Filed under: harmonica for beginners and harmonica lessons
Now that you have been working on you single notes another great exercise for the beginner harmonica player is a style of playing called chugging. Chugging can be a great breathing and timing exercise. It is basically playing a chorded combination of blows and draws to a rhythm. One of the common rhythms used is the train rhythm.
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Harmonica for beginners tip: Remember to breathe from your diaphragm (your stomach should move in and out when you breathe not your chest) – hold the harmonica deep in your mouth with your lips relaxed.
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There are a lot of great traininng videos on the web. One of my favorite suggestions on harmonica for beginners is the series by Jim Luke on ehow.com – Its totally free to watch (if you don’t mind a short commercial at the beginning) and has a lot of the beginner harmonica basics covered in a clear simple to understand way.
(Don’t forget to come back ;o) – Check it out:
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You can have a lot of fun and make some great sounds while developing your breathing and practicing your rhythm. Start off slow and increase your speed as you practice. Play around with it. Improvise!
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- Concentrate on your rhythm and don’t worry if you can’t follow any of the single note licks or riffs on these or other songs your listening to. If you stay on beat and focus on your breathing you will still get a lot out of the chugging exercises. (You can work on you single note licks separately)
- Practice as often as possible even if it’s just for a couple minutes and you will be surpised at how fast you improve.
- Once you can play at a faster tempo (or the speed of your rhythm) I suggest playing along with a recorded song or even a electronic rhythm device or computer midi file. You can also use a metronome if it is loud enough to hear while you are playing. A metronome is a device that gives a sound at a desired tempo to practice keep a rhythm. You don’t need to spend a lot of money though. If you don’t have any of these available you can just tap your foot along as you play and concentrate on keeping a constant rhythm to play along with. This will help you to prepare for playing with other musicians.
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While harmonica for beginners is introducing this for a basic exercise it can have other techniques added as you develop your skills. Single notes and more advanced skills can be added. As you continue to get better you can develop this into more advanced songs like the introduction to Magic Dicks Whammer Jammer (see video at end of lesson 1) has a great example of mixing it up.
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Life is meant to be lived -Enjoy
Wayne
Great information, I just bookmarked this.