Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

The Ten Minute Question: part 1

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 110

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Something a little different for episode 110 (and also episode 111 so I can keep the length around the one hour mark).

The next two episodes are a compilation of all the ten minute question answers from the series so far, in this, the 110th episode (get it?)

Not every episode had a ten minute question, such as the retrospectives, but most did, 96 in fact.

So I hope you enjoy listening back to this collection and apply some of the tips and tricks offered by the great players who have been on the podcast so far. 

I’ll say the name of each person before they respond to the question: “if you had 10 minutes to practise, what would you spend that ten minutes doing”.



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SPEAKER_21:

Hi all, doing something a little different for episode 110, and also episode 111 so I can keep the length around the hour mark. The next two episodes are a compilation of all the 10 minute question answers from the series so far in this, the 110th episode. Get it? Not every episode had a 10 minute question, such as the retrospectives, but most did. 96 in fact. So I hope you enjoy listening back to this collection and apply some of the tips and tricks offered by the great players who have been on the podcast so far. I'll say the name of each person before they respond to the question. If you had 10 minutes of practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing? This podcast is sponsored by Zeidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.zeidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicas.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_21:

Just one of Sonny's rhythms. That's what I would work on because rhythm is the main thing in harmonica. Just that sort of, if you can hear it on...

SPEAKER_20:

You know, just working, and they're a great breathing technique. It helps you with your breathing pattern. I mean, I wouldn't be out of breath. I could play that all day long, and I wouldn't be out. Some people would think, well, you're

SPEAKER_21:

just drawing and drawing and drawing. Your lungs are going to burst. But just that sort of rhythm. Steve West-Weston.

SPEAKER_11:

Just 10 minutes would be probably just before I play. I would work on Sonny Terry's stuff. I'd just do Sonny Terry's style of singing. It's a lot of really controlled breathing, getting those going, and it's just like an exercise I use.

SPEAKER_21:

Oh, really? Okay. I don't really associate you too much with doing Sonny Perry-style stuff when I've seen you play. I guess you do an acoustic one like that, do you, Marshall? Yeah.

SPEAKER_11:

When we finished, recently I did an acoustic stuff the harmonica, what was it, Hopping by the Sea?

SPEAKER_21:

Oh, yeah, the one in February of this year. I was going to come this year. It was a fantastic event last year. They had this guy from Uruguay who was just amazing. But I was going to go this year, but they did all sold out by the time I got round. Well, I didn't leave it that late. You know, those guys have done great down there. But me and Will Wilder and Joe Sisco

SPEAKER_15:

did a thing at the end, you know, and it was just improvised. And we did a

SPEAKER_11:

couple of numbers of it, like the Funny Boy Williamson thing, and then a Sonny Terry type of thing,

SPEAKER_21:

you know.

SPEAKER_08:

If

SPEAKER_21:

you're in

SPEAKER_08:

your early stages, I would really try and practice a shuffle rhythm.

SPEAKER_21:

If you go to Snooki Pryor or Sunny Boy Williamson, The intro that they do, it's sort of based around Sunday Boys' All My Love in Vain. And your imagination, it's sort of like... And Snooki Pryor does it a lot as well.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_08:

Try and do the Snooki Pryor and Sonny Boy intro and

SPEAKER_21:

try and get that rhythm down.

SPEAKER_08:

Because once you've got that shuffle rhythm, you know, it'll really help you out, you know, to get people moving on the dance floor, to have an impact of jams and stuff. And also, if

SPEAKER_21:

you've got another 10 minutes, you know, try and get Howlin' Wolf's solos down

SPEAKER_08:

because... you know, very deceptively simple player, because rhythmically and tonally and

SPEAKER_21:

phrase-wise, he's actually incredibly sophisticated and tasteful. Is it Moaning at Midnight? That very repetitive riff he plays, and that was so powerful and strong, and like you say, he's not the greatest harmonica player in the world, but it's very effective what he does.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_08:

You know, Little Walter, all of his major songs

SPEAKER_21:

have a central riff, a central melodic figure. You know, Sonny Boy didn't do that. The band might have done it with Sonny Boy, like on Help Me, the band is the hook on Help Me. Little Walter could write melodic riffs that were hooks. And that's what sets him apart from all the other... from all the other harp players, you know, so he was a composer as well as a player. Sonny Boy doesn't really have composed riffs in his playing. He has stock riffs and he played, you know, he's a genius, but Little Walter, you know, like blues of a feeling, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, you know, you can hum Little Walter's riffs. Billy Branch.

SPEAKER_11:

If I only had 10 minutes to play, I would improvise something for 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_21:

Would

SPEAKER_11:

you approach

SPEAKER_21:

the improvisation by playing something in

SPEAKER_11:

second position or by the blues scale? It would completely depend on how I felt at that moment, which is the way most of my recordings have been and a lot of my performances when I take a solo. There are certain songs... that I will play practically the same solo each time. But there's a lot of cases in which I'm learning as I'm going along on any given night. This is one reason I'm a person that doesn't mind sitting in because when I'm in different musical settings, I can explore different, experiment on different things. So if I had 10 minutes, it would depend on how I felt. I'd make up something.

