can start easily and sound clearly. A few models, such as the Suzuki Fire Breath and Pure Breath, come pre-adjusted for overdraws.
Got a shiny new harp all snug in its box? You’re probably eager to crack the lid, pull out that harmonica, and start playing. Let’s start off with a tryout and some basic pointers. Here’s a quick preview.
Picking up the harp
Before you do anything, look at the harp and the printing on the covers. It has a top and a bottom.
Harmonica
The most obvious way to make a harmonica louder is to breathe harder — to push or pull air through the reeds at a faster rate. To accommodate the increased airflow, the reeds have to make wider swings as they vibrate, which makes louder sound.
However, harmonica reeds are tiny, and when you push them too hard, the sound they produce is distorted and hard to control.
Harmonica
Getting a single note on the harmonica is great, but there aren’t many one-note melodies out there. To make the most of your new skill, you want to start moving from one note to another to play melodies. On the harmonica, the two main ways to change the note you’re playing are:
Breath changes, when you change your breath direction from blow to draw or from draw to blow.
When your breath makes a reed vibrate on the harmonica, some of the air escapes along the space between the edge of the reed and the edge of the slot in the reedplate. You can narrow this space so that less air escapes. This narrowing allows the reed to respond more efficiently and with increased volume.
You narrow a slot by pressing the edges of the slot inward with a hard object.
When you put the harmonica in your mouth, your lips have only one job — to direct air where you want it to go without leaking out. Part of that job is also letting the harmonica glide easily to the left and right to get to different holes. For now, your goal is just getting the harp in your mouth and gliding without air loss which you can see in Chapter 3, Video Clip 0301.
Harmonica
You probably already know how to whistle or hum dozens of tunes. So the best way to get started playing melody on the harmonica is to try to find some of those melodies in the harmonica. Here, you find several familiar tunes that are played in the middle register.
The harmonica tablature (or tab) under the written music tells you the holes and breaths to play.
Harmonica
The harmonica works well with fiddle tunes. The instrumental dance tunes in folk music are often called fiddle tunes because the fiddle is the most popular instrument for playing these tunes. Fiddle tunes include the traditional dance music of Scotland, Ireland, England, Cape Breton, Québec, and the United States.
Harmonica
When you’re playing a note on the harmonica and you want to jump to another note several holes away, you may have trouble landing in the right hole when you jump. You may also find that as you pass over the holes in between, those notes sound when you don’t want them to. Fortunately, you can play wide leaps cleanly, accurately, and quickly with corner switching.
On the harmonica, you can reinforce a melody note with another note that’s several holes to the left, played as a harmony. But how do you keep the holes in between from sounding? You block them out with your tongue and leave space at the left and right corners of your mouth to direct air to the holes you want to play.
You will need to do some preparation for bending notes on the harmonica. Once you have an idea of how to tune your mouth to different notes, and you’ve created your bend activator by narrowing the airflow at your K-spot, you’re ready to try bending a note.
To bend notes successfully, you need to be able to close off your nasal passages and to play a single note without air leaking through your lips.
Harmonica
With practice, you may be able to race up and down the harp, popping out overblows and overdraws with ease and abandon. But your first overblow will take some concentrated effort, and it probably will cause you some frustration. Just like learning to bend notes down, learning overblows takes patience.
A couple of approaches can help you get over that first hurdle: The push-through approach, and the springboard approach.
Harmonica
The high notes in Holes 7 through 10 on the harmonica can make some beautiful music, but they also pose some challenges. People sometimes associate these high notes with high tension and tiny size — as if the holes were smaller and closer together and took more force to play. But look at the holes on a harmonica.
Harmonica
The harmonica is well-suited for the blues. One of the most well-loved (and basic) song forms used in blues and rock is called 12-bar blues, which is like the verse of a song. This verse form is the container for both melodies and solos, and when you understand its features, you can easily find things to play within it.
Harmonica
Bending notes on the harmonica happens in the dark recesses of your mouth with the harp blocking the view, so seeing it requires something less intrusive than flashlights and mirrors. However, you can get an idea of what’s going on inside your mouth by doing some simple explorations with your tongue and then you can try out some breathing and vocal noises to get you started on the bending path.
Harmonica
While you create the bulk of your harmonica sound in your air column, your hands can affect the loudness of a note by opening and closing your hand cup around the harp. This action changes loudness — and the perception of loudness — in three related ways:
Rapid changes in tone color: When you change quickly between the dark sound of closed hands and the bright sound of open hands, the listener notices and will perceive your sound more readily, something like the way you notice a flashing light of an ambulance or firetruck in your rearview mirror more easily than you notice just another set of headlights.
