Bio
Christopher Flynn
Webdeveloper, husband, dad, surfer, ameteur photographer, tinkerer, 2nd amendment advocate, brewer, chef, libertarian, atheist, UNIX Geek, troublemaker.
Harmonica Inspirational Music
by Christopher Flynn — Wednesday, September 23, 2009
What inspires you to play the harmonica? Is it an instrument a close friend or relative played? Is it a sound you remember from your past? Did it just seem like a good idea? I'm willing to bet that more often than not, someone, or at least some song, has inspired you to pick up the harmonica and give it a go.
For me, that inspiration is music from many different artists. Bob Dylan was probably my first real exposure to the harmonica. Cream, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Billy Joel and even the Beatles all featured songs with harmonicas. Later, as my music exposure grew to blues, I discovered a new appreciation for the instrument.
Some of the artists I enjoyed are not even considered accomplished harmonicists, but does that really matter. I once watched Penn Jillette talk (I think on his Penn Says) about music and inspiration. His general idea was that music or some other art is only good if it inspires you. If that wasn't exactly his point, it's what I took away from it. It doesn't matter if the person playing has 30 years experience and can do all sorts of things with the harmonica, if what they play doesn't inspire you, they are no good (They may be good for someone else though).
You can also inspire yourself. One recommendation I've read is to record yourself playing. This will help you hear what others hear, which is different with the harmonica, as well as help you notice things you might otherwise have missed. If you enjoy what you play and have fun doing it, keep it up! I'll talk more about this in a future post about failure.
Now that I've started playing the harmonica, I've really looked around for songs to help inspire me. Like learning a new language, immersing yourself will help you learn. Before I liked the blues but wasn't that into it. I would listen when I heard it, I've been to a few House of Blues (in FL and NJ), listened to the blues channel on Sirrius radio for the short trial run we had it with our new car, I've even gone to a blues festival, but ask me to name a blues artist and song and I could probably count them on one or two hands. So now I'm searching them out and found a bunch of great stuff. A lot of it is Blues but it's not limited to that.
If you're not sure where to look, the first place I would try is youtube.com. They have a lot of user submitted music videos so that is a good place to start.
If youtube doesn't have what you are looking for, The iTunes store and amazon.com will both give you a short clip to preview. There are also these things called torrents though if the material is copyrighted and you don't have the copyright holders permission to download their material, it's illegal. However, some bands will allow fans to record live shows and share them. A good resource for these is tapecity.org.
Another option is some of the live streaming sites like last.fm, pandora and for live stuff wolfgangsvault.com. The advantages of pandora and last.fm is that you type in artists you like and they create radio stations for you based on them. So if I start a station on pandora by typing in say Howlin' Wolf, I would end up with my harmonica station. I'll be using this station for my blues harmonica stuff but given that I have no control over what pandora picks, I can't guarantee everything will have some harmonica in it.
Just remember, have fun!
Comments
Kelli Garner
Thats very good to know... thanksshow comment form