Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Harmonica, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you tried Jon Gindick's harmonica technique (he wrote a simple method and bundled it with an inexpensive harmonica in the Klutz books series) you might find you are interested in learning more. There are a lot of books on harmonica method, and they range from too simple to too complicated.

This book is surprisingly good. It covers what harmonicas to purchase (and the advice is good, the listing of brands fairly complete.) There is a section on bending notes, an essential technique for getting more notes out of a diatonic harmonica and for creating a bluesy sound.

The best chapter, for me, was on the structure of 12-bar blues with an explanation of the "call-and-response" structure. It's easy to understand and essential for structuring your blues riffs to make musical sense. There's also a fine chapter on the etiquette of jamming with harmonica when you join up with a guitarist, singer and other instrumentalists. The harmonica plays support, mostly, but does get to solo. When should you chime in and when do you fade to the background? This chapter tells you how not to make a fool of yourself.

The only thing this book doesn't have is a CD with guitar or piano for jamming along with. If you are getting started in harmonica, especially blues harp, you will need some CD's, especially of the greats like Little Walter and Charles Musselwhite, to provide examples. You can't listen enough to get the ideas down. But this book is a really worthy text to go along with your practice.

This book is surprisingly good for a book written for "complete idiots". I expected something very basic but it covers just about every aspect of learning to play a harmonica up to a pretty high level. It goes way beyond simple techniques. One thing I found unique is that the authors treat the harmonica like a real musical instrument instead of just a toy. They explain concepts and techniques from the standpoint of real music but it doesn't get bogged down or complicated. They even give you the option of learning to play the harmonica by reading music or by the more standard tab system, and the chapter that teaches you how to read music is extremely easy to understand. It also includes some information not usually included in harmonica books such as the history of the harmonica, buying and repairing harmonicas and how to play in a band. There are other books that may be better on individual topics, but this is by far the most complete soup-to-nuts harmonica instruction book. I recommend this be the first harmonica book you buy and then you probably won't need to buy any others.

I've read music, sung, and played piano and violin, so your mileage may vary, but I was playing some simple songs the first and second day I had the book. I think it's organized well, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much is covered in the music theory chapter.

Two things that would really help a lot: (1) A CD so you can hear the examples, and (2) Proof read the music! There are many mistakes, not only on the songs that are written out in tablature, but even in the samples that are written in standard music notation. Very frustrating to have to wonder on each example what I'm doing wrong, only to eventually experiment and find the RIGHT note (usually just the difference between a blow and draw on the tab versions) and correct the music. I also agree with a previous post that it would have been nice if they had continued supplying suggestions on which notes should have chords underlying the melody and which should not, but I'm not really bothered by that omission.

Here's the good news: the author/publisher could go a long way towards solving BOTH these problems without even issuing a new revision (although that would be ideal...I'd buy the book again if it was accurate and had a CD): they could post an errata page and post mp3 files for the sample music (I know, I know, copyright laws, mechanical licenses, etc., but many of these songs like Shenandoah are public domain, some are originals, and I'm not suggesting to post the original ARRANGEMENTS anyway...just files where you could listen to the melody).

I still found this book valuable, but I'll definitely need another book of music for my practice sessions--preferably one with an accompanying CD.

The Kindle edition is not worth the price. There is no CD(obviously) and the promissed web site where you can download parts of the CD and "learning tools" is more than lacking...I found no learning tools etc.
The illustrations in the Kindle edition are too small to be of any use.
Perhaps the print edition is OK, but not the Kindle edition.

This was one three harmonica instruction books I bought, and clearly the best. for the best part is its organization, which is easy to follow even for a beginner. It has the usual Complete idiot's Guide structure which emphasizes making it easy to read and find things, like a complete index, easy to read forma, and tips and tricks which are hi-lighted. The resource guide at the end is also useful and gives you additional instructional material, harmonica websites and organizations, magazines and places to purchase harmonicas, etc.

This is the only Harmonica book I own so I don't have much to compare it with and I am only on chpt. 4 but I am definately liking this book. It introduces you to the world of the harmonica in a way that doesn't make you feel like a COMPLETE idiot, and that its ok to be totally ingnorant about the subject. So far, I feel that all my questions and doubts are being addressed, and even those I hadn't thought of. It is an easy read and even makes me chuckle every so often, not at all tedious.

A good buy, worth every cent...so far.

I think this book gets you thru the basics pretty nicely, but, as things start to get harder, the book isn't as useful.

At one point you are advised something like this: "from this point out we aren't going to advise you when to play chords or single notes, just go with what sounds good". Great for the musically creative, but not me.

The section on reading music doesn't clearly show you what notes go with what holes, is another example. And the section on playing blues was odd, not even explaining how 12-bar blues really works.

I really like this book. I have been playing around with the harmonica for a couple of years but had never taken lessons or tried an instruction book. This book helped me understand the mechanics and improve what I thought I already knew, like bending notes and tongue blocking. But it also does a good job of explaining some of the more advanced aspects of playing the harmonica like playing different positions and chord progressions. The chapter on playing blues was the clearest explanation I've seen on the underlying fundamentals.

I've tried to learn to play the harmonica several times and even though it looks easier, it's not. This book is great. I have only had it for a few days and I can play some songs that sound like songs. They explain everything really well, AND this book was fun to read -- even funny. Also, I couldn't read music very well and this helped, even though you can use it even if you don't read music and don't want to learn.

I'm not sure that I would reccomend it for beginners. As other reviewers have pointed out it covers some pretty advanced techniques; however, a lot of the really basic techniques are glossed over or inadequately explained. Furthermore, there are a relatively few number of songs written in the beginning stages. My biggest problem though, is with the chapter dealing with note reading. It is fairly difficult to figure out if you have no experience reading music. For example, the book gives you a diagram of what notes are ploduced by each blowhole, but then fails to provide a corresponding diagram of what each of those notes looks like on sheet music. Instead, it gives a diagram that seems to jump all over the place and shows numerous sharp and flat notes that are essentially useless at that point in the book. I pretty much had to make my own diagram showing where the notes are located and which blow-hole they go to. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I definately expected a little bit better instruction.

That being said, I love that the book actually tries to teach you notes and introduce you to musical theory instead of doing everything in tabulature. So I would recommend this book but probably in conjunction with a little bit more basic book for all the musical newbies out there.