Harmonica For Dummies (For Dummies (Sports & Hobbies))

360 Pages·2008·1.35 MB·English

by  Winslow Yerxa

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Part II: Starting to Make Some Music
Chapter 5
I Hear a Melody: Playing
Single Notes
In This Chapter
(cid:1) Discovering how to single out a note using embouchures
(cid:1) Jumping from one note to another
(cid:1) Understanding the three ranges of the harmonica
(cid:1) Practicing tunes that fall into the different registers
W
hen you first start getting sound from a harmonica, you get several
notes at once. But if you want to play melody, or a sequence of single
notes, then you focus on isolating one of those tiny holes and start figuring
out where all the notes are. One cool thing about the harmonica is that you
can do both at the same time.
Whoever designed the note layout of the harmonica was very smart. He
(or she, or they, we don’t really know who was involved, though there are
plenty of legends) knew that it wasn’t easy to get single notes right away, so
he arranged the notes in neighboring holes so that almost any two, or even
three, holes produce harmony notes when you play them together. On piano
or guitar it takes special study to play harmony notes along with melody.
However, you have the opposite problem with harmonica: You get to make
pleasing harmonies right away, and your job is to pare down those harmonies
so you can play one pure melody note at a time. Then you can add harmony
whenever you want it.
When you first try to play melodies on the harmonica, you may feel like
you’re fumbling around in the dark — there’s nothing to see and not much
to feel. So it’s a big help to know what you’re trying to find. In this chapter, I
explain how to play single notes, and then I give you some simple, well-known
tunes to play. You probably already know what these tunes sound like, so all
you have to do is try to find the notes in the harmonica.
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Part II: Starting to Make Some Music
Shaping Your Mouth
to Single Out a Note
Musicians have a word for what you do with your mouth when playing a
musical instrument — embouchure, pronounced awm-boo-shure. (It’s a
French word, so you can feel sophisticated when you casually mention to
your friends that you’ve been devoting hours of study to your single note
embouchure.) Embouchure is one thing guitarists can’t brag about — making
painful grimaces to impress the audience doesn’t count; your embouchure
actually has to help make a sound come out of the instrument.
Don’t worry if you can’t isolate a single note right away. The skill will come
over time — perhaps in a few days. If you can hear the tune in what you’re play-
ing, you’re doing okay. Start in on the tunes in this chapter whether you can get
a single note or not — don’t wait! You can develop your embouchure as you go.
The two most widely used embouchures are the pucker and the tongue block;
they’re both valuable for different reasons. With a pucker, as the name sug-
gests, you pucker your lips like you’re going to kiss your mother on the
cheek. When you tongue block, you put your tongue on the harp to block out
some of the holes. Tongue blocking offers all sorts of cool effects, as detailed
in Chapter 7. I show you the basics later in this chapter.
Forming the pucker embouchure
I recommend that you learn the pucker embouchure to get started, because
it’s easy and straightforward. Here’s how you do it:
1. Open your mouth wide, leaving your lips relaxed.
2. Place the harmonica between your lips so that the front of the har-
monica touches the right and left corners of your lips, where your
upper and lower lips meet.
3. Let your lips drop onto the harp so they form a cushion that lets the
harp slide when you move it to the left or right.
The cushion should be relaxed, but it should also form an airtight seal
with the harp.
4. With your lips on the harp, inhale or exhale gently.
You should hear a chord (several notes sounding at the same time).
5. As you play, let the harp slide forward as if it’s slowly slipping out of
your mouth (but keep an airtight seal between your lips and the harp).
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Chapter 5: I Hear a Melody: Playing Single Notes
Your lips will make a smaller opening as they get closer together — it
may feel like you’re pouting. As you do this, make sure that the corners
of your lips still touch the harp. As you continue to breathe through the
harp, you should hear fewer notes; it will sound like less overall sound is
coming out of the harmonica.
6. To isolate a single note, you may have to push your lips forward a
little more — be especially pouty (like your kid sister used to).
