Learn to play HARMONICA, the easiest instrument to pick up!

Welcome to the course! This is a bundle of my best, most popular and most recent courses bundles together into a seamless learning package. Take them in order please. If you are not a beginner just skim through the first ones until you hit your level - you are bound to learn something new! I hope this brings you great joy - if so my work is done.

Introduction

Which harmonica do I need?

Simple answer - any 10-hole diatonic harmonica in the key of C.

Here are some ways to hold the harmonica and thoughts and exercises on breathing.

Open Chords, Chugging, Trainsounds

Playing single notes with the 'pucker' or 'kiss' embouchure

This is all about learning to tongue block

Here's a lecture on starting to bend notes.

This lecture shows the C major scale, the pentatonic scale derived from the major scale and the other 6 modal scales.

Wrapping up this first section

Quick learning check

Promo movie

Let me introduce you to this section

More simple train sounds

Nice and easy so far - Haha Hoohoo

Interview with my (now sadly late) step pop Pete about steam trains - he has driven the UK's most prestigious and famous steam train - Flying Scotsman - google it. It just had its 100-year celebrations I saw recently.

Bells and whistles

Train sounds from Goa

Salty's sounds

George Bullet Williams sounds

Sounds from Flying Scotsman

Excellent train sounds here.

Trainsound with shakers.

Step pop Pete makes silly sounds

Wrapping up the Trainsounds section

Here's a metronome track in case you don't have one

Let's see how you are getting on up to now.

Trailer

Let me introduce this section

A little chord theory before we play

And a little theory on 12 bar blues structure

Here's how the chord structure works.

Here's how the lyrics in Blues scan out

Playing rhythmic chugging in the blues

Now we play some single note lines and it's quite easy!

Now we play some single note lines and it's quite tricky!

Bending hole 1

Learning to bend hole 4

Note Bending - hole 6

This time we will play using some note bending

This is an alternative way to look at the blues

Basic blues learning check - how are you getting on so far?

Bonus - a bit of Sonny Terry for you

Here's where I introduce the section of the course that focusses on getting good tone

Here's an idea on breathing while lying on your back

Great breathing game and trainsound here

How the inside of your mouth alters the sound

Try to make it worse then better

More on mouth cavity tonal changes

How does the vocal tract affect the sound?

More aspects of tone

Does tongue height affect tone?

Let's get into breathing and posture

Exploring use of hands

Big Walter explains his tone and use of hands

https://youtu.be/KX0Eu5Lqexc

Relaxing as you play

Which harmonica to use for best tone?

Do you hear any differences?

This is part of the lesson with Phil

Finishing this section of the course

This is the trailer

This is were I introduce this section of the course

Here we analyse the 12 bar blues and look at notation for many instruments

This is the first 2 bars of the 12 bar blues

Here's the first 4 bars repeated at different speeds

This is the middle part of the tune

This is the last part of the tune

See what happens if you double each note

Here's how you use tongue blocking

Here are a few ideas on how to vary your improvisation

Here's the trailer movie - worth a look

Introduction and preparations

First pattern - holes 1&2 only

Pattern using the first three holes only

Pattern using the first four holes only

Pattern using the first five holes only

Pattern using the first six holes only

Using Ta-ah and tucka

Using Ta-a-a and Takata

Sonny Terry rhythm

Triplet rhythm

JJ Milteau lick

Bends, over-blows and wrapping up