Second, I do love the deeper notes on the 16 hole harp. I have a feeling I would love bass harmonicas as well if I ever went that route.

Third, after playing it for a bit, I found myself delighted that Tifa's Theme and Aerith's Theme were both within reasonable reach on first play through. I can tell there will be an even bigger mental break in my brain than on the diatonic, because it was already taking effort to know that two different notes could be on the same hole. With four notes on each hole now, I can feel my brain hurting, which I'm sure will shift with practice.

I also got my first sense of loss at losing the ability to play Alfyn's theme really well. It'll be a big shift, but there's no longer that terrible bend that plagues me when I get to it.

Fourth, it does really interesting things to my brain to switch back and forth between the harps. I'm going to want to explore that more in the future, but for now I'm planning to stick to chrom for a bit until I get better.

Fifth, a lot of the material out there for learning chrom appears to center around scales. I'm not opposed to this, but it's a little surprising given that there was so little of that in the diatonic world (for obvious reasons I suppose).

In fact, there isn't a lot of good intro chrom harmonica stuff at all, in my opinion. I picked up Dave Kettlewell's book because I really liked his YouTube channel, and I might extract the useful info later, but it reads like a right brained person dictated into Skype call for an hour and someone typed it up. Not to mention the Kindle formatting is barely legible and the chapters are inaccessible from the sidebar. Dave, among others, recommends Method for Chromatic Harmonica, so I'll give that a try, as well as peek into Yvonnick Prene's Harmonica Studio. I'll probably post more about this as I go through things.

All in all, it feels uncomfortable to go back to square one, but I already feel like this is the direction I was looking to go, so I'm hopeful about what comes next.

#harmonica

... But I can't get the idea out of my mind that I might want to switch to chromatic harp instead. And while I shouldn't quit before I get a good sense of something, I similarly shouldn't ignore my own feedback and preferences when other viable alternatives exist.

Sure, The grass is always greener on the other side, but there are a few reasons that I'm taking this seriously enough to try a switch.

I'm Really Struggling To Enjoy Bending Practice

Though I've heard many players bend and enjoy hearing them play, I'm finding that I simply do not like playing the bends.

I do not like how they sound when I practice. I do not like how imprecise they are. I do not like how most of the notes on the harp are well defined... only then to have this arbitrary trombone-like component which removes that just to get notes that feel like they should be there already.

It seems you can still bend notes on the chromatic harmonica, but that style of harp also is much more in line with having a place for all the notes to begin with... no torturing of the instrument necessary. Plus, for my goal (to follow people around at DragonCon and play the themes of any costumes I see), I'll mostly (if not only) be playing melodies anyway.

The Chromatic Harp Seems Closer to My Goals

With the walk around DragonCon as my goal from the very start, I thought this would be achievable enough on the diatonic. It has enough range, and with the right technique and practice I could pull all the notes out that I needed. Most learning material these days seems to be for diatonic, so there's plenty of help out there. I might have to transpose a few songs into a different key, but no big deal.

However, as I've gotten into it I've learned that diatonic harmonicas tend to be more blues and band focused. This is a pretty far mark outside of what I want to do, and it feels a bit like I'm trying to pit a round peg in a square hole.

Chromatic's focus on melodies and including accidentals in the design means I carry fewer harps, focus on the stuff that will make people smile, and hopefully won't rely on bends... or at least not as much as on diatonic.

A Chance to Go Lower

Third, the least impactful factor but not a totally insignificant one, I've found that I love playing lower notes on the harmonica. The 12 and 16 hole chromatics give the full range on those deeper notes without crazy bending work. I'm sure there will be other challenges making the switch, but even just switching the key from a diatonic C harp to a diatonic A harp made practicing much more enjoyable for me. I look forward to even more octave flexibility as I walk down this road.

Moving Forward

The biggest challenge I think I'll have moving forward is figuring out what new lesson plan I should undertake. Some of the original checklists for beginner intermediate and advanced look like they still apply, but I'll want a lesson plan more focused on chromatics. I'll post here with what I come up with once I've found it.

Hopefully I'm not re-reviewing my harmonica journey too soon, but I think these are probably appropriate adjustments to make 4 weeks in, and I'm trying to be open to the idea that changing course is not the same as failure or abandonment.

#harmonica

The Key Tech That Helped Me

Harmonica.com's Bend It Better tool (Explainer Link || Direct Link ) is amazing, and absolutely helped me figure out what I was doing... all for the price of free.

So many books and descriptions before had talked about tongue placement, but it all seemed so abstract. I could get the gist of what to do, but couldn't actually connect the dots in my head to the harp in my mouth to make the note change. Trying to make my tongue more perfectly like the pictures and drawings wasn't helping. This Bend It Better tool let me keep all that on the mental back burner and just focus on feeling out the right pitch.

