PM me if you happen to live around Orange County CA by any weird stretch of coincidence.
-FrL-
Phoenix. I’m in Orange County about 2 or 3 times a year but I don’t know that it’s ever enough for a harmonica lesson, unfortunately.
Picked up a Lee Oskar in C today. Immediately gave myself a headache playing it. Have evidently lost all middle school french horn breath control.
Fifteen years of piano have taught me nothing I can use on the harmonica. 
Well, yesterday on my way home from school, I picked up a Hoehner Ocean Spray harmonica, chromatic, with 20 holes, key of C. Much better than the tinny one I got with the basic intro book!
I suppose I should also mention that perhaps I should feel a bit sorry for my neighbors. I’m learning the harmonica and the bagpipes!
They can form a support group with mine; my boyfriend plays the accordion.
From “Coast to Coast Music” site:
“Chop Saver lip balm For Musicians with Lips”
Never met a musician without them!
What makes a ‘quality’ harp? I happened to be at a music store during my lunch break today, and I bought a couple of Hohner Blues Band ones. These cost about $5.50 and are made in China. I put one next to my Hohner Special 20 that cost about $30 and was made in Germany. Both have plastic combs. Both have metal covers. Both have brass reeds. They are identical in dimension.
Why is the Special 20 better than the Blues Band? I haven’t blown a Blues Band recently. (Wait… That didn’t come out the way I intended it to.) I have one in the glove box of my car, so I’ll try to remember to give it a toot on the way home. Let’s take it as given that the more expensive harp sounds better. Why?
One thing I’ve noticed about cheaper harps is they tend to take a lot more air to play. I assume that has to do with how well they are gapped out-of-the-box and how good the quality control for that is. Controlling bends on cheap harps can be a bit finicky for this reason. And some real cheap-o harps are darned near impossible to get to bend (AFAIK, the Blues Band does not fall into this category.) You can, of course, re-gap or adjust the gapping of your harp (and I do so on some of the better harps if the note doesn’t quite feel right or if I’m having issues with getting a reed to choke for an overblow.)
I want to find myself a Blues Band now to see how it plays and sounds. I’m curious if it really is as good for a $5 harp as it seems to be.
I’ve been reading about air leakage. If I understand correctly, the covers allow blow-by. I wonder if you could make a better seal on cheap harps? (Just as an exercise.)
The reviews at Amazon are largely – one might say overwhelmingly – positive. I did blow on the one in my car when I left work yesterday. It’s ‘softer’ than the Special 20. I don’t know if that’s because of leakage, or if it’s just because that model isn’t as loud. Considering the construction/components appear to be the same (i.e. plastic comb, same-size reeds, metal covers), I’m guessing leakage. But all of the notes play.
For six bucks, you really can’t go wrong. They’re cheap enough to have one in each car, plus another one in the house and a spare. (I had a couple of others before I bought two more yesterday.) Since I’m a beginner, I like having cheap harps at-hand, rather than having more expensive ones sitting in a glove box.
Heh. From one of the Blues Band reviews:
This 1-star reviewer says quality control is an issue for the Chinese-made Hohners. ‘You may get one that plays blues so hot it turns your soul inside out, but the odds are against you.’
OK, I’m laughing my head off now.
The SO is out, and I’ve told the boss I’m ‘going home’. So I opened up iTunes to listen to some of the tracks that came with one of the harmonica books. I’m playing along, then playing alone. Tonka (the cat) jumped up on the arm of the couch to see where all that noise was coming from! Then he leapt over my lap, and turned to see what this metal thing in my mouth was from the other side. When I stopped playing so I could type this, he scurried away howling. When I resumed, he jumped up for a closer look again.
It reminds me of a cat I used to have that loved to listen to me play Mr. Bojangles on the guitar.
As amusing as my attempts are to the cats (well, to Tonka at any rate), I cannot bend a note to save my life. Text doesn’t translate well to technique. I’ve found a couple of videos that explain the technique in detail, but I’m unable to reproduce the results. I need an actual person to diagnose where I’m going wrong.
