Figure 5-1: Lips configured to play a puckered single note.
Chapter 5
Moving Around with Single Notes
In This Chapter
Playing a single note with your lips or your tongue
Finding your starting hole and changing your breathing direction
Moving from hole to hole and playing blues phrases
The harmonica is named for its capability to create harmony by sounding two or more notes at once. You can inhale or exhale in any group of holes and almost all combinations, or harmonies, will sound reasonably pleasing together. To play a melody, however, you need to play just one note at a time. When you do that, you’re playing single notes, and you get single notes by isolating just one hole on the harmonica.
By the way, you may hear harmonica players talk about their embouchure (awm-boo-shure). This word comes from the French word bouche, which means “mouth,” and it refers to whatever you do with your mouth to get a sound out of a wind instrument. Now that you’ve reached this part of the book, you can inform your friends that you’ve reached a new level of artistry and that you’re deep in embouchure studies on the harmonica.
Blues players never walk in a straight line, though, and their approach to embouchure is no exception. They have at least two different ways to play single notes, and they argue all the time about which one is best. Meanwhile, they find all sorts of ways to sneak harmonies in with single-note melodies (I get into that subject in Chapter 10).
Isolating a Single Note with Your Lips
When you play the harmonica, all the air you inhale or exhale goes through the harmonica. Your lips form a seal to keep air from escaping. They also determine how many holes are in your mouth, and therefore, how many notes you play at once.
To isolate a single note with your lips, you reduce the size of your mouth opening so that you direct air to just one hole. You can do this in a relaxed way, and with a little practice, you’ll soon be playing single notes with your lips. This technique goes by several names, including puckering, lip blocking, and lip pursing. I prefer puckering and use that term in this book.
To get started with puckering, here I revisit the part in Chapter 4 where you get the harmonica in your mouth:
1. Drop your jaw and open your mouth wide.
2. Insert the harmonica in your mouth until the harmonica touches the corners of your mouth, where your top and bottom lips meet.
3. Let your jaw close gently and let your lips fall onto the harmonica’s covers.
Remember to keep your jaw and lips relaxed.
4. Inhale gently, and continue to inhale as you perform the next steps.
5. Slowly raise your jaw.
You’ll feel the harmonica being gently pushed out of your mouth. Important: Make sure to keep full-lip contact with the harmonica. Your upper lips, lower lips, and both corners should continue to form a relaxed, airtight seal with the harmonica.
6. As your mouth opening shrinks, you’ll be playing fewer and fewer holes.
Eventually, you’ll be playing one hole and you’ll hear only one note. If you get close and can’t seem to isolate a single note, try moving the harmonica a tiny amount to the left or right, in case your mouth opening is straddling the border between two holes.
You don’t need to squeeze your mouth into a tiny opening. Avoid tensing your lips, and avoid making a hole smaller than the hole in the harmonica, as doing so can obstruct airflow and make the harmonica unresponsive. Figure 5-1 shows how large your mouth opening can be and still isolate a single hole. Before taking this photograph, I played a single note and then maintained my mouth shape while moving the harmonica out of my mouth.
After you start to get the feel of playing a single note, try alternating between inhaled breaths and exhaled breaths. At first you may find that a neighboring hole starts to sound when you change breath direction. If that happens, pay attention to things you may be doing without thinking about them, and try to eliminate them:
Don’t widen your lip opening or move your lips to the right or left.
Don’t move the harmonica.
Photograph by Anne Hamersky
If the note sounds bad — choked, weak, or somehow wrong — tap any moisture out of the harmonica and then try playing the note again.
On Track 5 you can hear me isolating Hole 4 by starting with an inhaled chord, narrowing my embouchure to isolate the draw note in Hole 4, and then switching to Blow 4 and back to Draw 4.
Singling Out a Note with Your Tongue
Puckering is a straightforward and obvious way to play a single note. But many, perhaps most, blues harmonica players prefer to use another method, called tongue blocking. When you tongue block, you have several holes in your mouth, and you use your tongue to block the hole or holes you don’t want to sound while leaving an opening at the right or left corner of your mouth for the holes that you do want to sound.
Tongue blocking allows you to keep your lips and jaw relaxed and keep the harmonica deep in your mouth, which promotes a rich tone. Just as important, tongue blocking allows for all sorts of special effects that you get by alternating between single notes and chords and by playing different combinations of the various holes that are in your mouth. (In Chapter 10 I describe the techniques you use to create these effects.)
Before trying a tongue-blocked single note, I want you to first get familiar with some of the physical sensations that can help guide you.
1. Open your mouth as if to say, “ahhh.”
2. Extend your tongue forward so that the tip of your tongue rests on your lower lip.
Leave a space between your tongue and upper lips so that you can breathe through that opening. Also, pay attention to the right and left edges of your tongue. The edges of your tongue should be touching the right and left corners of your mouth.