I tried some other tuning apps, and they might have worked OK, but it was hard to visualize where I was on the harp as I was stumbling around for a bend. The harp diagram layout of BIB is brilliant, and totally fit my mental model, letting me focus on the hard part in my mouth while getting instant feedback as I went.

The only trouble I had was getting it to work right on my phone (since I practice in my car). On my Android phone it works in Chrome and nothing else. I also have to be mindful about turning the mic on and off and closing the tab when I'm done or it tends to hang on to the mic, messing up other apps. Once I got the routine down though, it's been smooth sailing, and I can't give it enough credit for getting me past the first bend hump.

Motivational Advice That Helped Me

There is a lot of advice on bending along the lines of “it just takes practice.” I absolutely believe this, but I found it a little too vague for me. It didn't help me understand what to do next.

Maybe because I'm used to sports and weight lifting, the way bluesharmonica.com phrased it really resonated with me: you've just got to put in the reps. It'll suck, but do it 100 times and it'll get better.

It reminds me of an old Aikido saying: the way to learn to roll [on the ground] is to roll a thousand times. Then you'll know how to roll. Same with bending.

Focusing on reps let me bite-size any action, and just hit repeat over and over until it starting feeling better (or my mouth got tired) while being confident this is what practice should probably look like. Bend a note. Then bend it 10 times. Then bend it up from the blow and then down from the draw and back again. Bend it smoothly and bend it with a quick snap to the tone.

Break it down and conquer it a piece at a time, rather than just pulling in your breath funky for a few minutes and giving up.

A Thinking Framework that Helped Me

Caveat: this could be a terrible idea but it seems to have helped me with my minor breakthrough, so I'll share it for others.

I find a lot of the information on bending focuses on tongue position and placement. When I focused on this, I found that the advice didn't really connect, and I wasn't getting the bend I was looking for either.

What did start to work well, was focusing on drawing the air to a particular point on my hard palette (or behind it). Then I found in making that happen my tongue would end up the right shape more often than not.

Hopefully that's not terrible advice for newbies, because it seemed to help me.

Looking Ahead

I can tell now the next challenge is... my bends are just terrible to listen to. I don't like how they sound, and I kind of can't imagine lying to anyone and calling them “music.”

I'm reminded of the amazement I always had watching trombone and violin players find notes seemingly out of nowhere. I never took up those instruments precisely because I thought it would be too hard.

... But the only way to get good is to put in the reps. I am committed for at least a month. So let's see how we fare at the end of it... even if I'm currently dreaming of switching to chromatic harp or trying ocarina instead where I can run from this scary thing I've just started to learn.

#harmonica

Enter, MuseScore. I didn't see any explicit tutorials on how to do this out there, so I figured I would write down the steps I've found to make it as simple as possible.

At a high level:

1. Put the music into MuseScore
2. Transpose the key if necessary / desired
3. Use the Harmonica Tablature plugin to generate the tab
4. Look over to see if any octaves need adjustment
5. If necessary, clear out the tabs and re-run the plugin after adjusting the octave

To the details!

Step 1 – Put the Music into MuseScore

There's no magic to this step. If you're lucky enough to find the song you want already transcribed on the community (and have a subscription), then you're ahead of the game. Otherwise you'll need to put it in the program note by note, either with the mouse or a MIDI device. I've used the mouse 100% of the time so far.

This part is still a bit tedious, but it'll be worth it, I promise!

Step 2 – Transpose the Key if Necessary / Desired

Most of the music I'm interested in wasn't written for harmonica. So when I'm done transcribing it, it's usually in a key I don't have a harp for... given my glorious collection of exactly two diatonic harmonicas.

This isn't necessarily a problem, because one of diatonic harmonicas' strengths is that once you get a tab in one key, it's the same for all diatonic harmonicas. The key transposition is already done for you inside the harp... once you have the first tab.

So while it's not usually necessary, you can transpose the music you have in MuseScore before generating the tab.

Ctrl + A to select the whole piece Tools... Transpose... [Choose a key of choice]

So far I've only used this to get out of octave trouble (further detailed below), but if you'd just prefer to have the music in the key of your harmonica first, you can do that as well.

Step 3 – Use the Harmonica Tablature plugin to generate the tabs

So this plugin is very basic, simply giving you the holes for the harp key you pick that match the notes that are in MuseScore. This is powerful, but also lets you shoot yourself in the foot if you're not mindful.

It's powerful because it's position agnostic. Pick the key of harmonica the piece is in, and BAM, you've got a first position tab that works on any diatonic. Pick a harmonica key that you know can play the displayed key in second position? You're good to go.

Pick a harmonica key that matches your harp but has no relation to the key onscreen? Well... then you might have a weird time, getting tons of funky draws, overblows, and missing notes in the tab.

First position is the easiest to adjust to. Just match the harp key in the plugin to the key of the music when running it. You can use the generated tabs on a different harp later and it will sound fine, just transposed to a different key.