SPEAKER_21:

My favorite harmonica exercise is the train

SPEAKER_22:

imitation. You can never have good enough rhythm. You can never have big enough tone. You can never have enough breath control and breath support in your playing. You got to love the sound of those harmonica chords being played. So the harmonica train imitation, that's where I'm always going back to. And I've actually been challenging my students these days to go back and revisit that to help overcome that. certain

SPEAKER_21:

challenges in their own playing. If

SPEAKER_11:

I had 10 minutes to practice and I was just a very, very beginner, I would learn how to tongue block pucker, tongue block pucker, tongue block pucker, to make it sound exactly the same, depending on whatever hole you want to go in. And then I would work on trying to bend a note. And that would be it, you know. And a Felisco is going to hate me for this, but I do a lot of puckering. I do

SPEAKER_04:

a lot of tongue blocking as well. I kind of added tongue blocking on the low notes later on in life. And I think that

SPEAKER_11:

there's certain, I guarantee a little Walter did not tongue block all the time. Did not. I can hear it. And there's certain transitional notes that you can't get otherwise. And there's certain ways the harmonica sounds that you can't get otherwise. You have to be able to get a lot of different sounds on the instrument.

SPEAKER_21:

I think five minutes would be on something that you already know, some song that you've learned, just to keep your chops fresh and keep your mouth and your embouchure up. And the other five minutes, I think, would just be on trying to create something new that you haven't played before. You know, when I pick up the harp now, most of the times I don't have an idea in

SPEAKER_09:

my head until I start playing the harp and something comes out. And I say, hey, yeah, that was

SPEAKER_08:

something worth repeating. And then I'll go back and try to play that again. Sometimes

SPEAKER_21:

I can play it again. Sometimes I can't. And so doing that, I think that's how you create something new for yourself and add to your vocabulary. Yeah, that comes through strongly, as you talked about your instrumentals earlier on, that you try to come up with something new, yeah? I think a lot of people, and I find myself doing this quite a lot, might just play songs that you know of other people's harmonica parts, whereas you spend quite a lot of time trying to come up with your own new stuff, yeah? Yeah, trying to find a head that you maybe heard on a saxophone record, or you can't quite play the whole head, but you can take a portion of it and then elaborate Charlie McCoy

SPEAKER_16:

Probably thinking of songs I've never recorded and trying them Thinking of songs that I have on my mind to record in the future and trying them out, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_21:

So playing some melodies then?

SPEAKER_16:

Yeah, melodies, right. You know, a lot of guys get all hung up on tunings and technique and all that. My whole focus is on songs. What song will sound good on this and what's the best way to record it and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_17:

P.T. Gazelle. Regulating breathing. Learning to relax and regulate your breathing because most people tense up and get too involved and try to play too hard. You're having to work way too hard to make any sound on an instrument that shouldn't be that difficult to do. Any particular tips on how you would do that? It all starts with relaxing. If you're relaxed, then your diaphragm is open. Then it's easier to inhale or exhale. It all kind of starts there for me.

SPEAKER_05:

Lately, I've just been practicing just patterns and different keys and through like a cycle of force or chromatically down, just anything that kind of pushes me. I'm never going to be a hardcore jazz guy. It's actually opening up my blues playing. So if I try to play something in a weird key, it's helping my regular playing and stuff and just helps me to be more free in the easy keys, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Like, I mean, you know, even something like a triad coming down chromatically.

SPEAKER_00:

That's

SPEAKER_05:

just the whole one, two, three, four. But if you take it from the third. Et cetera, et cetera. So you... You have to literally think in your head, okay, now I'm in G, now I'm in F sharp, now I'm in F, now I'm in E, now I'm in E flat, and sort of visualize those patterns in each one of those key centers. It's a real workout. I just was doing that a little bit today with a metronome. Because I just started to visualize it, it's like, oh, I can actually think my way through this slowly. In a nutshell, lately, that's what I've been practicing, just different things that just sort of push me and challenge me to think clearly and deliberately in different key centers

SPEAKER_21:

brendan power

SPEAKER_15:

oh just whatever i'm into at the time you know again i couldn't say anything specific but if i'm into chinese music it would be a chinese chinese thing if it was into effects i'd be playing with them so yeah i couldn't say anything specific except what i'm gonna buzz on for that at the moment i've never had a practice regime i mean a lot of people practice scales and and all this kind of thing but i've never been one of those

SPEAKER_21:

I'd probably play some songs.

SPEAKER_13:

I'd probably

SPEAKER_19:

think of a song that I'd like to play and play it, because I find it's more entertaining to myself. Think of a song and then think, well, what if I played that same song? in first position. And what if I played that same song in third position or 12th position? What would it sound like? And so I kind of will amuse myself in that way. And by trying out melodies in different positions,

SPEAKER_17:

I think that's a great way to practice. But it's also, it's more entertaining than

SPEAKER_19:

just running scales or something like that.