Keep your lips as relaxed as possible while maintaining an airtight seal.
As you work on the pucker, listen for air escaping around your mouth. It will
make a sort of hissing sound. Try to keep your lips, especially the corners,
gently sealed on the harp so that all the air from your mouth goes through
the harp.
You may need to move the harp a small amount to the left or right to line up
a hole on the harp with the hole in your mouth. If you aren’t quite getting a
single note, experiment by sliding the harp just a little as you push your lips
forward.
The farther you can get the harp inside your mouth and still get a single note,
the better the harp will sound. After you get a single note, try pushing the har-
monica a little farther back inside your lips. The harmonica should always be
inside your lips and in contact with the moist inner parts of the lips. It should
never feel like the harmonica is pressed against your lips from the outside.
A relaxed, airtight seal with full sounding tone takes time to achieve, but
don’t hesitate to make it a goal. Look at my lips in Figure 5-1. I played a single
note and then took the harp away from my mouth. The opening in my lips
is much bigger than the holes in the harp, and yet that’s what I use to get a
single note with a pucker.
Figure 5-1:
The mouth
opening
for a single
note with a
pucker.
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Part II: Starting to Make Some Music
Producing a tongue block embouchure
Even if you’re just playing single notes with no special effects, tongue block-
ing has one advantage: It configures your mouth to promote a full, rich tone.
Sure, you can get a good tone with puckering, but tongue blocking makes it
almost automatic.
To get a single note by tongue blocking, follow these steps:
1. Open your mouth wide, leaving your lips relaxed.
2. Place the harmonica between your lips so that the front of the har-
monica touches the right and left corners of your lips, where your
upper and lower lips meet.
3. Let your lips drop onto the harp so they form a cushion that lets the
harp slide when you move it to the left or right.
The cushion should be relaxed, but it should also form an airtight seal
with the harp.
4. With your lips on the harp, inhale or exhale gently.
You should hear a chord (several notes sounding at the same time).
5. Touch the tip of your tongue to your bottom lip and press your tongue
forward gently.
6. Gently press the top of your tongue against the harp.
When you do this, the top of your tongue will make a broad surface that
glides against the harmonica without poking into the holes.
7. Touch the left edge of your tongue against the left corner of your lips,
leaving an opening between the right edge of your tongue and the
right corner of your lips.
This is where air will pass through to the harmonica.
Listen for air escaping, and move the harp a little to the left or right to
help align a single hole with your mouth opening. Try to make the opening
between your tongue and the right corner of your lips small enough to isolate
a single note but large enough so that air can flow freely and produce a clear,
strong note. Figure 5-2 shows my tongue block embouchure with the harp
removed from my mouth.
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Chapter 5: I Hear a Melody: Playing Single Notes
Figure 5-2:
Tongue
block
embouchure
for a single
note.

The Elements of Motion: Moving from
One Note to the Next
Getting a single note is great, but there aren’t many one-note melodies out
there. To make the most of your new skill, you want to start moving from one
note to another to play melodies. On the harmonica, the following are the
three most important ways to move from one note to another:
(cid:2) Change your breath direction from blow to draw or from draw to
blow. When you change breath direction, you don’t move your hands,
lips, tongue, or anything else. You just stop breathing in one direc-
tion and start breathing in the other. (You can read more about this in
Chapters 2 and 4.)
(cid:2) Change holes by sliding the harp left or right in your mouth. I show
you how to do this in Chapter 4, but without measuring how far you
move. Now you have to start aiming for specific holes and notes.
Again, when you move to another hole, the only things that move are
your hands sliding the harmonica a tiny amount to the left or right. Your
lips stay put and form a gliding surface.
(cid:2) Change holes and breath direction. You have to coordinate changing
your breath with moving the harmonica. You’ll probably pick up on the
combined action pretty quickly.