Harmonica
When you play a sustained note on the harmonica and make it pulsate at a steady rate, you’re adding vibrato to the note. When you pulsate a note, you use a series of gentle pulses to create a subtle ripple or undulation in the sustained sound. You do this using the same motions as when you start and stop notes, but you do it more gently.
Harmonica
The note you hear when you play an overbend on the harmonica seems to pop out of nowhere, with no slide up from another note. But when you start an overbent note, you can slide it up in pitch just as you can slide bent-down notes down in pitch.
Playing overbends in tune
When a reed opens, it plays a note that’s a little flat, so it sounds out of tune unless you bend it up slightly.
Harmonica
Every instrument has a way of making melody notes sound bigger and more interesting. On the harmonica, the most powerful and natural way to reinforce a single note is by lifting your tongue selectively to add notes from the neighboring holes. Because all these notes are part of a chord, they reinforce one another and make the whole sound bigger than its parts.
Choosing tunes for the harmonica can lead you to some that are already known and played on the harmonica or it can lead you to tunes that are completely innocent of any association with the mouth harp. But before you begin selecting your tunes, consider these guidelines:
Pick tunes you feel good about. Maybe these tunes inspire you, maybe they mean something special to you, or maybe they just sound good to you.
As you can view in Chapter 18, Video Clips 1803 and 1804, Harmonica reeds can be adjusted so that they respond to a player’s breath in a particular way — for instance, to strong or gentle attacks or to heavy or light breathing. The result of these adjustments is called reed action. You set reed action by changing the curvature of the reed relative to the reedplate.
Harmonica
As you make progress and gain experience playing the harmonica, you will need to become familiar with the shift — the place in Holes 6 and 7 where the breathing sequence changes as you go from the middle register to the high register.
Here’s an important fact to remember about the shift: When you go up the scale from Draw 6, the next note is Draw 7 (instead of Blow 7).
Harmonica
To get at the reeds in a harmonica for tuning, adjustment, or to clear obstructions, you have to take the covers off. You may also need to remove the reedplates from the comb. If you’re careful, you can disassemble and reassemble a harmonica without mishap as you can watch in Chapter 18, Video Clip 1801. Just make sure there are no parts left over when you’re done.
Harmonica
Test your harmonica tuning either with an electronic tuner or by playing the note together with another note on the harp. If you can, play the note you’re tuning together with the same note an octave higher or lower (you do this by playing tongue-blocked intervals, or splits).
You may hear a quavering when the two notes play together.
Harmonicas can go out of tune with playing, and even new harps straight from the factory aren’t always in good tune. But you don’t have to accept what you get — you can correct out-of-tune notes.
Harmonica tuning, as you can watch in Chapter 18, Video Clip 1805, follows straightforward procedures, but it has some ins and outs that you need to know.
Harmonica
Once you have some practice with projection, it’s time to start thinking about dynamics, the changes in loudness that can make your harmonica playing more colorful. You can vary your volume by tapering gradually between soft and loud volumes or by suddenly changing your dynamic level with dramatic contrasts.
Dynamics and musical terms
Musicians use a set of Italian words to indicate volume:
Piano: Abbreviated with a bold, italicized p, “piano” means soft or quiet.
Playing a harmonica in its labeled key seems like the obvious thing to do. Here are three tunes that explore how you can use first position in folk-influenced popular songs.
“Kickin’ Along”
Listen in Chapter 13, Audio Track 1301 to “Kickin’ Along”, a song that lets you explore first position while playing an easy melody with a happy rhythmic groove.
The harmonica isn't limited to blues, folk, and rock music. You might be surprised to learn that several classical, pop, and world albums feature the harmonica. Check out the following albums to hear the various ways the harmonica can be used. It'll be an ear-opening experience.
Classical
The introduction of the chromatic harmonica in 1910 allowed harmonica players to tackle complex music, and pretty soon, famous composers were writing concertos for the harmonica.
Harmonica
First position on a harp plays the major scale. Your home note is Blow 4 or Blow 7, and the blow notes together form your home chord. The harmonica was designed to play in first position, and hundreds of traditional tunes can be played in this position successfully without any special adaptations. Here are three fiddle tunes to get you started playing traditional tunes in first position.
Harmonica
First position — playing a harmonica in its labeled key —works well for many folk tunes. When you play in first position, your home note is Blow 4. Your home chord is formed by any combination of blow notes.
Many of these tunes are old folk and country favorites — you’ll probably meet others who know how to play them on guitar.
Harmonica
Harmonica players have proved very clever in adapting a C-harmonica to play in many keys. While first, second, and third positions are the most popular, you can make some great sounds in twelfth, fourth, and fifth positions as well.
“À la claire fontaine” in twelfth position
Twelfth position has been seldom used until recent years.
