BLUES HARMONICA FOR BEGINNERS (Progressive) [Perfect Paperback]

William Lee Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1984

For Beginners to Intermediate

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Koala Music Publications (December 31, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 094718385X
• ISBN-13: 978-0947183851
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,615,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For harmonica beginner with no previous music experience, August 30, 2000

By 

Scott McKenzie (Queanbeyan, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BLUES HARMONICA FOR BEGINNERS (Progressive) (Perfect Paperback)

This book is perfect for a beginner to blues harmonica who is also a beginner to music theory. The tunes in this book are easy and progressively get more challenging. I could play decent sounding stuff from the first attempt but had to work hard to do the harder stuff later in the book.

If you already play another instrument and/or can read music another book would be better as this one doesn't use standard notation. This book is best for someone who has no musical experience. Also, If you have no experience playing with other musicians the CD is very helpful - you play along with other musicians (drums, guitar, bass, keyboard etc) on the CD so that you will learn correct timing and rhythm. And with the CD you can listen to the harmonica on the CD, play with it and then play on your own as the CD leaves a verse or two free from harmonica for you to play along.

Great value for a harmonica beginner who is also a musical theory beginner. I also have the accompaning book "Blue Harmonica Licks Vol.1 - it has more of the same but doesn't feature bending notes. Some of the tunes are simple and you may want to move onto something by David Barret or Jerry Portnoy later.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good place to start learning blues rhythms and licks, January 13, 2004

By 

S. E. Nelson "NELZ" (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: BLUES HARMONICA FOR BEGINNERS (Progressive) (Perfect Paperback)

I enjoyed this book along with the companion Blues Harmonica Licks because the one page lessons focusing on one lick were simple enough to feel like you were accomplishing something. This layout fosters confidence in harmonica playing such that by the end of the book I was comfortable improvising to the backing music with the numerous riffs and techniques learned in this book. The shortcoming of the book is that the volume 1 stops right at bending. This wouldn't be that bad, but as I understand it, volume 2 was never finished or published. Without bending, you really are not playing the blues. I would still recommend this book over other beginner books because it sticks to teaching licks without all the goofiness of books like Gindicks. I am left though to ponder how much less of a struggle learning to bend would have been had they published volume 2.