3. Lower your jaw by a tiny amount to open your mouth slightly wider.
Keep contact between the left edge of your tongue and the left corner of your mouth. Let a gap open between the right edge of your tongue and the right corner of your mouth. You’ll direct air through this gap to a single hole of the harmonica.
4. Let your upper lip drop onto the surface of your tongue.
The only place for air to move should now be the right corner of your mouth.
5. Try breathing through the right corner of your mouth.
Make sure that the opening is big enough that air can pass through easily. You shouldn’t hear any sound or feel any pressure when you exhale or suction when you inhale.
Try simply breathing with a tongue block for awhile to get used to the feeling.
Remember to breathe only through your mouth and not through your nose.
Relax your jaw, lips, and tongue.
Figure 5-2 shows my tongue in position, ready to add a harmonica and play a tongue-blocked single note.
Figure 5-2: Position of lips and tongue to play a tongue-blocked single note.
Photograph by Anne Hamersky
When you’re ready to add the harmonica and isolate a single note with tongue blocking, do this:
1. Drop your jaw and open your mouth wide.
2. Place your tongue on your lower lip, with the left edge touching the left corner of your mouth, but with a gap between the right edge of your tongue and the right corner of your mouth.
3. Bring the harmonica up to your mouth and rest its bottom front edge on top of the tip of your tongue.
4. Insert the harmonica into your mouth until it touches both corners of your mouth.
5. Let your upper lip drop onto the harmonica’s top cover.
6. Gently press your tongue forward so that the top surface of your tongue blocks all the holes except the one in the right corner of your mouth.
Don’t block holes using the tip of your tongue or the right or left edge of your tongue. Using the tip creates friction and drag when you try to slide the harmonica to the right or left and can abrade your tongue. Using the side edges makes several important tongue-blocking techniques difficult or impossible.
Now that you’ve formed a tongue block, try playing a note. Gently inhale or exhale. If you get a single note, congratulations! Now try breathing in the other directions, and again you may get a clear single note.
If you don’t get an isolated note that sounds clear, you may need to make some adjustments.
If you hear more than one note
• Try moving the harmonica slightly to the right or left in case you’re straddling two holes.
• Try closing your mouth opening a tiny amount to bring the right corner of your mouth closer to your tongue and create a smaller opening.
If the note sounds weak, muffled, or obstructed
• Tap any moisture out of the harmonica and try again.
• Try relaxing the tip areas of your tongue. Don’t press hard on the holes, as doing so may push your tongue into obstructing the hole you want to play.
• Try opening your throat as if you’re yawning, and make sure the back of your tongue isn’t humped up close to the roof of your mouth and narrowing the airflow.
• Try relaxing your jaw or widening your lip opening to allow the opening in the right corner of your mouth to be big enough.
If you get a single note when you breathe in one direction but not in the other direction, make sure you’re not changing your mouth formation or moving the harmonica when you change between inhaling and exhaling.
On Track 5 you can hear me playing tongue-blocked single notes in Hole 4.
Making Your First Moves
To play a note, first you find the hole where that note is located. When you get there, you either inhale or exhale to play the note you want. Optionally, you can alter the pitch of the note by bending it (see Chapter 11 for more on bending).
When you play a melody, you move from one note to another. To do that on the harmonica, you can
Change the direction of your breath to sound a different reed.
Move to another hole.
Change both the hole and your breath direction.
You can also bend a note to alter its pitch as I describe in Chapter 11, but first you need to find the right hole and breathe in the right direction.
Finding your starting hole
You may know that a tune starts in Hole 4 and that the holes on most harmonicas are numbered, but you can’t actually see the numbers under your nose as you play. So how do you find your starting hole? You can
Count up as you play. To do this, start at Hole 1 (which has no notes to its left) and play one continuous breath as you move the harmonica to the left, counting holes as you go until you reach your destination. (You can do this by counting down from Hole 10 if it’s closer to the hole you’re looking for.)
Match the note you’re hearing. Listen to your target note on a recording or sound it on a keyboard or guitar while you try to find the same note on your harmonica.
Memorize the physical location of the note. If you always hold the harmonica the same way, you can eventually memorize the feel of where the note is on the harmonica in your hands.
For now, try finding your starting hole either by counting up from Hole 1 as you breathe or by matching the note you hear.
Changing between inhaled and exhaled notes
After you find your starting hole, you have to play the right starting note, which is either a blow note or a draw note. So your first job is to know which direction to breathe in and then do it. To play the next note, you can do one of several things:
Repeat the note you just played (see Chapter 4 for info on repeating a note).
Change the direction of your breath between inhaling and exhaling (a breath change).
Move to another hole (a hole change).
Simultaneously make both a hole change and a breath change.
In this chapter I take you through hole changes and breath changes, but you don’t do both of them at once until you get to Chapter 6.
Playing your first single note blues
Your first blues song is “I Wanna Get Close to You,” as shown in Tab 5-1. The singer delivers the melody while you add a nice harmony by playing some long notes. All you have to do is stay in Hole 4 and alternate between inhaled and exhaled notes.