Harmonica
When you play in second position on the harmonica, your home note is Draw 2, and the surrounding draw notes form the home chord. However, notes are missing from the scale directly above and below the home note.
In earlier times, people played second-position fiddle tunes in the upper register, where those missing notes were available.
Harmonica
Second position — playing the harmonica in the key of the draw chord, with Draw 2 as the home note — works well for many folk tunes but also for a large portion of the southern gospel repertoire. The following tunes lie well in second position. Grab a harp and try them out.
“Since I Laid my Burden Down”
“Since I Laid my Burden Down,” an African-American spiritual, was the basis for the well-known country gospel tune “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Third position on the harmonica happens to match a scale called the Dorian mode that has been widely used since the Middle Ages. Many traditional tunes are in the Dorian mode and work well in third position.
“Little Brown Island in the Sea”
This song’s original title in Scots Gaelic is “Eilean Beag Donn A’ Chuain.
Harmonica
There are several elements of 12-bar blues on the harmonica, including playing the root note of each chord in the 12-bar verse, playing rhythm chords over the 12-bar verse, playing the same line over the three different parts of the verse, and playing wailing notes. Each element is embodied in a tune that you can play in second position.
Playing scales on the harmonica can be very useful. If you take two notes an octave apart and add some of the pitches that lie between them, you’ll have a scale. With 12 different pitches to choose from, you have endless possibilities. However, most music uses a few standard types of scale.
You can describe the notes in a scale in one of three ways:
You can simply name which notes belong in the scale.
Music notation tells you which notes to play and when to play them. However, notation doesn’t tell you how to get the notes on the harmonica or on any other instrument; those specifics are left up to you. Here are some basics of reading written notes and relating them to a C-harmonica.
Placing notes on a staff
Notes are written on a stack of five horizontal lines called the staff.
Harmonica
The diatonic harmonica is designed to play in just one key. Even though you can play it in several keys or positions, you’ll likely want several keys of harps so you can just pick up a harp in the right key for whatever song comes up.
If you can play a tune on a harmonica in one key, you can play that tune in any key just by picking up a harmonica in the appropriate key and executing the same sequence of holes and breaths you already know.
Very few people have the ability to name what note they’re hearing. That ability is called absolute pitch or perfect pitch. But most harmonica players and musicians have a much more useful skill: They can hear and describe the relationships among notes using intervals. Those relationships create structure in scales, melodies, chords, and harmonies.
What do you need to know to buy your first harmonica? Your first harmonica doesn’t need to be gold-plated or encrusted with rubies, but it does need to be airtight, responsive to your breath, and in tune.
Pricing a harmonica
The cheaper the harp’s price, the more likely it will be leaky, unresponsive, and out of tune.
Why make music on the harmonica all by yourself when you can multiply your fun by sharing with a partner or a group? When you play music with others, you need to find out what keys everyone wants to play in, and you need harps that match those keys.
Setting some ground rules when you play with others
When you play music with other people, whether for your own enjoyment or in front of an audience, you develop a way of working together.
Once you’re onstage in front of the audience, you may be called on to take a harmonica solo. First things first: Make sure you have the first few notes of your part ready to go and that you have the right harp (and it’s right side up). Now, make sure you also do the following:
Watch the leader to begin. When it’s time for your big moment, the onstage leader will gesture or say something to tell you to start.
Harmonica
The diatonic harmonica is the most popular harp in North America, but many other types of harps are worth checking out. There are three other popular harmonicas that you may want to explore.
You may find chromatic, tremolo, and octave harps in stores that have a broad selection of harmonicas, but many stores stick to the most popular models and keys of diatonics, rounded out by one or two chromatics.
Harmonica
How do you choose harmonicas for playing traditional music? Different traditions use different types of harmonicas, and each type has strengths and weaknesses in adapting to existing styles. Here are some considerations for using the three main types of melody harmonicas in traditional music.
The simple ten-hole diatonic is the most widely used type of harmonica in North American music and is often found in English and Celtic music as well.
Harmonica
As a harmonica player, you have many choices among vocal mics and mics designed for harmonica. The two most popular types used to amplify sound are vocal mics and bullet mics.
General purpose vocal mics
Vocal mics work well for harmonica. They deliver a clean, natural-sounding signal that can be processed to give a wide variety of sounds, from clean and airy to distorted and boxy.
Harmonica
Both harmonica and harp are borrowed names, and neither one is the only correct name. The harmonica was invented during the Romantic era of Beethoven and Schubert, a time when garden décor included the Aeolian harp, a stringed harp that you set outdoors, where the wind makes the strings vibrate. Even though the harmonica has reeds sounded by a player's breath instead of strings sounded by the wind, some early harmonica makers referred to their instruments as Aeolian harps by way of poetic association.
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