How To Play 'Hardcore' Harmonica

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The HH-1896 Marine Band is available, for $7.75 each, in 12 different keys: A, B, Bb, C, Db (Cg), D, E, Eb, F, Fg, G, and Ab (G4). If you're just starting out in music, pick up one of the harmonicas tuned to the key of C (which is the easiest of all the keys to learn). Later, after you've mastered a number of songs in C and started thinking about transposing them into some other key, you'll find the job to be quite simple: Just buy another HH-1896 in A, G, Eb, or whatever and wail away exactly the same way that you learned the tunes in C (only the sounds which come out will be different).

GET ACQUAINTED!

Once you've ambled on down to the local musical instrument shop and returned home with an HH-1896 Marine Band in your pocket, it's time to sit down and become well acquainted with the harmonica.

First off, your mouth organ probably was packaged in a compact little hinged box with a U.S. Marine Band photograph on its cover. And the nice fellow or gal down at the music store probably slipped you a complimentary copy of a 24-page booklet entitled "How to Play the Hohner Harmonica" when you shelled out your $7.75. (If he or she didn't, go back and ask for the guide. You'll undoubtedly "outgrow" the minimanual during your first serious day of harp practice, but the booklet does contain some good beginner's tips and . . . well, you're entitled.) The 24-page Hohner guide plus the information in this article should be all you need to get you properly introduced to your pocketsized musicmaker.

Now right at the beginning, you can tell your casual-interest-in-the-instrument player from your dyed-in-the-wool hardcore harmonica freak. Because the "boys" and "girls"-so to speaktend to hold a mouth organ rather gingerly in a "four fingers on each end" clasp . . . while the "men" and "women" in the game start right out cradling their harps in a "ten finger sandwich" (the only decent grip ever invented for a selfrespecting harmonica).

Form this sandwich by, first, placing your hands around your harp as if you're praying . . . with the instrument lying between your palms and aligned with your fingers. Then-depending on which feels most comfortable to yourotate your hands one way or the other so that one winds up with its fingers on top of the mouth organ and its thumb on the bottom ... and the other is wrapped around the first with the heel of its palm squarely facing your mouth. (Righties generally end up with their right hands "dominant" in this kind of sandwich and lefties the opposite . . . but suit yourself.) This grip, as you'll immediately see, creates a sort of "chamber" around the harmonica. And that does two things: [1] It automatically gives a funkier sound to your harp playing and [2] it allows you to move the fingers of your "outside" hand up and down rapidly, thereby "wavering" your mouth organ's notes as you play . . . which adds a great deal of emphasis and emotion to the music that you just can't squeeze in any other way. Try it! You'll see.

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