How to Hold a Harmonica

How to Hold a Harmonica
Hi I’m Jim Luke and we are going to be talking to you today about how to hold the harmonica and how to move the harmonica and why. First thing we are going to talk about of course, holding the harmonica for fun and profit. Now you can learn to play it, play it in any style but you’ll always want to have the best tone you can get out of it. One of the ways to do that is learn to cup it correctly so that you can use it to amplify and give your harmonica the best tone. You see that the tone that you can get by playing the harmonica correctly as far as having a full cave can give you the best tone much better than the next guy. One of the other things that you can do is learn to play with a microphone inside that cave that I’ve created. That is really the secret here is making a cave give you that muffled sound. Now when you play that through an amplifier you get a sound like the Chicago blues guys play. Ken Wilson and The Thunderbirds and guys like that. But you’ve got to have that full cave or you’re just not going to be able to get that tone and that sound. The other reason for holding a harmonica like this is because you want to be as comfortable as possible. If you are going to be on a gig for three or four hours you want to be comfortable while you are playing so you don’t wear out and get sore somewhere. So anyway, the idea is to start making, by making sure your elbows are comfortable and then building up the hold from there. Then the wrists come together and it all comes up to your face. And as the hold comes to your face you try to keep it relaxed and tucked under a little bit. Now once you have that posture you want to be as relaxed as you can. Start playing and remember you move the harmonica and not your head. So there you have it. That’s really the beginning of how to hold the harmonica. Be as relaxed as you can; keep your thumbs close to your face, move the harmonica in front of your face and have fun playing the harmonica.