How To Play 'Hardcore' Harmonica

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It's that kind of spirit-the spirit of the true, dyed-in-the-wool mouth harp player--I'm sure, which eventually carried Lincoln all the way to the White House.

THE HARMONICA'S "INNARDS"

If it's true that Abraham Lincoln played the mouth organ, it's just as true that the "tin sandwich" he-and a host of homesick Civil War soldiersmouthed in the mid-1800's was almost identical to the harmonicas being manufactured both today and as early as the 1820's.

For-despite the fact that some historians trace its ancestors all the way back to the "sheng", a reed instrument supposedly devised by the Chinese Emperor Nyn-Kwa around 3000 B.C.--the harmonica as we know it was actually invented in 1821. It was then that a German clockmaker named Buschmann put 15 pitch pipes together to create what he called a "mund-aeroline" (derived, obviously, from the German word mund . . . meaning "mouth").

Christian Messner, another clockmaker, soon introduced the instrument to the town of Trossingen . . . where-in 1857-Matthias Hohner, his wife, and two employees produced 650 harmonicas by hand. As you probably know, Hohner has led the field ever since. Furthermore, the German firm "still makes 'em just like it made 'em in the Good 01' Days".

The heart of the harmonica has always been-and still is-its reeds . . . thin strips of a special brass alloy that vibrate when air is blown past them. These reeds are mounted into two plates which, in turn, are sandwiched-one above and one belowaround a resonating chamber (a squaredoff slice of wood or injection-molded plastic that has been "honeycombed" with air passages cut parallel to the platemounted reeds. Two nickel-coated steel cover platesone across the top and the other across the base of the instrument-protect the reed/resonating chamber/reed sandwich within from drops, bumps, and prying fingers. A few small rivets and screws hold the whole thing together.

And why does the mouth organ have two separate and distinct reed plates inside, each equipped with a full set of reeds? Because one plate contains a set of "blow" reeds and the other is filled with "draw" reeds . . . so that, no matter whether you breathe in or out on one of the honeycomb holes across the front of your harmonica, you'll get a note. The mouth harp, in short, is a very simple instrument to play . . . precisely because its manufacturer has taken the time to do some rather sophisticated work on its "innards" before you buy it.

THE VARIATIONS ARE ENDLESS

And, believe me, this "sophisticated work" can become quite complex in deed. There are, for instance, diatonic harmonicas (tuned to just the eight tones of any standard major or minor scale such as-for the key of C-C, D, E, F, G. A, B, C). And there are chromatic mouth organs (tuned to any of the same standard scales . . . but including all the sharps and flats too, such as-for the key of C-C, C4 or Db, D, Dp or Eb, E, F, F or Gb, G, G4 or AO, A, A# or Bb, B, C). You can frequently-though not always-tell the chromatic harps from the diatonic ones because many-but not all-of the chromatic instruments have a little finger slide on one end which, when pushed, diverts the air that is blown through the organ from the whole-note to the half-note reeds.

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