SPEAKER_21:

Lee Oscar.

SPEAKER_19:

You know, I think it's good to play with good tone, play with phrasing, breathing. Take 10 minutes every day when you're starting off and just learn to play a pure tone on the two-draw or the three-draw because you've got to learn to play unconstricted air. You don't suck air. You breathe air. So 10 minutes, and it's good to practice getting nice tone.

SPEAKER_21:

Howard Levy.

SPEAKER_27:

Well, I have these things that I call rhythmic breathing rudiments, where I transfer drum rudiments to the harmonica, paradiddles, roughs, all sorts of things like that, which I do, and certain arpeggios, you know, playing melodies in certain keys, expanding the pitches of the overblows. Yeah, stuff that I warm up with before I play my concerto.

SPEAKER_21:

Rochelle Plass.

SPEAKER_14:

Pushing on my... record app on my phone and try to find new melodies and new tricks on the harmonica. I will just play and record while I'm playing and I will hear what I've played to see if there's something interesting.

SPEAKER_21:

So you see recording yourself as a really important part of your practice and then listen back to that?

SPEAKER_14:

Yeah, if I have only 10 minutes to play in a day, I will try to find a new melody, for example.

SPEAKER_21:

Gregoire Marais

SPEAKER_19:

I would come back to playing scales and arpeggios and the sound. So I would do long tones, like something like that, like... And really have the sound really steady, like not just going through. First, without vibrato, you know, just really straight. Just to have a real control of the sound. And then eventually you can venture into playing vibrato and all that stuff. The other thing that I would do is playing really soft. But with a lot of projection. So you hear, you heard me, and it's very soft. At the same time, it's very... Clean, precise. You have control of the note from the very beginning until the very end. It's not something that's just kind of going all over the place. It doesn't have to be a long tone that stays playing that long forever. It just can be relatively short. As long as it's really controlled, it has to be controlled. That's what you're practicing. That's the first thing I would do. The other thing I would do is literally arpeggios. That kind of stuff, which is really, really actually important for just articulation and then I would just play like even just major scales in all 12 keys or you can do it over two octaves and then eventually you can kind of do it fast that already with these exercises you have a lot now if you have all that stuff together and you can sort of practice That's great. So already a lot. And then if you had another 10 minutes, I would kind of, whatever, choose a song. It doesn't have to be complex. Whatever song you want to play and try to really play, play the melody sounding really good. Each note sounds great. And the last thing that I would say is it's really beneficial to practice with a metronome. So whether it's a tune or even those exercises that I just showed, just try to practice with a metronome because time in jazz is essential. You've got to be able to have good time. It's

SPEAKER_21:

interesting. So you're still working on those more basic things now, are you?

SPEAKER_19:

I always go

SPEAKER_21:

back to

SPEAKER_19:

that. The very complex stuff, I'll work on it for a while and then I'll go into something else and I'll just explore different things, different types of scales, different types of everything. The thing that I never change are those basic exercises. First, start slow. Don't start playing fast. Fast comes later. Fast is not as important as sounding great. What you want is to sound great. Each note sounds great. Each note is a pure treasure. It sounds so good. I mean, when you listen to other instrumentalists, when they play the instruments, it's like that. Every time they play something, it's like, wow. Listen to Keith Jarrett, you know, every time he plays a note, it's ridiculously beautiful. Listen to Herbie, listen to Pat Metheny, every freaking note he's playing on the guitar is perfect. Always like that sense of perfection. already first with the sound the tone and then eventually you get to if you want to play faster or you know whatever more complex you can but there's nothing wrong with playing very very simple as long as it's beautiful that's going to be more much more effective and emotionally interesting and powerful than playing fast

SPEAKER_22:

probably practice bending notes on the diatonic. Because I don't think there's a better exercise for either instrument, chromatic or whatever, is just stepping down through the bends and back up. It's different pressures. And find if I do that before a gig, if I just take an A or a G and just play the bottom half of it, bending up and down, bending up, it really gets my embouchure straight. And I find that if I don't do that for a while, if I don't do any bends, it kind of affects both. It affects my chromatic playing as well. So yeah, I would practice bending on the Titanic.

SPEAKER_21:

Jerry Portnoy.