You can play this song with a pucker embouchure or with a tongue block. I recommend that you try both.
To play the notes, look at the tab below the music notation. It tells you the sequence of action you perform on the harmonica — which hole to play and whether to blow or draw.
To get the timing correct, you can do one of three things:
Read the notation. If you can read rhythmic notation, follow the rhythm and the tab at the same time.
Count the beats. Coordinate your actions with the beat numbers written above the music:
1. Play your first note (Draw 4) starting on Beat 1 and continue through Beat 2.
2. In Beats 3 and 4, you play Blow 4.
3. In the next bar, you return to Draw 4 for Beats 1 and 2 and then rest for Beats 3 and 4.
4. Repeat Steps 1 through 3 two more times.
Follow the lyrics. The words to the song are written under the tab. Start each new tabbed note at the same time as the word that appears underneath it. Most of the notes last for more than one syllable, though, so don’t change breath every time you hear a new syllable.
Tab 5-1: “I Wanna Get Close to You.”
To prepare for playing this song, first listen to the track a few times. As you listen, try counting beats out loud or following the written lyrics and observing the word that coincides with each new harmonica note. Then turn off the music, find Hole 4, and try playing the draw-blow-draw-rest sequence a few times before you try playing along with the track.
If you haven’t gotten the hang of single notes yet, don’t worry. This song will sound fine, even with a little unintended harmony bleeding in from neighboring holes. But keep working on your single notes anyway.
When you feel ready to play along with the track
1. Find your starting note (Draw 4) and sound it.
2. Turn on the music and listen for the count-in.
The beat after you hear “four” is where you start playing.
3. Play through the tune with the recording a few times.
If you feel like you’ve made a mistake, don’t stop. Keep going and keep playing. After a few tries you’ll be groovin’ with the band.
You can listen and play along with this tune on Track 6.
You can break your long notes into shorter notes that start with each new syllable of the lyrics so that you’re more in sync with the singer. To do this, apply the note repetition techniques I show you in Chapter 4 to sound the syllables written below the lyrics in Tab 5-1. To hear the song played this way, listen to the second version of “I Wanna Get Close to You” on Track 6.
Playing Your First Blues Phrases
If you’ve worked through the preceding section, you’ve played a blues song with just two notes. Now it’s time to start getting around on the harmonica to play more notes and shape them into short phrases.
Moving to a neighboring hole
Now that you’ve worked out a little with breath changes (changing between inhaled and exhaled breaths) in the preceding section, it’s time to tackle hole changes, where you play a note in one hole and then move to another hole to play another note.
When you change holes, make the transition smooth by following these principles:
Keep the harmonica in your mouth as you change holes. That way you don’t disturb the seal between your lips and the harmonica, alter the shape of your single-note embouchure, or lose your place on the harmonica.
Breathe continuously as you change holes. You want one note to flow into another, and this can’t happen if you stop breathing between notes. Also, you get audible feedback if you breathe while you move from one hole to another — you can hear when you arrive at the hole you’re moving to.
In Tab 5-2, you play a series of two-bar phrases that include hole changes and breath changes.
Tab 5-2: Two-bar phrases with hole changes.
For now, ignore the brackets and titles above each two-bar phrase.
Get familiar with each phrase on its own before you play them all in sequence. Repeat each one several times until you’re familiar with it and can play it without stopping.
Take a moment to breathe at the end of each two-bar phrase. Remember to drop your jaw with the harmonica resting on your lower lip and to breathe over the top of the harmonica.
Question-and-answer phrases
Often, two musical phrases form a pair. The first phrase sounds like it’s asking a question, and the second phrase sounds like it’s providing an answer. Sometimes, the answer doesn’t sound conclusive, though, and the next phrase restates the question, with another answer that has more finality. This back-and-forth dialogue helps give form to musical statements and also holds your interest as a listener — you feel like you’re hearing a conversation.
Look back at Tab 5-2 again. Each phrase is labeled as either a question or an answer. Note that Question 1 always precedes the answer. That pairing of first question and answer doesn’t always happen in question-and-answer phrases, but it helps bring the music to a more final conclusion.
Always listen for question-and-answer phrasing in the music you hear, and try to include it when you make up your own blues phrases.
Finalizing your musical statement
Blues songs often have three large phrases in each verse. The first two are similar, and both leave the question hanging. But then the third phrase sums everything up and drives the verse to a conclusion, or “brings it on home,” as blues musicians sometimes say.
Tab 5-3 is a full 12-bar blues verse. The first four bars contain a question with an inconclusive answer. The second four bars contain a different question that echoes the first one and then receives a similar answer. The last four bars are really one long phrase that drives the verse home to a conclusion by using longer sequences of notes that traverse a wider stretch of holes and employ fewer resting points that contain long notes.
You can listen to Tab 5-3 on Track 8.
Tab 5-3: A 12-bar blues verse with question-and-answer phrases.
