How to play the blues harp

Someone once told me that harp playing was all about sucking and blowing in three positions.(OK if your partner has no objections)

Blow though the holes in the front
Suck through the holes in the front
Suck very hard through one of the holes in the front (start with hole 3) until the note bends (changes pitch - usually downwards)
Listen to as much blues harp as you possibly can (see below)
- It also helps the breath control to swim a mile every morning including one length under water. (No I really do this and it does help!)

More sensible advice can be got by asking other people who play.
Sometimes just one tip can set you on the right track. Since there is such a wealth of useful information out there (see the links section below) I will simply point you in the direction of the most useful sites. However, if there is a really simple or important tip that I can share, I will do so as this site evolves.

In 1960, I was in the record department of the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street in London looking at a Sonny Boy Williamson LP and I got talking to someone who also played the harp about the difficulty of capturing the sound. He happened to have a harp in his pocket (as one does...) and, to the amazement of the shop staff showed me there and then how to bend a note. I had one in my pocket as well and tried what he showed me and it worked. I don't know to this day who he was but I never looked back.
In the early '60s I used to appear regularly on Ready Steady Go as a dancer (a long story) and I took every opportunity I could to get advice from harp players appearing on the show.
I got my first tip on playing the harp from Van Morrison, then the singer with "Them", and he told me to listen to Little Walter. Jack Bruce, later of Cream, told me that Forest City Joe was his inspiration.
I also picked up tips from Keith Relf of the Yardbirds.
(I recently saw the film "Quadrophenia" and got the shock of my life seeing myself jigging about in front of the Who all those years ago in the scene where the "hero" is watching Ready Steady Go. My ears had taken about a week to recover from being so close to the speakers.
I had a further shock to discover that the same sequence appears at the start of chapter 18 of the Who's "The Kids are alright" DVD.)

Starting out
Source Material
When I started learning the harp, the choice of listening material was very limited. Now you have access to the Amazon and Document web sites and can get hold of a huge variety of material. If you are interested in older material, it has even been digitally remastered to remove the hiss and scratches. For some guidance on source material check out the harps section on Blues Who's Who For a good taste of harp styles on a single CD check out Blues Harp Boogie This features Little Walter, Cary Bell with Muddy Waters, Paul Lamb, Junior Wells with Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, Big Walter Horton, Jimmy Reed, and Sonny Boy Williamson and thats just the well-known artists. There are also some "finds" like Greg"Fingers" Taylor, Paul DeLay and Paul Orta. This has got to be one of the best blues harp CDs issued in a long time.

Bending Notes
Just like blues guitar, the blues sound on a harp is achieved by being able to bend notes. Bending notes also supplies you with many of those notes that you thought were missing when you first picked up a harp.
Once you have achieved a bend, you will be on your way. )
If you imitate a police siren (Eee Yaw Eee Yaw) without moving your lips or dropping your jaw as some trainers suggest, you will find that your tongue is moving correctly to produce a bend. Just hold the draw note steady while you move your tongue. Over time, you should find that the less you move your mouth while you bend, the more focus and control you will achieve and you should require less air (I lied in the first part of this page when I said you should suck very hard to produce a bend - once you have it you will find that it requires very little extra effort)
Once you have produced a bend on hole 3, move on to holes 4, 5 and 6.Once you have got to this stage, it's time to try producing blow bends on holes 7, 8, 9 and 10.
To produce a blow bend using tongue block embouchure, blow steadily and simply articulate a slight "eee" sound with your tongue. Relax your tongue and repeat the movement until you hear the note changing in pitch.

Many beginners, particularly those learning on "bargain" harps, find the top notes particularly difficult to sound. If this is the case, it is well worth investigating how to adjust the reeds. You will be surprised at what a difference this can make. For the first five years that I played the blues harp, I was absolutely convinced that the top two notes on an Echo Super Vamper were unplayable. Now in less than ten minutes it is possible to gap the reeds on a harmonica and get it to play the way you want.

The National Harmonica League - I'll be honest: when someone told me about the National Harmonica League and suggested that it was worth joining, I was not enthusiastic. Apart from it's rather earnest 1930s name, the President at the time was Larry Adler who to me was not only not a blues musician but to my ear was in the same musical drawer as Winifred Atwell, Mrs Mills and Semprini. This point of view is of course grossly unfair - Larry Adler was a great musician and would tell you so at every opportunity.
Now his mantle has passed to Paul Jones, a real blues harp player and the picture has changed somewhat. I have attended both the NHL Spring Festival in Birmingham and the NHL Autumn Festival at the Folk House at Bristol and all I can say is that the help and support available at these meetings is nothing short of amazing. The Bristol event has featured workshops by Joe Filisko, Steve Baker, Brendan Power, Johnny Mars, Tom Ball and many other top harp players and includes jam sessions, competitions for all styles of harmonica playing and a Saturday evening concert which features all the star players who have given workshops. With harmonicas, amps, microphones, music, tutors, videos, CDs and every harp-related object that you could possibly want to buy, together with friendly advice, the challenge would be to leave one of these events without having learned anything.
The last of the Spring meetings was a particular treat for me since Paul Lamb had a workshop there and also performed at the evening concert. The cost of the whole day including the evening concert? £10. Outrageous!!