SPEAKER_00:

The two-hole draw. I once walked around my house for almost two weeks playing nothing but the two-hole draw. It's the tonic note, and it's your root note. It's where you come back to all the time. Playing long tones, you know, note selection is very important. I mean, I've never particularly cared about impressing people with technique. The point of playing music is to communicate emotion. And so whatever tools you need to accomplish that is what you should use. And you don't need to use anything more or anything less. To me, what moves people, what moves people emotionally, what reaches them inside and stirs them, is the sound of the note. While your note selection is important because the combination of notes and where it's leading can create moods and feelings, it's the actual sound of the note that gets up in people's chest. And so the first order of business in playing music is to make a good sound come out of your instrument. That's the first thing. And then know where to put it. And that is really what music is about. Make a beautiful sound come out of your instrument and know where to place it. Just getting your note to sound good. You know, if I had 10 minutes, I'd just sit on one note and try and make it beautiful, make it sound different ways, put different vibratos on it, tongue floaters, make it sharp sounding, trebly, try and make it more bass sounding. Learn how to control that note. If you have an hour a day to practice, whatever you're going to practice, you're better off, if you have 60 minutes to devote to practicing, then you're better off bringing that up into practicing four times a day for 15 minutes or three times a day for 20 minutes, because it's all about muscle memory. And the more times you come back to reinforce it, the more effective it will be in imprinting that muscle memory. So if you've got 60 minutes, you're better off doing three sessions of 20 minutes space through the day or four sessions of 15 minutes because each time you come back, you're reinforcing that muscle memory. If you just practice once for an hour every day, I don't think you get the same result.

SPEAKER_21:

Mickey Raphael.

SPEAKER_13:

You know, I would put on a record. I put on Jimmy Reed the other day. or Jimmy Reed and Big Walter Horton there were a couple albums I liked and just play along because we're not playing that we're not touring right now so I've just got to keep my chops up and even though I don't play the blues in my day job you know it's a great exercise and it's great you know it's just you know fun stuff to play so those were actually the last two records that I played on oh and Traveler and the Chris Stapleton record because I've kind of you know we'll tour next year with him And I've got to kind of remember what we're doing, you know, when I played on the record.

SPEAKER_21:

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SPEAKER_11:

Melody and breathing. I find a lot of kids, when they first start, just get shoulders too far up. They just don't relax. It's kind of counterproductive to be in that stiff mode. You can't breathe properly. You know when you go into this stress management, the thing that you have to master is breathing. I think when kids are learning, I don't actually teach, but I've actually had one student, and that was Jude Law, the actor. I went to Jude's place. I showed him what to do. Antonio Serrano

SPEAKER_21:

Well, I try to focus on whatever I have to learn for the next gig or for the next concert or the

SPEAKER_20:

project. I don't really have anything that I practice every day, like an exercise routine. I practice songs or pieces or I work on things that I want to play. Actually, if I only have half an hour, I definitely wouldn't spend

SPEAKER_21:

it on playing scales and arpeggios and stuff like that. I would try to play some music. Grant Dermody. Well, I'd probably pick up a G harmonica because I love that sound. It's just got that big, deep, rich sound. And I'd probably just start with playing how I'm feeling at the moment. Just kind of see what comes. It wouldn't necessarily be somebody else's song. It wouldn't necessarily be somebody else's groove. If I had 10 minutes, I would just sit down and play what's inside of me and just let it come out. Sugar Blue. Practice my scales, take time to listen to and play a song that I like, you know, work on a melody of a song that I like, and that would pretty much cover it. I play scales, I play slowly, and I play it off as you heard. I've written a couple of good exercise books which demonstrate a lot of things that I do. Yeah, I was going to mention those. So again, I've got those two books and I use them certainly for quite a lot of time and I do return to them periodically. So lots of great exercises around scales and I think a little bit based on Jerry Corker's famous book around patterns for jazz, isn't it? Yeah, this is a general, this is in book two. This is a general sort of standard idea of practice for jazz players, which means that whatever you do, you've got to do it in every key. And if you play an arpeggio, then play it again in another key and then in another key and keep changing key, perhaps going up one scale, down another scale. Charlie Musselwhite. You know, I really like the way Hank Crawford phrases. I would listen to him and try to play along with him. Okay, so you have tried to emulate saxophone players then. Has that been quite a key part of your learning? Well, I get a lot of ideas listening to saxophone. Also, Grant Green's guitar playing, a lot of his licks are perfect for harmonica. And these guys are all real bluesy players. Donald Black. Accuracy. Now, there's different slots in the tremolo. The apertures where the reeds go into and people blow and suck, they differ from harmonica to harmonica. So you've got to get used to it. Some of them are quite small, and the accuracy has got to be much greater for certain harmonicas than others, because you can miss it. You know, you've got to watch your land exactly on it. So accuracy and really getting... Once, you know, people learn the scales, but they've got to get some music. I'm assuming that they're starting out. Play a tune you know, not something you don't know.

SPEAKER_11:

And play something easier, like Jingle Bells. The first six notes are the same. There's a lot of the same note there, but you're beginning to play a tune. And once you've done that, go a bit more adventurous and do exactly the same again with a slightly more difficult tune. It might be best to play a slow piece that you know and know well you

SPEAKER_21:

know it back to front and you know if you're playing it correctly if you don't so you try and find that note that you might not be getting correctly but take the time with it and don't worry about learning the whole tune maybe there may be three or four parts to that one tune even if you can get the first

SPEAKER_11:

few bars to start with get the first part and go over it and over it and over it and then you work on the second part and then sometimes you forget the first part and then put the two together but don't

SPEAKER_21:

worry about the third or the fourth they'll look after themselves once you're ready and just don't be afraid to express and just see what you can do. Greg Schlapp.