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Part II: Starting to Make Some Music
Exploring the Three Registers
of the Harmonica
The diatonic harmonica has three overlapping registers, or segments of its
range. Each register covers eight notes of the scale, which is an octave (see
Chapter 3 for more about octaves). Here are the different registers:
(cid:2) The middle register: The diatonic is designed to play melodies mostly in
the middle register, which covers Holes 4 through 7.
(cid:2) The high register: This register, covering Holes 7 through 10, allows you
to play melodies that extend beyond the middle register. Some melodies
can be played entirely in the high register.
(cid:2) The bottom register: Holes 1 through 4 make up this register, which is
designed to add accompaniment chords to the melodies you play in the
middle register (you do this with tongue blocking).
In the remaining half of this chapter, I start with simple melodies in the
middle octave, and then I move up to melodies in the high octave. But I stop
there, because playing melodies in the bottom register is tricky. Why? Well,
because the bottom register omits two notes from the scale to make its
chord sound better.
I show you how to use the bottom register for chording in Chapter 7. And because
you can do more with melody in the bottom register after you can bend notes
down (Chapter 8), I delve into melody playing in the bottom register in Chapter 9.
Playing Familiar Tunes
in the Middle Register
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. In this section, I take you through
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 (see Chapter 3 for more on tab). If you want, you can try
reading the musical notation as well. If any of the tunes are unfamiliar, the
notation tells you how long to hold each note (basic notation is covered in
Chapter 3 as well). And the words to the first few songs are included to help
get you started.
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Chapter 5: I Hear a Melody: Playing Single Notes
“Hot Cross Buns”
When playing the tune “Hot Cross Buns,” which is shown in Tab 5-1, your first
move is to go from Hole 5 to Hole 4 as you change from blow to draw. Later,
when you repeat the same note several times, play the notes all on one
long breath and touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth for each new
repetition. You can hear this tune on Track 9 of the CD.
4 œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙
& 4
5 r 4 5 r 4
Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns,
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙
&
Tab 5-1:
“Hot Cross
Buns”
4 4 4 4 r r r r 5 r 4
(Track 9).
One a pe-n - ny, two a pe-n - ny, Hot cross buns.
“Good Night, Ladies”
The first several notes in “Good Night, Ladies” allow you to practice sliding to
a neighboring hole. (See Tab 5-2.) Remember: When you move to a new hole,
use your hands to move the harp. Don’t move your lips or your head. This
tune introduces Draw 5, the highest note you’ve played so far. Listen to this
tune on Track 10 of the CD.
c ˙ ˙ ˙. ˙ ˙ œ ˙.
& œ
5 4 3 4 5 4 r r
Good night, la - dies. Good night, la - dies.
˙ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ w
Tab 5-2: &
“Good
Night,
Ladies”
5 4 t t t 5 5 r r 4
(Track 10).
Good night, la- dies. We’re going to leave you now.
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Part II: Starting to Make Some Music
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
“Mary Had a Little Lamb,” shown in Tab 5-3, takes you farther into the middle
register, all the way to Blow 6. You can hear this tune on Track 11.
Try stringing “Good Night, Ladies” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into one
long tune. They fit together, so you’ll have your first medley!
œ ˙
4 œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ
&4
5 r 4 r 5 5 5 r r r 5 6 6
Ma - ry had a lit - tle lamb, lit - tle lamb, lit - tle lamb.
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w
Tab 5-3: &
“Mary Had
a Little
Lamb”
5 r 4 r 5 5 5 5 r r 5 r 4
(Track 11).
Ma- ry had a lit -tle lamb, its fleece was white as snow.
“Frère Jacques”
“Frère Jacques,” shown in Tab 5-4, is an old French tune that’s also known as
“Are You Sleeping, Brother John.” Notice the clues that the notation gives you.
You can see the shape of the melody, almost as if it were on graph paper. If
you’d like to hear this tune played, check out Track 12.
4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙
&4
4 r 5 4 4 r 5 4 5 t 6 5 t 6
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙
Tab 5-4: & œ œ
“Frère
Jacques”
(Track 12).
6 y 6 t 5 4 6 y 6 t 5 4 4 3 4 4 3 4