Customer Reviews

Blues Harmonica Collection

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most aspirring harp players start with an instructional book covering the basics of playing, notes, positions, a few simple riffs. Once you get past that you want to play some real blues and almost every instructional book teaches you how to play "Oh Suzanna" and "Frankie and Johnny". This book shows you in simple tablature how to play all of your favorites by Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf and more. Some songs are more difficult than others, but Love in Vain or Don't Start Me Talkin' are not much harder than Oh Suzanna and a lot more fun to play.

That is the kind of thing that keeps aspiring players interested. If you have the cd's you can play along (it helps)but you can really be playing some good blues in a matter of weeks instead of mastering "Frankie and Johhny"

Wow! Tons of material, excellent transcriptions, variety of difficulties, large format is very easy to read. I read music notation easily, and have no trouble following along with my recordings. If you only know harp tablature you may have to work harder to find the spot on the page with the lick you are trying to cop, but the tab notation is all there for you.

No discography in here that I could find, but "Essential Little Walter" and "Sonny Boy Williamson, His Best" will cover about half of the tunes in here. That's enough to keep me busy for a year or two.

What an incredible value. If you're ready to really study a huge load of licks and choruses by the masters, buy this book!

There are many good books that teaches you how to begin playing the bluesharp. They have some short harpsolos that you can learn to play, but they are usually to few. For a long time I've tried to find a book with bluessolos containing tabulature for harmonica and finaly I found this wonderful book called Blues Harmonica Collection. The book is not suiteble for beginners but if you've played the bluesharp for a while and know how to play bendnotes, this is probably a challange for you. There are chords, notes, text and harmonica notation of songs recorded by great harmonica players as Sonny Boy Williamson, Jimmy Reed and Little Walter for example. Many of the solos are difficult to learn but many of the songs are possible to listen to on record and that is a great help. But even if you don't have the records there are still many riffs and licks that you can learn from and practice. I have played the harmonica for a while but I've always had trouble with creating/building a nice solo - but this book has taught me alot about how some of the great harpplayers played their solos and fill-ins.

The other reviewers have very well said how great this book is so I won't repeat what they have written. It is amazing though that this is about the only book of harp tab available although given the fact that harp isn't as pop culture as guitar this probably makes sense. There's another book of tunes out by Glen Weiser (also on Amazon) that I haven't checked out and even though it only has about half as many tunes as this collection does I will probably eventually get it. Weiser also has a collection of fiddle tunes, Irish and American, for harmonica in tab form. After I got this Blues Harmonica Collection I also got the "His Best" collections of both Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter which have a good many of the songs contained in the book. It may be a good idea to have at least a C, D, and an A harp which will let you play along with about 15 or so songs in the book that are in these keys. There may be a good chance you already know a bit about harp and have a few of these keys so of course my "tips" here are maybe only for more novice players. (like myself!) A good choice of harp if you're getting started may be the Hohner Special 20 or the Lee Oskar. They were both about 20 bucks if you shop around a bit online although I recently saw the Oskars go up about an extra 5 bucks almost everywhere all at the same time! They are really nice harps though. Only other thing I might add is to also highly recommend the Rock n Blues Harmonica book by Jon Gindick and the Bluegrass Harmonica book by Mike Stevens.

Really great tab. The only thing I wish it had is a CD so you would not have to chase all the music. The music is a must to have with this book. This book is not for beginners.

This collection, along with the Little Walter collection, is perfect for the middle level player who wants to go the rest of the way. If you can play these, you can work. Just don't stop there. Keep going until you have your own sound.

Blues Harmonica Collection isn't a blues harp lick book and isn't just a song book. And it isn't a harp tab book for playing the melody of songs. It's also not an instruction book. I have all these. "Blues Harmonica Collection" is different. It's a song book with the harp parts tabbed out in the appropriate places. If you've seen song books with the music tabbed out for guitar then this will look familiar. The difference is there's no guitar tab. The melody lines are written in regular music lines. So, what you may see is a couple bars of music (not tab) with the notation "guitar solo" as the intro, then two bars of melody line written in music notation (not tab) with the words underneath, then two bars of music with the harp tab underneath. Also, along with all of that, the chords are noted at the top like you'd expect to see in any music book. So, you can learn the song from intro to outro with the guitar chords, the harp licks and solos, and words. If you can play guitar and sing and play at least intermediate harp you'll love this book. If you have a friend or two to play with you'll love this book. If you want to learn just the harp parts for some great blues tunes, you'll love this book. I'll also be using it to help explain blues and blues structure to my (private) music students. If you're a beginner you probably wouldn't want to start with this book to learn on but you certainly would benefit from it by listening to the song by the original artist and following along in the book. You'll probably be able to get a mental picture of the song that will help when you're ready to attempt the songs. I would absolutely recommend this book to all levels. I'd even recommend the book to someone who only plays guitar and sings because the entire songs are there with the chords. I haven't had time to sit and play through the songs or learn the harp parts but based on sitting and looking through each page I'd have to say I would definately buy it again and I'd pay twice the price to get it. I'd like to have had a CD with just the harp parts on it but that would have been a huge project. Just pick up CDs with songs. jaysbluesBlues Harmonica Collection

Consider it to be a 4-and-a-half star rating, cause it could have been a five-star if only they had put a cd in it (it's not that easy to collect these records in this bieber-dominated time!)

Easy to read, hard to perform: a great buy for the serious harmonica player that can anyway help even an absolute beginner like to me to better understand the ideas behind the music of these amazing players.

Strongly recommended!

This collection is the best. You will find some transcriptions of the best songs recorded by LITTLE WALTER, SONNY BOY II and more. If you are a Chicago Blues' lover, this is for you.

Not necessarily a fan of Hal Leonard products per se. Still get some night sweats from them old accordion and piano book lessons I sat atop once upon a time. Nevertheless, this large blues harp collection is worth fighting off the spirits of those old ghosts.

For Beginners, would only recommend as a place or something to eventually strive for. Hopefully, with enough desire, practice and heart, you can/will get it up there one day too.

Intermediate & Advanced players will still have their challenges cut out and chops tested for them along the way also.

There are more than 60 songs (way too many to list here); each song in both music and tablature provides the artist as well as which key harp i.e. A, C, F, etc. they played and whether straight or cross harp was used.

The best way I'd recommend for everyone to learn any of this material is to hear it played several if not 10s or 100s of times more by the original artists. Yet while no discography is included, much of the original music can still be found. Additionally, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson comprise and make up at least half the selections in this book between them alone.

So in Little Walter's case, if you actually want to pay the current going rate of $70-150+ for his out-of-print "Essentials" - or even just download the songs at 99 cents a clip from iTunes whomever - by all means go for it.

For those on different budgets, Sonny Boy Williamson "His Best" and Little Walter "His Best" - each sold separately but on the Chess 50th Anniversary Collection CDs; and available new on Amazon or wherever - will cover the book's songs fairly well.

His Best

His Best :(Little Walter)The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection

And finally, for those who just like to collect these old Hal Leonard books for any type musical instrument or genre - Well, you certainly can't go wrong here anywhere either. {Just don't scare the grandkids with them, gran'pa! Forcing them to sit up straight at the dinner table, eat their veggies and oh, well...}

In any event, Highly Recommended to have fun!!