SPEAKER_20:

Yeah. First of all, I would divide the 10 minutes in two because what I think is it's quite a different thing to practice and to play. Two completely different things. So if I have 10 minutes, I would spend five minutes taking a theme, something I like with the phrase, the harmonica phrase from a song I like. So I would spend five minutes trying to get exactly the tone, the bands, the time of the phrase that I'm hearing and there it is very important to be very accurate and to work slowly each note with the perfect sound to get as much into it as possible and then the five minutes that are left I would spend playing so then the difficulty is to forget about practice because when you play you do not practice you should not practice when you play when you play you have to be you have to listen and what comes out of you is what you already know so you must when you play you must make mistakes it is important to make mistakes and the most important is to listen so five minutes for practicing really accurately every detail and five minutes to play but let myself go and

SPEAKER_21:

listen

SPEAKER_24:

if you always have the number of the title on your repertoire then you practice with all four notes Errol Linton.

SPEAKER_08:

Practice time with harmonica, I just pick it up when I get a vibe to it and play along. I mean, I did so much practicing before. When I used to go busking, that would keep your chops up because that is the hardest thing you can do. Yeah. It's easier playing whether you've got two or three or four guys behind you. When you're there on your own and you've got a thing, stamp your feet and blow that harmonica. Philip Jers.

SPEAKER_23:

I take a harmonica and then I take a note and I really try to find the note. Inhale, exhale, really kind of which note do I resonate with today. Really try to find a nice resonance and a nice tone. And it can be a bent note or a normal note. I do that for a few minutes, just play very slowly, very meditative. And then I often either play some blues lick or like a train stuff or on chromatic I would play some jazz lines, just free improvisation, playing the note that comes. Often they say the hardest thing to play every day is the first thing that you're trying to play I'm working on that it's nice just to take a harmonica and start playing something but to answer your question fast I would improvise something for 10 minutes

SPEAKER_21:

yeah and obviously working on your tone is important so

SPEAKER_23:

yeah always always work on tone I mean long tones in every register and really work on that and the cool thing because with harmonica we we inhale and exhale the music so we we become the tone almost I mean we are the reason the tone is there so I think one should really Son of

SPEAKER_21:

Dave.

SPEAKER_10:

This is part of my problem is that I quite often sit down thinking I'm going to practice and I'm going to be a better harmonica player and a better person and I'm going to really do this. But what you ought to do is arpeggiate. So I start arpeggiating and within a very short time I find a combination of four notes that I like or something and then I'm right into the Just naturally, I start writing a tune around it, and out comes the dictaphone, and I'm writing a song. And I never end up practicing harmonic sometimes. Not never, but I usually end up... It ends up turning into a song. It just always evolves that way.

SPEAKER_21:

Steve Baker.

SPEAKER_10:

I think probably

SPEAKER_21:

hand

SPEAKER_20:

positions and tongue block rhythm, because how you hold is of... great importance to how you sound. And if I just want

SPEAKER_22:

to

SPEAKER_20:

play something that, is a warm-up. Then I think that playing tongue-blocked rhythms and figuring out how to enclose

SPEAKER_28:

to get the sound where you want it is a very good way to spend your time practising.

SPEAKER_18:

But you could equally well say you practise scales, or you play your favourite licks or

SPEAKER_26:

whatever. I don't think it matters. I think the main thing is the play.

SPEAKER_21:

Robert Bonfilio.

SPEAKER_02:

minutes. I practiced maybe two to three hours for the last 40, 50 years. I don't know, 40 years. At some point, I was practicing 12 hours a day. So what would I do? This is classical, okay? I set my practice times up this way with student. You're going to practice one quarter of your time on scales and arpeggios. Then you're going to practice to some kind of etude. An etude might be something like if I'm using a biting technique as an articulation. So biting is where you bring the mouth down it gives you a definite percussive sound boom when you start a note and it's using the air from the diaphragm to give you that support but it doesn't really require support it just means that you're going to force that air out all right so there's a bite sound what i might do for the second thing would be some kind of etude

SPEAKER_14:

so

SPEAKER_21:

All right, so that's a bite etude. So an etude, to explain, is a piece of music to practice a particular technique.

SPEAKER_02:

Technique. So if it's a tonguing etude, you're tonguing for the one quarter of the tongue. So there are corner switch etudes. There are etudes which involve biting. There are etudes which involve some kind of octave etude or octave leap etude. You know what I mean by an octave leap. It's where you would go... That's an octave leap. And what you're doing is corner switching. And it might be the whole, you know, you might play scales in octave leaps. All right, that's an etude. So it's just involving one technique and beating it to death. That's the second thing. First, scales, arpeggios. Second thing, some kind of technical etude. Third thing, duet. A duet is a piece that you're going to play with another live musician, not with your computer. You're going to play with another live musician because live musicians, if they're really good, they use time. as a way of emotion. So they speed things up and slow it down, and you have to be able to follow them, and then they have to follow you when you speed up and slow down. So duets give you the ability to play with another person. And then the fourth thing you're going to do is work on a piece. So you split your things up into scales and arpeggios, technical etude, duet of some kind or another, so you're playing with somebody, and fourth thing is a piece. Let's say that's a harmonica concerto or a Bach piece or whatever, something that's going to require you to practice a long time, but the satisfaction will be at the end of it, you'll be playing something that you can actually play for other people. Those are the way I split four things up.

