I play harmonica. I'd hardly call myself an expert, but I can pick out a tune all right. I'd say it's one of the easier instruments to self-teach, at least to basic proficiency.
I learned the basics from a book by a guy named Marco. He used a simple system to notate tunes, which I found pretty easy to pick up: it simply consisted of the number of the note's hole, surmounted by an up arrow for blowing and a down arrow for drawing. He had a different notation for bending, which I don't recall, but you could make up anything for that, I suppose. Notating songs that way made it very easy to learn them quickly. Of course it doesn't help you with reading conventionally notated music.
I never got good at bending myself: I can bend the lower draw notes (which are the easiest), but not the higher notes or the blow notes. Even then, when I bend a note, I can't quite make it sound natural, so I prefer to avoid it as much as possible. Then again, bending does have that distinctive country/blues sound, which I've never much been a fan of.
As for slow, sad, country-ish songs to start with, I suggest the music of Stephen Collins Foster: classic songs, very pretty, not too hard to play.
Been playing for a while. My best advice is similar to Victor Wooten (sp?) "Just play"
Seriously, just keep making noise on it until it sounds right. You can read about how to move your tongue and all that but I definitely think it was the best adice I ever saw/read/heard.
As for which kinds of tips? All I can ever think of is go watch some harmonica players play. There's a great concert somewhere of Muddy Waters, along with a bunch of other musicians playing around and since all the action is going on in their mouth...pay attention to the hands. That was a huge leap for me, was when I started cupping correctly and learning how much you can influence the noise with just your hands.
I play guitar and harmonica at the same time. Honestly, it wasn't that hard to learn to learn the harmonica, and you can pick up songs easily by ear. With any song I cover on guitar, I usually add a harmonica bit (provided I have one in the right key >.<), even if the original song does not have it. It shouldn't take you long to learn-- just keep working at it and soon you'll be a harmonica maestro ^^
thanks for your posts, i will have to come back here when it is not evening/quiet time ive downloaded some help files and know there are lessons on youtube
EPT