Step 4 (& 5) – Make Sure No Octaves Need Adjustment, and Re-Run the Plugin if Need Be

As mentioned in the last section, the plugin will just throw an X in your tab if the note can't be found on the harp. I find this most often when a section dips too far below what the harp can offer.

You can highlight just a section of the music in MuseScore (or the whole piece with Ctrl + A), and transpose the notes up (Tools... Transpose... Up), and you'll get the higher octave.

Clear out the old tab (Ctrl + Z for undo is easiest, or left click a tab number, and right click Select... All Similar Elements and Delete). Then re-run the plugin to see what you get.

Conclusion

Hopefully that helps some aspiring harmonica tabulators. I'll be sure to update this post with anything new I come across as I continue the journey, but I think using MuseScore as a bridge into getting more harmonica tabs out there is a big win for everyone.

#harmonica

I added the Titanic theme to the list of songs to practice, largely because it's got a lot of lower notes. I can tell that one of the notes in the harp tab is wrong, but it's good enough to practice with.

I've been working in particular on my hand grip (which finally started feeling right in my hands) and not articulating every note. I had already picked up a habit to put a kah on every note, which seemed to work well at first, but I think it was acting as a mini reset between notes. So the melody was clean, but I was missing some flow. It's been frustrating to regress in my song while switching to minimal articulation, but I see the value in getting that extra expression from note to note. So... back to the suck we go!

I've also started the music theory lesson, which culminates in enabling transposition of music. I could breeze through most of the basics since I had some background on trumpet and choir when I was young, but the step by step to transposing music for harmonica is hugely valuable to me. I'm toying with different tools to make this easy on the computer, including everyone piano, MuseScore (and the harmonica tab plugin), the online tone generator, and even more on my phone for metronome and pitch checking. I've started playing Final Fantasy VII remake, so it think those themes will by high on my list to transpose and learn.

I recognize that I'm starting to get the basics of Rainbow Connection down, and I'll want to start integrating other harmonica techniques to see how to be more expressive. They may come with time, but I'm being mindful of what the next limiting factors are.

Onward and upward! Hopefully FFVII remake won't crowd out too much of my harmonica time.

#harmonica

I'm learning the harmonica, in case the title wasn't obvious. I'm trying to model this a bit as an Ultralearning project a la Scott Young. So I figured a good first post would be to outline the framework I'm starting under.

Goals

• I want to be able to really wail on sad notes in songs that I feel like I can't sing as well anymore
• I want to be able to bust out geek songs at Dragon Con on demand, focusing on this genre as opposed to blues or rock
  • It's not a thing where I'm going for cool, I'm going for remix culture and leaning on the familiar
  • Maybe improvising within those lines, but that's the base
• I want to connect with an artistic expression side of myself that I don't always find easy to connect to
• I want be able to translate any geek song into a harp doable arrangement

What's the lesson plan?

My Harmonica (Special 20) came with a www.bluesharmonica.com free trial, so I figured I'd start with that. It's for blues, but certainly the basics are probably similar.

To mix with that, I'll pull from harmonicatabs.com to mix in other music I'm interested in.

I'll practice twice a day, 30 minutes scheduled during the day and up to 30 minutes after the kid goes to sleep. Due to space constraints (and to keep my family from throwing things at me), the car will be my concert hall.

We'll re-assess the approach each month, with weekly reviews as we go.

There's also a good checklist I found from some Harmonica YouTube video that gives specifics on what you should be able to do as a competent beginner.

Namely:

• Can you play a clean, single note on all draw and blow holes?
• Play the harmonica in just the left hand
• Can you play a rhythm pattern for 1 minute without running out of breath?
• Do you know more than 1 melody by heart?
• Can you play a major scale in both directions?
• Can you produce a Hand Wah that is distinct to other listeners? (doesn't have to be perfect)
• Can you sketch out a tab that you understand?

I'd like to try and get there within a month if I can swing it.

First week results

The first week has gone pretty well I would say. My study song of choice is Rainbow Connection, which I've leaned into way more than the lessons. I'm focused on trying to get clear, single notes and get a little bit of feeling into it. It's been really fun.

I think I need a clearer picture of which mechanics lessons to do each day. I haven't figured out a great way to do the bluesharmonica.com lessons in my car. The phone is fine, and I've printed the sheet music, but it's a little clunky to try and tie it all together. I figured I wouldn't worry too much about it for the first week.

I should probably start recording myself to get a sense of how I sound over time. I should also lean more into formal lessons and using the metronome. I already sense the bending will be a challenge for me (which is where I've stopped in the past), but let's nail all the basics on straight harp first.

I also originally was learning on a C harmonica, but since the lessons were mostly with an A harmonica, I grabbed one of those two and like it a lot better.

#harmonica