Harmonica: Expert Guides and Resources

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.