Thursday, April 09, 2009

Blues Harmonica Questions and Harmonica Tutorials

What I really want to talk about today is harmonica playing, and where you can find answers to questions that you may have, and where you can view some great Harmonica Tutorials.

I have mentioned many times, and probably will again that I play blues harmonica for my own entertainment mostly, but every now and then for friends and family too. And I have also mentioned that I answer questions over at Yahoo answers. Well many of the questions about blues harmonica come up over and over. And I thought, hey, I could do a blog post on those questions. And when people ask, I can just point them to this blog post.

People want to know what harmonica to get? Where to buy harmonicas? How to hold a harmonica after you get it? How to play a single note? How to bend notes? Where the can find books, CDs, DVDs and other training material about blues harmonica? etc, etc and etc.

I have answered these and many other questions about blues harmonica so many times, that I am tired of answering them. Plus some really smart dudes invented a website called YouTube which answers every one of these questions better then I can. By people who can play the harmonica waaaaaaay better than I can.

Here are my favorite YouTube blues harmonica channels, where you can find awesome (and I do mean awesome) blues tutorials;

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Jon Gindick's YouTube blues Harmonica Channel - Jon Gindick is the guy who taught me to play blues harmonica. Yes, you can blame those squeaky noises coming out of my face on him. Well I just love his stuff, he is a great teacher that has been around and he knows what he is talking about.

He has 78 videos posted, hours and hours of instructions. And as he says in one of his comments, this is what he does for a living. I love the versoin of Work Song that he does below, and here are a few other leassons that you may enjoy;

Jon Gindick Musicality Memory
Jon Gindick Understanding the I-IV-V.
Gindick Blues Harp Lesson: Add Percussion & I-IV-V to Scale



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Håkan Ehn - Is a harmonica player who lives and plays harmonica in Stockholm, Sweden. Check out the video below just to see what he can do.

I really like his style, and his presentations are crisp and easy to follow. Here are a few of his online videos;

Håkan Ehn - Bo Diddley Harmonica Beat
Håkan Ehn - Harmonica Train Boogie
Håkan Ehn - How To Play That Sugar Blue Harp Riff (With Tabs)



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Adam Gussow's dirty-South blues harp channel - Adam Gussow is a college professor and blues musician who has a great style of presentation and a body of work on YouTube that any beginning to intermediate harmonica player will find valuable.

Adam has over 200 videos, check these out;

Sanctified Blues 1 (MBH.167)
Sanctified Blues 2 (MBH.168)
Sanctified Blues 3 (MBH.169)



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Jason Ricci's Blues Harmonica Channel - Jason Ricci is one of those guys who has amazing chops and he can communicate what he is doing on the harmonica to you. I love all his videos and I highly recommend them to anyone wanting to learn about harmonica playing.

As of this moment, he has 95 videos up.

Just to give you a taste of what he does check out these three videos;
Jason Ricci's Beginning Harmonica, Lesson #1
Jason Ricci's Beginning Harmonica, Lesson #2
Jason Ricci's Beginning Harmonica, Lesson #3




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I will post more info on all these guys, but this is a good begining for anyone who wants to get some good online harmonica tutorials.


5 comments:

prin said...

LOL! thanks for posting this. reminds me of the time i decided i could learn to play the blues harp :) went out and bought me not one but two harmonica's. a c and a g, i think. lord have mercy at the noise i made :)it never occurred to me that you might have to be able to breathe and have great lung capacity in order to play the blues harp, neither of which i had or could do, due to all that stuff i was smokin at the time. maybe i should think about trying again? thanks again for the memory :)

Unknown said...

another great post.

Tony Eyers said...

A great collection here. I've seen a few of them, Adam Gussow is my favorite. He teaches for a living, his videos show this. He is a terrific player.

I teach harmonica online as well, but through a web site rather than YouTube. I also have a harmonica teaching web site in China with over 35000 members. Check my link for details.

Nicole said...

Jerry Portnoy also has a blues harmonica tutorial at http://www.jerryportnoymasterclass.com. I've tried a bunch of the lessons there and its definitely worth taking a look at. He plays a mean harmonica.

Sam Barry said...

Hi, and thank you for you post. I love the harmonica, too. Please check out my Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Barry/85687628393