Learning the Harmonica

by Christopher Flynn — Monday, August 31, 2009

I've always been interested in learning the Harmonica but never got around to it. I even had one when I was younger but I have no idea what happened to it. The other day my daughter came home from a birthday party with a kids harmonica as part of the party favor. It actually sounded half decent, not like a toy. Turns out it is a Hohner Kids Harmonica . It's not the best harmonica but what do you expect for $2.49?

So I started playing with my daughters harmonica and doing a bunch of research on how to play. It's a great instrument, it's small so you can take it just about anywhere, a quality one will run you about $30 so it's inexpensive. It also sounds great.

So where do you start? Well that's a good question, I'm certainly no expert but the general consensus seems to get a harmonica in the key of C, then practice learning to play single notes. There are a lot of sites with harmonica tablature which basically consists of the note to play (as a number corresponding to the number on top of the harmonica) and a symbol to blow (+) or inhale (-). (Sometimes blowing has no symbol, just the inhale or draw) There are a number of easy songs to practice. Some I've been practicing include Happy Birthday, Danny Boy, Camptown Races, Moon River and others. The internet has a lot of really good resources for how to learn how to hold the harmonica and how to blow/draw.

My strategy is to start by practicing playing one note and learning a few simple songs. From there I'll reevaluate what I want to learn next. If it's something that interests you, I encourage you to pick up a harmonica and play around with it.