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Articles & Books From Winslow Yerxa
Wail on your harmonica!The harmonica is one of the most popular and versatile instruments in the world. There are several reasons harmonicas are awesome—you can play them anywhere, they’re inexpensive, and you can show off in dozens of musical styles. The friendly and pleasingly tuneful Harmonica For Dummies is the fastest and best way to learn for yourself!
Breathe the blues into your harmonica!Blues harmonica is the most popular and influential style of harmonica playing, and it forms the basis for playing harmonica in other styles such as rock and country. Blues Harmonica for Dummies gives you a wealth of content devoted to the blues approach—specific techniques and applications, including bending and making your notes sound richer and fuller with tongue-blocked enhancements; use of amplification to develop a blues sound; blues licks and riffs; constructing a blues harmonica solo; accompanying singers; historical development of blues styles; and important blues players and recordings.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-01-2022
From the beginning, the harmonica has been an integral part of blues music. The blues is a uniquely American art form that got its start from the collision of African and European cultures in the American South. And the harmonica has a natural genius for the blues, with its ease of producing the moaning, wailing sounds often associated with this style of music.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-12-2021
Learning to play the harmonica starts with playing a single melody with either a pucker or tongue block — and knowing how to read harmonica tablature (tab), how to play a harmonica in position, and knowing the positions for the 12 harmonica keys.
How to Play a Single Note on the HarmonicaTo play a single melody note on the harmonica, use your mouth to isolate a single hole.
Step by Step / Updated 03-27-2016
You probably already know how to whistle or hum dozens of tunes. So the best way to get started playing melody on the harmonica is to try to find some of those melodies in the harmonica. Here, you find several familiar tunes that are played in the middle register.
The harmonica tablature (or tab) under the written music tells you the holes and breaths to play.
Step by Step / Updated 02-15-2023
The bends in the harmonica’s middle range — Holes 4, 5, and 6 — are shallow and not too difficult to control, so this is a good place to start. When you bend a note, you can isolate a single note either with a pucker (with your tongue off the harp) or with a tongue block (with your tongue on the harp).
Each of the following licks has three versions — one for each of the draw bends in Holes 4, 5, and 6.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
A harmonica can seem like a small, mysterious box — you breathe through it and music comes out. Knowing what goes on inside that little box can help you understand how to play it. Here’s a brief tour of the hidden workings of the harmonica.
Making a five-layer tin sandwich
A harmonica has five layers.
The center layer of the harmonica sandwich is a slab of wood, metal, or plastic called the comb.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
The chords played on guitar and piano that accompany a melody are built from intervals. As a harmonica player, knowing a little about chords can help you understand how the notes you play relate to the chord sequences used in the songs you play and can also help you understand written music.
The simplest type of chord has three notes and is called a triad.
Article / Updated 02-15-2023
First position — playing a harmonica in its labeled key —works well for many folk tunes. When you play in first position, your home note is Blow 4. Your home chord is formed by any combination of blow notes.
Many of these tunes are old folk and country favorites — you’ll probably meet others who know how to play them on guitar.
Article / Updated 02-16-2023
Second position — playing the harmonica in the key of the draw chord, with Draw 2 as the home note — works well for many folk tunes but also for a large portion of the southern gospel repertoire. The following tunes lie well in second position. Grab a harp and try them out.
“Since I Laid my Burden Down”
“Since I Laid my Burden Down,” an African-American spiritual, was the basis for the well-known country gospel tune “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?