Creative Commons License photo credit: PjotrP

As I continue to learn harmonica, the old saying we all know rings true, practice makes perfect. I practiced with my buddy Big Tiny (I just gave him that for his blues name, if you play blues, you gotta have one) from 4 to 9 yesterday afternoon. If you have a friend who plays another instrument or wants to, having a practice partner is amazing. It’s something I never though of. He’s been teaching himself guitar for the past couple of years and while he has picked up a few things, I think he’d agree that he hasn’t really done much with it. I understand it too.

I don’t really practice alone. I don’t focus well and have no structure to it. Me practicing is kind of a mess. It’s the time when I feel I have the least talent or skill. I listen to experts talk about how to do things on video or listen to the classic great harmonica players and get discouraged. It’s counter productive. I get most of my practice at karaoke, open mic nights or blues jams.

My favorite dive is doing a battle of the bands Saturdays in October. Big Tiny and I have been talking about putting a band together since I started playing harmonica. We just never had focus. The battle of the bands gave us focus. We need 4 songs. The first is Hoochie Coochie Man. We spent 5 hours playing that yesterday evening. We even amplified my harp playing with a cheap Samson mic and a Fender starter amp.

It is the most productive practice time I have ever spent. When you do Karaoke, It’s one song at a time with no do-overs. An open mic is limited to what you can play with someone else or just jamming. Blues jams are the same way. All your skills improve evenly because they all get the same amount of attention. You may get deficits because you avoid stuff you are bad at for the sake of live performance. Practice by yourself, unless you are REALLY disciplined, isn’t very effective and you get discouraged when you have trouble working through problems.

Imagine spending 5 hours working on getting Hoochie Coochie Man down. I can pull out my harp and blast that riff without even thinking about it now. Big Tiny has gone a long way too. You get positive reinforcement when you do well and help with areas where you are deficient. It’s that perfect center between practicing alone and a performance like karaoke.

We are going to be practicing with each other over the next few weeks. so we can play in the Battle of the Bands but after that, I would like to get together with him once a week for practice. It is really productive.

We’re also working on some classic Muddy Waters, Hoochie Coochie Man.

Gotta Love The Hoochie Coochie Man. My A Harp is fast becoming my most played Harp.

I went to open mic night last night and tried it out. My B harp is now one of my constant carry harps. Texas Flood gave me lots of solo harp room. There is a 15 measure opening and a 24 measure solo. That’s a lot of space to fill with a harp solo. I really got to dig into my bag of tricks and play around with licks. It’s like having a blues jam without having to coerce all the other musicians up on stage. I’m putting Texas Flood in my repertoire as my new opener, I’m getting a little tired of She Caught the Katy. I still love the song but I think the bar staff at the places I go are getting tired of hearing it.

My next harp will probably be an Ab Blues Harp Harmonica. I know there are a bunch of great Eb blues songs. I just can’t remember any right now.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach all have historical locations to commemorate their life and work. We have 2 pictures, 2 sets of recordings, and the buildings where he recorded, The Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas and 508 Park Ave. in Dallas. We’re uncertain where he’s buried. The most important in the history of American music, has so little to remember him by. Now, there’s going to be a little less. A LOT less. I understand keeping history isn’t the easiest thing. Even the buildings that stand to remind us are temporary.

When I think about how hard people fought to save the Dr. Pepper factory, A SODA FACTORY, but there is so little work being done to protect our musical heritage, especially here in Dallas. Shame on us and our temporary attitudes about our world. In 600 years will there be anything to remember Robert Johnson by? J. S. Bach will have 1000 year old historical buildings.

Hey, Clapton, Richards, Aykroyd you get it, work with me. Lets save one of the few things we KNOW are connected to Robert Johnson. Is this what people mean when they say, “We are at a crossroads?”

I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
Asked the lord above “Have mercy now
save poor Bob if you please”

After that another buddy of mine backed me on a little harp jam. He played back up 12 bar acoustic. I wailed a bit and got some applause which surprised me a little. I guess I’m the only person that thinks I sound like crap. I need to tighten up my one hole and key switching. I definitely need to work on my licks. I feel like I have one lick. I jam better when I get going but I always seem to fall back to the same stuff.

Oh, I almost forgot. I blew out a reed on my A harp on stage last night too. My sound guy friend says he heard a ping and my harp lost sound. It’s the first harp that I played heavily so it was in bad shape to begin with. I guess I’m glad I bought the wrong harp from Musicians Friend a while back. I already have a replacement. I may Pick up a Hohner Hot Metal Harmonica in the Key of A as well. I’m thinking about getting a set of them as back up.