SPEAKER_18:

I think on harmonica and any instrument, really, I'm doing it now with the saxophone. But with harmonica, the big challenge is making things fluid, legato, and sounding like they're not chopped up. I practice arpeggios a lot, up and down in all the 12 keys. Maybe you could do in 10. No, you probably couldn't do in 10 minutes. Well, let me put it this way. I've never been a very systematic practicer. So it's very nice when I have a piece of music, a jazz standard, which I need to learn, or in the case of the French, the Odysseus, piece, something like that, it's nice to have a goal. If you're just sort of between things, and one thing I do, which is kind of a warm-up, is I play an augmented scale, a whole-tone scale, that is, starting on a C and just going up, because that scale happens to be in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, right? So it gets your... your lungs moving in a controlled but very quick fluttering manner, so it kind of increases your speed and accuracy. So that's one little thing I do, for example, before I play a gig sometimes. And you can get pretty arcane on the harmonica. There's some jazz harmonica players who have taken it into pretty out-there realms. I'm more of a melodic player, so it's important for me that I can play all these... seventh chord arpeggios up and down in every key, the semblance of fluidity. So that might be something that I would practice, yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

5-10 minutes I would work on bends for a fair bit because it's like a muscle that needs to be constantly flexed the control of the bends and doing bends as quietly as possible but successfully so I'd spend a bit of time on a diatonic on all three just working on those bends I'd probably do a little bit of tongue blocking work just to again keep the wheels oiled with the rhythmic work and the placement of the octaves probably for like the last couple of minutes I'd just go nuts and just play around, mess around, have

SPEAKER_21:

some fun. If I get to exploring harmonica, it's usually at least an hour. Oftentimes what

SPEAKER_17:

I do when I rehearse is a little bit evasive of your question, but I'll find some aspect, and a lot of times it's from the little Walter mind, but sometimes it's from a big Walter or Sonny Boy, Warner Sonny Boy 2, or any of the other great harmonica players, but I'll find something I really enjoy about what they do, and I grab onto it, and I try and understand what What they're doing, I try and learn to look verbatim, and then I try and reallocate it

SPEAKER_18:

so it has my own personality in it. And that might be just taking the intention of what they're doing. It might be taking a part of what they're doing and adding

SPEAKER_21:

some of my own things to it. But I try and find some way that I can explore through that lens. So if I had 10 minutes, I'd probably go

SPEAKER_18:

to the Muddy Waters, the first record I had, Muddy Waters Sail On, because every time I hear it, I hear something new in Little Walters Plain.

SPEAKER_21:

that i'd probably take that and study that because you could never you could never learn that all the way the lessons will walter that

SPEAKER_18:

guy was such a genius and every time you go back to that well it's a whole other thing you could study something and then go back to a year later and hear all sorts of different things a year later than you heard the first time that you're studying it so

SPEAKER_21:

uh it's an endless journey to study harmonica and that's what makes it great is that the work is never done hey

SPEAKER_25:

everybody you're listening to neil warren's harmonica happy hour podcast proudly sponsored by tom halcheck and blue moon harmonicas this is jason richie here telling you i love blue moon harmonicas i love the combs the covers the custom harps the refurbished pre-war marine bands and nobody's easier to work with than tom halcheck

SPEAKER_06:

Bill Wiggins. Depending on the level, but I would say tone, getting good clear single notes on the harmonica and getting a nice kind of rich, fat tone and kind of making yourself aware of the range of tones that you can get from the harmonica by both, you know, what you're doing with your mouth and all, you know, maybe more importantly, what you're doing with your hands, like with the cupping techniques on harmonica. I mean, a lot of people, you know, I fixated on gear, like the right microphone and the right amplifier. But the sound that comes out of your harmonica begins with your own body. If that sound is no good, then when you plug it in, it's just going to be that no good sound louder. But the main thing is to realize that it's your own body. It's your own, you know, I mean, the harmonica is your own voice and it starts with what you're doing with your own body.

SPEAKER_21:

Hermione Durlow.

