I'm slowly making progress with the harmonica, currently working from two main angles: (1) learning folk tunes, and (2) working through exercises to develop technique. Of course, I'm also noodling around with the odd blues lick for a bit of fun as well.
On the folk tunes front, I can now play a passable Irish Washerwoman, and am starting to get somewhere with Miss McLeod's Reel and The Kesh Jig. At least, I'm getting somewhere when on my own with nobody listening. Lunchtime today I got together with a colleague who goes to the local pub sessions for a bit of a practice (me with the moothie and him with a fiddle), which was the first time I have ever played with anyone else (I think the messing about with Gav on Saturday doesn't count). This was great fun, but revealed just how far I have yet to go (unsurprisingly I was slipping up all over the place). At least I have stepped over another hurdle in my musical development and am slightly more ready for the next session (as long as I keep practicing in between).
The current exercises I am doing are from Charlie McCoy's All-American Harp book, which is doing a good job of getting me over one of the major technical hurdles: bending notes. This is a technique that allows a player to play most of the notes that are "missing" from a harmonica, meaning that the little 10-hole blues harp has a full 3 octaves of range. More advanced techniques allow access to all chromatic notes, but I'm not worried about that right now — many successful harp players go through life happily not playing those extra notes. Anyway, I can now just about do semitone(ish) bends on the first four holes. Go me!
The McCoy book is really good, but I'm glad it wasn't my first bit of tuition material. It runs over the basics very quickly, and would have probably just put me off. As a bit of follow-up material, though, it is great. The book that got me started was David Barratt's Basic Blues Harmonica Method, which was a great starting point (and I still haven't got through all of it), though helped massively by getting the DVD which accompanies it. Other than that, I have Ben Hewlett and Paul Lennon's Get Chugging (the linked one is a newer edition), which is just great fun for playing with rhythms and breathing exercises, and have more recently picked up Brendan Power's Play Irish Music on the Blues Harp which does what it says on the tin and was a great opportunity to get hold of a pair of customised harmonicas at a discount. Seriously, those Suzuki harps are wonderfu
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