Harmonize with A Harmonica

Ever been asked: Do you play any musical instrument?

Bet you, many of us have been and sadly, many of us will reply in the negative.

Of course, many of us can belt tunes, using our excitingly unique vocal chords as our musical instrument.

Okay, aside from that, which else?

Again, chances are we don’t. I go with anecdotal evidence from both friends and family members. In our family of nine, all the girls had decent piano lessons, one ultimately majoring in music. But all the five boys, nada.

Late in life when I was already deeply focused into gainful employment, tried to take guitar lessons. But after a few sessions, two stubborn obstacles helped to sink whatever little interest was keeping the spark. First, guitars are such they can’t be kept in one’s side or back pocket until lesson time rolls in. Second, lessons couldn’t be had until the master guitarist was available, and as with most things in life, his availability rarely coincided with ours. So that whole nice thought was consigned to oblivion.

Then, Eureka! A discovery! An instrument cheap and small enough to keep in one’s pockets and even better, one does not really need any teacher to teach one how to play. Well, except oneself.

Thus, was born this ardent desire to learn to play the harmonica. Of course, the harmonica and its sounds were no strangers to our growing-up years. Some nifty friends did have the native gifts to play good harmonica, which I bet you many of them got their skills through self-study, goaded by their passions and perseverance.

After many shaky starts with plenty of benign neglect, I to this day still consider myself a faithful student, spending whatever precious little time I might be able to allocate for “blowing and drawing” into that little instrument with little holes made of reed. What keeps me going is the fact that it does not take much time to learn to play a song, and thus, this relative ease keeps my lazy interest going.

The process of learning itself is quite simple – following numbers on a sheet music intended for harmonicas, and either blowing or drawing breaths to the instrument. As pictured, the numbers above the lyrics denote what to do with the harmonica. With positive numbers one blows, negative numbers one draws. Or maybe, properly, I should say exhale for blow and inhale for draw. Most harmonicas are divided into different notes in different holes from 1 to 10, from lower notes to higher notes starting from the left. Some harmonicas have the numbers etched close to the holes to guide the player. If no numbers are given, the player simply “feels” for the notes by testing the different holes and trying to remember where one note ends and the other begins.

Luckily, one can download many samples of harmonica sheet music from the Internet. Simply Google. One very helpful individual for me is Mr. Jack M. Earl. Aside from samples, Mr. Earl also provides some quick topical but very helpful lessons on how to play. Like, start to learn to play songs that you already know. Thus, you can judge right away if your harmonica is hitting the right notes.

But what kind of harmonica to use?

There are many types of harmonica in the market, from all over the globe. Such as diatonic, chromatic, or tremolo. Wikipedia is most helpful in this area.

As pictured above, I use a tremolo harmonica which was made in Shanghai, China and has all of 48 holes. It is vintage 1970’s but still works fine. Must have collected gallons of my saliva over time. And as a companion piece to it, I have my filled folder of music individually encased in plastic, all downloaded from the Internet.

Now, a simple diatonic harmonica has as few as 10 holes, and sometimes called the Marine Band harmonica. Others have 20 holes, etc. But any reputable music store should have one version/model or other available. I bet you, the many pawnshops around may also have their hoards, which might need plenty of hard and sterilizing cleaning before use. Or Voila, one can order from the Internet.

C’mon, join in the fun and start learning. Everything is within reach anyway. All it needs is a little of your time and a healthy dose of interest. Who knows, one day you might be asked to play the plaintive sounds of your harmonica – publicly, in front of an enthralled audience.

Together now, let’s all blow and draw!