SPEAKER_12:

I would practice five minutes of scales, and I would then, you know, go over all the 12 scales, either in major or melodic minor. Although the first thing I would do is play a long note or a couple of long notes, listen to your sounds, then do the sub scales, like our old 12 scales. And then 10 minutes, I would play songs. I divide my time always in thirds. So one third is technique. one third is playing chord changes and go over new tunes with chord changes and the last third I really play a whole tune with a solo and I try to play a beautiful thing like I would be on stage

SPEAKER_21:

yeah and you do that with backing tracks or without

SPEAKER_12:

sometimes with backing tracks but lately I'm doing this very difficult thing like just putting on the metronome and only play with the metronome and keeping the one on the good place you know it's harsh but it's very good

SPEAKER_21:

yeah it's a good way instead of because I practice usually songs with backing tracks and yeah you kind of rely on the backing track for your timing and things don't you when you do it with a metronome you have to be much more disciplined

SPEAKER_12:

it's very disciplined and sometimes it's difficult and I just want to relax and I put on a nice backing

SPEAKER_06:

track

SPEAKER_12:

but my experience is that I moved forward by doing this with the metronome I really improved I think

SPEAKER_21:

David Nadech.

SPEAKER_11:

Well, actually, the thing that helped my playing, I'd say, more than anything is jamming with other musicians. Even better than practicing alone, I find by jamming

SPEAKER_09:

with other musicians, you've really got to think fast. You've got to start playing tunes you've never heard before, really

SPEAKER_11:

feel a tonal center and what you can do with it, and try to get close to the melody lines as you can. So I find that's excellent training. And if I'm going to a bluegrass

SPEAKER_24:

jam, I might prepare myself by practicing a little some of the

SPEAKER_17:

bluegrass standards. If I'm going to Adam Burney

SPEAKER_26:

What I like to do for my own well-being is if I've got 10 minutes, I think, oh, I could get a Noah Lewis tune in there. I'll put that tune on, try and play along with that. I'll put a Sonny Terry one on, and then I'll probably put two Little Walter ones on. And then once I've done that, it's almost like praying, really. I've done that, and I feel good for the day. Then I can play and play and do what I like. But I like to know that I've listened to the masters and tried to learn something off them each day, really. So 10 minutes, I could get each track. Two minutes, 50, it might be a squeeze, but four classic blues songs.

SPEAKER_21:

Yeah, so you'll play along to four. yeah four great blues songs yeah yeah

SPEAKER_26:

yeah

SPEAKER_21:

I think again a lot of people our generation probably did that didn't they spend a lot you know spend a lot of the time learning by playing along with records which maybe people don't do quite as much now with all the internet resources which we touched on earlier on so do you go to the trouble of you know sort of transcribing writing stuff down or do you just play along when you're

SPEAKER_26:

doing this no I'll never do that no I'll just play along and if I miss it I think well I'll get it next time I don't get too bogged down in it you know replicating it exactly and it's not just picking up the notes it's picking up how they play the notes and the phrasing and the feeling and it's so much to absorb and you know as I've discovered the older you get you realise there's more to absorb so it's that really it's so much to take from each of those classic players

SPEAKER_21:

Tony Ayres I guess I'd spend the 10 minutes learning a new tune. So in recent years, I've gravitated to old time music. Your strength is your repertoire. So building the repertoire. So if I had 10 minutes, I guess that's what I'd do. I guess one other thing I do, and I'm actually doing this now because I'm preparing myself to do this recording. There's a scale exercise I learned from a recorder teacher. It's called the Hans scale. It's basically a major scale exercise. And I do that, you know, to a metronome. So yeah, a scale exercise to a metronome. or learning a new tune. And how do you approach learning tunes? So for me, learning a tune is mostly playing old-time tunes now, which is sort of a particularly American music form.

SPEAKER_04:

I would spend those 10 minutes learning how to cup more airtight. When we hear about cupping a microphone, we think about creating a seal between the back of the harmonica and the front of the microphone with our hands. And it turns out that it's really, that's part of it. But whether we're playing amplified or acoustic, what we have to come to learn is that a great deal of sound pressure escapes out the front of the harmonica tube. If you're not blocking those escape paths for sound pressure until you can get kind of a full or near full mute, you're not getting a full cup. And the problem here is that if you're not getting a full one, you don't know how far away from a full one you are. And a lot of the golden beauty in amplified playing is somewhere between like 97% and 99% airtight. You can always open up more. I have a harmonica in my hand. I don't know how well you'll hear this, but I just want to say here's how That's how most people sound when they open and close their hands. But when you get a really good airtight cup and you seal off both the rear and the front of the harp... I hope that difference comes through. It does, yeah, it does. Playing acoustically even, learning to really cup the harmonica well will give you a much deeper wah. And the trick is sealing off all of the escape paths for sound pressure. It means putting a lot of harmonica in your mouth, using tongue blocking if you can, and then sealing off the right side using a combination of your cheek and your thumb. And then being really observant, looking in a mirror, finding out where the leaks are and learning how to plug them.

SPEAKER_21:

Jason Rosenblatt.