Learn not to look down the holes!
...you don't know what you'll see in them!
Seriously though - although tutors give you notation which tells you which number holes to blow or suck, the sooner you can learn not to look at the holes, the quicker your fluency will improve. If you produce a bum note when you are playing, learn to slide along or reverse your breath automatically until the correct note is produced - your ear will tell you when you have got it right. Once you have developed this ability, you will be on your way. Its like touch typing only much more exciting.
I recently saw Brendan Power in a concert with Frank Kilkenny. He blew everyone away but I did notice that he did look into the holes before playing. I am fairly sure that, in his case this is just a way of gathering his thoughts. When you get to be as good as him, you can look into the holes all you like.
Incidentally, he has a very interesting web site with sound bytes, details of his custom harmonicas, forthcoming gigs and details of the film soundtracks to which he has added his distinctive sound

Brendan Power with Frank Kilkenny at Bishampton Village Hall. An amazing concert featuring a mix of gypsy jazz, blues, Irish and Bulgarian tunes in an intimate village hall setting - just one of a series of rural concerts organised by Worcester Arts Workshop. Brendan has performed in a number of these across the Midlands and has almost certainly created thousands of converts in the process.

Harmonicalessons.com There is quite a lot of useful information on this site that you can sample before subscribing.
It is a well-laid-out site which includes keyed lists of songs on many of the more popular blues CDs. Cost of membership compares very favourably with buying a couple of tutors and an instructional CD or DVD, although, like everything else, once you are hooked you will probably buy a number of those as well.
electricbluesclub.co has more links to set you on your way.

If Dizzy Gillespie played the harp....
...it would look like like this.

An early attempt to help novice harp players, the Hohner Trumpet Call automatically produces bent notes.
As you can see here, they come out straight and are bent upwards by the trumpets.

In fact, this harp is not very good for playing blues as it is valved which means that the notes can only be slightly bent. However it has a good stirring sound particularly if you play octaves and is quite good for marches, hymns and anything with a bit of an Oompah feel.
It's also very good for comic effect when produced at the right moment on stage.

Being a Man of Taste and Discernment, Bob Jones, my partner in R&B Jones hates it.

Visit Adam Gussow's Educational Resource on YouTube

Adam has posted 140 instructional and entertaining videos on YouTube where you can pick up some really great tips as well as seeing a fine selection of shirts.
- I've only got another 138 videos to post to catch up!! (and I can't afford the shirts)

While you're at it, check out the instructional material including harp tab available on his website.

Move to Bracknell!
South Hill Park in Bracknell is the location for a Harp Jam every other Monday evening from 8pm to 10pm. Beginners are given an introductory guidance session and intermediate to advanced players get to grips with more advanced topics, dissecting popular numbers and building up a repertoire leading up to a twice yearly performance session.
For a mere £3.50 a session, this is top value for all aspiring harp players.
For details contact Peter Wheat
The next session is scheduled for the 12th May 2008

On the alternate Mondays, there is an accoustic jam at South Hill Park which is mainly for guitarists and singer song writers. However, they do appreciate a bit of tasty harp accompaniment and it provides a good opportunity for would-be Sonny Terrys to meet a Brownie Maghee.

One of the most useful that I have discovered is The Diatonic Harmonica Reference which has been built up by Mike Will over the years. (I often used to wonder why it was called "My Quill" until I realised that Mike Will was the man behind it - if you are as slow on the uptake as me, just read it out loud and the penny should drop)
I have found it particularly useful for the comprehensive description of harp maintenance and customisation (I used to have a whole drawerful of "dead" harps at the time but thanks to Mike's pages and a maintenance course at the NHL Autumn Festival (see below) I recovered a significant number of them.

This page makes the basic assumption that you want to learn to play blues harp because you love the sound of the blues and are not merely motivated by the thought of the sexual favours that would be bestowed on you as a star player.
That being the case, the more you listen to blues the better you will be as a blues player - you'd think this is obvious but many blues jams are improved enormously when everyone is familiar with the material - I have been to some where a good general knowledge of the blues is not there and they tend to fall apart very quickly.

What harps do I need?
Most people start with a ten hole diatonic harmonica in the Key of C - mainly because most music stores stock these but, to be able to to try and pick up riffs by ear from CDs, buying more than one harp will speed you on your way.
As a starter, C; A; and D will do - these will enable you to play in second position (cross harp) with blues in G, E and A respectively.
If you add G and B flat harps to your collection, you will be able to play along with most things on the Blues Harp Boogie CD.
If I'm not sure whether I have any aptitude - should I buy the cheapest harps possible?
This is a matter of personal choice but if you are unsure, you would do well to spend the money on a good single C harmonica and persevere with that until you are more certain about your aptitude.It is my personal experience that cheap harmonicas can be very unrewarding in terms of their set up and tuning and even a fairly good player would find it difficult to get the full range of expression and volume from them compared with a "standard" Marine Band, Lee Oskar or Special 20.

Personally, I have found that the Tombo Folk Blues (Tombo make Lee Oskars) is a very cost-effective choice and, looking through my current set of harps that I take to gigs I find that I still play one that I bought in 1998. Most of my other harps are Hohner Special 20s which are very well sealed and responsive but I also have three Marine Band de Luxe and the new Seydel 1847. At £35 for the Marine Band de Luxe and more than £50 for the Seydel, these last two are unlikely to be a beginner's first choice.

Giles Hedley (with or without the Aviators) Described by Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown's legendary drummer, as "the funkiest man I've heard in Europe", Giles is vocally the closest vocally to Howling Wolf that you may see in a long time. As well as being a very powerful vocalist, he plays a number of guitars including a home-made lap steel guitar as well as rack harp using a home-made microphone which gives tremendous punch to his playing. He is also famous for playing a harp with his right nostril which is a sure fire way to stop people asking him if they can have a blow. Here he is at the NHL Autumn Festival in 2005