I took a little time to try out mics and an amp. I’m not serious about amplifying just yet, but I wanted to mess with it a bit because I will eventually. I tried a big metal monstrosity that I though looked badass. While it looked badass, I could barely hold it in my hands, and I have big hands. I put that one away real quick. I thought about all I have heard about amplifying Harps and I asked if they have a Shure 520DX Green Bullet Mic. They said they don’t carry them anymore but checked and found one in the back room. The first 3 things I like about the Green bullet, ignoring important things like sound and sturdiness, it has its own cable with a 1/4″ jack which I really liked. You don’t need a separate cable for it. I really liked that. Not having to get a cable makes it easier to get into amplified harmonica playing. The second thing I liked is the little volume knob underneath it. I will probably have it jacked up all the time but having the ability to adjust the volume is cool. It also means if I’m sharing an amp with a guitarist, I can control my volume without effecting the guitarists. Third, I like the feel of it. I wrap my hands around it and can easily hold the harp.

After some fussing around, we hooked it up to a Fender 57 Champ Tube Amp to see how it sounded with my new harp. I let the amp warm up and started playing. I played a few licks and messed around with the volume on the mic. It sounded cool. I definitely liked playing through it. I felt old school. I think, in the distant future, I will be picking up one of these mics. Not today though, I have a lot of work to do on technique before I dive into amplified playing.

That’s why this book is so cool. If you can play by ear, the CD has all the licks recorded by an amazing harmonica player Tom Ball. If tabs is your preference, the book has all the licks tabbed out and easily understandable. I use both.

Another cool thing about this book is the the section on back up harmonica. You know, you are jamming with a band and the front man gives you a sour look because you aren’t playing “Back up” enough. When he’s singing, he doesn’t want to hear you playing any crazy licks making him sound bland and like he can’t sing. This book has a bunch of back up licks to help you blend in with the music instead of take over the stage.

This book isn’t for beginners though. You have to know a little about bending and cross harp to be comfortable with what you’re learning. The book does explain tabs, cross harp, bending and how to hold the harp but the CD doesn’t reference these sections and the information isn’t the best. The truth is, though, that when it comes to harmonica books, or even looking on line, finding that stuff is easy. A good set of licks by a guy like Sonny Terry is another matter. Spending a week with this book and CD will put you way ahead when it comes to blues jams.

He does give examples of a few advanced techniques like growling and so on but he doesn’t go much into them either. Is this a good book? It is. Is it worth having in your library? It most definitely is. This is the type of book you will reference again and again when you want to tweak your playing. I’m sure I will come back to this book ins six months and say to myself, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that lick, that’s cool!” and get it down for then next time I’m on stage.

To leave you with a little extra, here’s Tom ball, the guy who put this set together on stage and jamming. Below that is Sonny Terry singing Easy Rider.

Cool Old Harmonica Set

He said to me at the luau, “Cool so you play cross harp?” The guitarist of the band had me, I was about to fail the pop quiz. I had been playing harmonica for the better part of a month and had just bought my second harmonica, an A Diatonic. I knew enough that the 2 hole draw was bluesy but what in gods name was this cross harp I kept hearing about. I came back with, “For me, it’s all about the 2 hole draw.” He seemed satisfied.

I have been avoiding this post. I had an idea of what cross harp is, but to write a post about it is another thing. Here is the deal. I had answered correctly when I said, it’s all about the 2 hole draw. On a diatonic harmonica, the 2 hole draw is the first note in second position or “cross harp.” If you get nothing else from this post, remember that. If you, like me, want to play blues harmonica, we play cross harp by default. We start with the 2 hole draw. Here’s the deal though, when we play cross harp, the key we are playing in is not the key of the harmonica. That means, when someone says, “Lets play … in the key of G,” we don’t grab our G harp. Second position on G is D and we need to be playing in G. So what harp do we need? What harp has a 2 hole draw that plays a G? It’s the C harmonica.

That’s what got me. I thought to myself, “Crap, I’m going to have to learn every note on every harmonica.” (I know, the name of the site is harmonica notes but I meant my notes on learning to play the harmonica not the notes on the different harmonicas.) I don’t know if I am going to ever learn what notes every hole, blow, draw, bend, over blow, over draw, and chord on every harmonica plays. I probably will eventually know all the cross harp keys though, and probably the notes on my favorite harmonicas.

Here’s a cheat you can use. Take a sharpie and write an X (for cross harp) and the cross harp key on your harmonicas. As you play you will learn the cross harp keys. I got the ideas because the key labels are rubbing off of my harmonicas and I don’t want to get them confused.

I may as well tell you the cross harp keys for all 12 diatonic harmonica keys.

Ab=Eb, A=E, Bb=F, B=Gb, C=G, Db=Ab, D=A, Eb=Bb, E=B, F=C, Gb=Db, G=D

So there you have it, all the cross harp keys and the harmonicas they’re played on.