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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Just bought a new book
Just bought a new book
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minidaz
12 posts
Jan 14, 2010
5:01 AM
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While searching on ebay, i came accross a ' learn the harmonica ' book, that i thought might be a good read.
( plus it was cheap )
Its a First Step book, from 1965, called How to play the Harmonica, by T.W Thurban and E.H Wickham.
According to this book, tongue blocking is the only correct way to play the melody ( single notes )of a tune. It also has a lot of tunes set out in the typical music scale, rather than tabs.
It talks about a Vamper ( Diatonic in C ), which i'm guessing is , or was, a make of Harmonica back then.
It also explains the way to learn single notes : By covering all the holes you dont want to play with your index fingers, leaving just one hole free to BLOW or DRAW.
It is interesting to see what the learning techniques were like 35 years ago, and i'm guessing alot of the older players probably started out by reading books like this, but i think for me, i'll stick to Adams lessons, and keep the book as a little history lesson.
Daz
Last Edited by on Jan 14, 2010 5:02 AM
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Honkin On Bobo
169 posts
Jan 14, 2010
5:21 AM
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Well if tongue blocking is the only "correct" way to play a melody, then I am quite the incorrect player. Then again, I am politically incorrect quite often, so maybe it fits.
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toddlgreene
470 posts
Jan 14, 2010
5:27 AM
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"According to this book, tongue blocking is the only correct way to play the melody ( single notes )of a tune. It also has a lot of tunes set out in the typical music scale, rather than tabs."
Lots of older text has errant info;this is a prime example!
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Philosofy
323 posts
Jan 14, 2010
5:55 AM
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Slight correction: its 45 years ago!
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minidaz
13 posts
Jan 14, 2010
6:29 AM
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Maths never was my strong point ... oops :o)
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oldwailer
1014 posts
Jan 14, 2010
11:34 AM
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I think '65 was about the time I bought a book by Tony "Little Sun" Glover--I don't remember the exact title, but it was all about blues Harp and it had a kind of tab that you could possibly learn from. Adam talks about this book somewhere in the YT videos. The tab was difficult to read, but it was tab.
There was also a book that I still have Called "The Harmonica Styles of Sonny Terry." (I'm not certain about the title). It had an autobiography of Sonny that was really great. The tab in it was accurate, but a really weird system--I have to transcribe it into Adam-tab to make any sense of it.
So, it wasn't all total stone ages--If I had stayed with it, I would be a really great player now--but I got distracted into guitar and life in general--coulda woulda shoulda--the older I get--the better I was. . .
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