SPEAKER_03:

If I only had 10 minutes, let's say, to warm up before a show, let's say, the first thing I would do, I just play through the chromatic scale.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I would just play it through the chromatic scale using a tuner or a piano as reference. And next would be arpeggios. I'm trying to go through all 12 keys and just making sure that I'm kind of in tune. For the purposes of this podcast, I'm rushing through it. I would try not to rush. I would try to play each note as clearly as possible. Finally, the last thing I would do would be what I call long tones. Focusing on a particular bend that can sometimes get a little out of tune. So for instance, I would focus on an F. F I would play without vibrato. Then with vibrato. Add vibrato, take away the vibrato, then play the F sharp. vibrato take away vibrato and just try to hold the note as long as i can 30 seconds a minute and play it with a tuner so i can see if the arrow is sticking you know perfect center am i playing it flat sharp whatever the case is and and this way i can i can really try to gain control over over those particular notes

SPEAKER_29:

sigh leo Well, for me, if I have 10 minutes right now, I would choose to just improvise around, just create whatever they come up with in my mind right now. But if you ask this question a year ago, I would say I would go for the Bach cello suite, number one. But yeah, right now I am really indulged in jazz music. So I've been focusing a lot on improvisation. So I would definitely spend that.

SPEAKER_21:

So when you are, you know, working on your improvisation now, are you thinking about chord sequences and playing over those? Are you playing over backing tracks to do that on your jazz practice? How do you approach that?

SPEAKER_29:

I've always been playing along tracks since I started exploring blues and jazz music on my own. At first, I started playing with all the pop tunes that I know and then I just play along. Eventually, I stepped into jazz and I played with backing tracks on YouTube. But right now, I feel like what I was lacking in my training is to develop the independence of improvisation without anything to support or maybe just a metronome. So that's what I've been working on. I would practice with the metronome or even without and play through the changes of standards instead of having the backing track.

SPEAKER_21:

Rory McLeod. I'd say jamming with people is great, but that's playing what you know. So I wouldn't do scales. If there was a tune you really loved, I'd try and learn the tune, really. Try and learn the tune because, you know, tunes are lovely. You know, scales are probably really useful, I'm sure, but I'd just try and learn a tune that you like, even if it's difficult. I think if a tune is difficult, I mean, I did that on the trombone as well. You have to develop techniques to play that tune, and so that's kind of practicing and getting your breathing and the phrasing and, you know, the tone of it. practicing using the diaphragm perhaps to get the tone which you would if you were singing I mean most wind instruments you use that tone get trying to get that tone with using your muscles there you learn tunes by playing by ear yeah I do I don't read I just play by ear I play everything by ear and I arrange as I say I've arranged using my voice there's recordings in fact I even put them on the album in the end there was a whole demos of arrangements of me singing all the parts and I thought I'm going to put that on instead it's like the Mills Brothers singing all the parts but I play by ear I can't think of any other way of doing it I wish I Magic Dick

SPEAKER_09:

Well, it depends on what I was practicing for. If it was for a gig, that would be a tough time because I get pretty nervous about all that. But if I'm just practicing without any commitments coming up, I think the thing to work on, quite frankly, is for most harp players, most harp players need music lessons. You know, I'm talking about the fundamentals of music and counting. And in terms of practice, I think it's a good idea to try to copy, to emulate as best you can those players, Richard Yems

SPEAKER_28:

I probably would be practicing on different minor tunings, working on material for the next record I'm going to do with Tor Einar Becken, which is inspired by Norwegian and Finnish folk music, but it's mainly based on freeform improvisations. So my answer is I would work on different minor tunings and different themes. I don't work on playing scales that much. If you ask me what scale are you playing now, I probably couldn't answer, but I really like to work on different tunings to develop different harmonically ideas and to practicing on playing you know contrapuntal stuff to use octave double stop and to play around with the same minor theme in different minor tunings for example you know to see what kind of suits the songs the best and gives you most opportunities

SPEAKER_21:

Rick Estrin

SPEAKER_01:

Ten minutes. Spend the ten minutes listening because hopefully that would inspire you to practice more than ten

SPEAKER_21:

minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Because ten minutes ain't going to do you any good. But if you spend ten minutes and you're listening to something that gets you excited and makes you want to... What I felt like when I first was playing and first was hearing that stuff is I was hearing things that made me feel ways that I wanted to try to make people feel. I wanted to be able to, what was occurring in me as I was listening, I wanted to do that to other people.

SPEAKER_21:

Yeah, when you find a song that you really like and that you're inspired by and

SPEAKER_11:

you just keep practicing with it until you get it, you get it. If you keep doing it, it'll come to you because the fact that you want to do it means that you can do it.

SPEAKER_21:

So is that how you started out learning yourself? You know, you listen to records, play along to records and pick them up that way, yeah.

SPEAKER_08:

And the fact that if you want to do something like that, that means that there's something in you that

SPEAKER_11:

is in the person that you're listening to, like Son Once again,

SPEAKER_21:

thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to everyone I've interviewed from point one. It was great putting this compilation together. It really took me back and reminded me how much I've loved talking to each and every one of the people who appeared on the show. If you want to jump to a specific player's answer, then you can select that via the chapter markers, the three lines in a box shown on the podcast player page or the website page. The remaining 10-minute question answers will appear in episode 111. Until then, I'll leave you with one of the players from part one, the mighty Rob Piazza playing Snap, Grapple, Hop.