So I’ve emailed Guitar Center and a local music shop, asking if they have lessons; and I talked to someone at the one music store I’ve actually been to here. The guy said they do indeed have harmonica lessons. They’re $90/month for one half-hour lesson a week. That’s $45/hour, if anyone’s calculating. There’s a guy in Vancouver who charges $35/hour. Vancouver is only 10 miles farther from here than Bellingham, but there’s city traffic and a border crossing.
Lacking musician friends (at least ones within 1,200 to 2,500 miles), it looks like the music shop is the way to go.
It really is a difficult thing to explain how to do. Anyhow, the two holes you should try this on is 4 draw and 3 draw. (Holes 1,2,3,4, and 6 have draw bends; holes 8,9, 10 have blow bends. I’m leaving overblows/overdraws out of this.) I find 4 draw to be the easiest. Anyhow, for the draw bends, what it feels like in the mouth is like the very back of your tongue dropping down, relaxing, kind of like you’re trying to draw air from deeper in your lungs–it’s really hard to explain. I think I started getting the feel for it by playing 4 draw and putting my mouth in a “yo” show. So, I was inhaling doing something like a “WEEEE” type mouth shape for a straight note and then shifting to something like a “YOOOO” or “YAAWW” (a deep, back vowel) for the bend. That kind of started getting my in the right ballpark to know what it feels like and then play around. The mouth shape will slightly vary for each note, like a 1 or two draw bend are really deep down in the throat, while a 4 draw bend is a bit higher up (and this will also depend on the key of your harmonica). That’s why I think the 4 draw bend is the easiest for most people to get, but try bending the 3, too.
It really is trial and error. You just have to play those two draw notes, alter your mouth shape, relax the back of your throat, try to drop the back of your tongue down, etc., until you finally hit it. There may be some good tips out there on the 'net these days, but I just learned it by screwing around until I finally found the feel of it. Yes, it is frustrating, but I think it’s just a part of every harmonica player’s journey.
Or, try this. Say “EEEEEE”. Feel where your mouth and tongue are? Fairly tense; fairly high, front of the mouth. Now, if you have an accent where cot and caught are not merged, say the “AW” vowel from caught. If you merge those two, then try something like “UHHHH,” which is back in the throat but not quite as open/relaxed. Feel that mouth and tongue position? That sort of difference is what you’re playing with when you’re making the mouth shape for the bend. I find my mouth making a shape generally as that for a back vowel, and it feels like I vary the “open” or “closed”-ness of the vowel for how deep the bend is on notes (like 3 draw) that have multiple bends. If you’re not familiar with IPA, then the last sentence may not mean much to you, but the ones before still apply in describing the feeling.
It’s still not working for me. I appreciate the effort, though.
It’s like flying a helicopter. I can tell someone that the cyclic requires constant, minute, inputs to keep the ship stable. Or I can explain adding left pedal as the collective is pulled to counteract torque. But you need someone sitting next to you to ‘get it’. (Of course with a harmonica, you’re unlikely to die while attempting to learn it!)
wrong account
A teacher certainly couldn’t hurt, but I really think this is something you kind of have to figure out by yourself by screwing around, although a teacher might have some other tricks up their sleeve in explaining it or giving different exercises to get to the right mouth shape. It’s not conducive to imitating by watching somebody else, since it all happens inside your mouth. I know it’s frustrating, but one you get it, it’s awesome. I can’t remember how long it took me to learn, but it was probably several hours to get that first one just to barely bend, and then a good while to really start controlling the more difficult ones. Weeks at least to get to a basic competency on the 3 and 4. 2 bend probably came a few months later, and the full three bend around the same time. I wish I could say there was a trick to it, but it was just trial and error. Also, try digging out the Special 20 and see if you have any more luck with that, just in case. But do expect it to take at more than a couple minutes to get, unless you’re lucky. It may take days or weeks.
I personally feel like that’s overstating the difficulty a good bit, but don’t get discouraged if it takes awhile, because it is supposed to be challenging.
That’s the one I play with. The Blues Bands are just in case I get a sudden urge to play, and I don’t have the Special 20 with me.