Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

The Ten Minute Question: part 2

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 111

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Episode 111 is part 2 of the ten minute question, from the remaining podcast guests up until this point.

As per the last episode, I’ll say the name of each guest 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_39:

Welcome to episode 111, which is part 2 of the 10 minute question, from the remaining podcast guests up until this point. As per the last episode, I'll say the name of each guest before they respond to the question. If you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing? This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. well

SPEAKER_46:

you know i don't practice harmonica if i want to learn something new i just go for it at a gig i do practice guitar because your motor skill you'll lose the motor skills in your fingers if you don't keep them limber but with harmonica it just doesn't seem to matter if i take a month off or you know something i don't lose any sort of motor skills or lip skills or whatever i guess if i'm learning a new song and it's a very difficult song that i might have to practice that but I don't know how to, for example, I don't overblow. I suppose if I wanted to do that, I would have to practice quite a bit to learn it. I don't really want to learn it. I'm lazy, man.

SPEAKER_39:

What about when you were more starting out, playing along with records? Is that the main way you learned?

SPEAKER_46:

It really was. And I think nowadays, of course, young folks who are learning have a definite advantage because there's so much material out there, so much instructional material, DVDs and books and tapes, etc. Back then, there wasn't anything. Now, I found out years later that Tony Glover had written a book on it, but I never saw that back in the day. And so the only way to learn was playing along with records. Now, fortunately for me, because I played guitar, I could differentiate what key these songs were in, and then I could figure out what key harp I would need. That's a big hurdle, I think, for beginners, because you only got a 1 in 12 chance of having the right harmonica, really, if you're playing along with the record. So by knowing what harp I needed and then trying to play along with it. I just basically stole everything I knew. And then when you steal enough stuff, you can kind of string it all together. And after a while, when you run out of stuff to steal, then that's when people say that you have a style of your own.

SPEAKER_21:

Jim Conway. I don't know what I would do, but what I would encourage other people to do, I've always said, play the soul, not the instrument. So find what's appropriate for whatever song you want to play and stick to that. And sometimes if it's not a song... then find the essence of that song. Search deeply for that essence of whatever sound you're trying to make. I've noticed, for instance, when you're playing first position down the bottom of the harmonica, there is essentially one pathway that identifies first position down the bottom of the harmonica. And if you really listen deeply, you can hear that pathway and that'll point you in the right direction. And the same with third position and probably the same with with second position. I guess we might call those things modes or we might call them something else, but find the essence of whatever you're trying to play.

SPEAKER_03:

Tone, you know, getting a good sound. And for me, again, it's all about the song and the music more so than the instrument. Yeah, tone and feel. You know, the listener, and that's what moves me the most too, is playing space instead of just concentrating on the notes you can play. You can also concentrate on the notes to leave

SPEAKER_02:

out too.

SPEAKER_39:

Matthias Heiser

SPEAKER_02:

It kind of depends on your level, I guess. If I had 10 minutes, I would take out a jazz standard. I would apply some different improvisational concepts to the jazz standard. Also, when you're starting out, it's just very important to play your major scales, to play all 12 major scales, and to play also your chords, playing the major triads and the minor triads. You just have to... kind of massage that structure of the harmonica and of the notes into your system, into your brain. And the only way you do that is just by consistently playing those different scales. That is really the key also to playing jazz. Every time you practice your major scales, it's a huge plus. You can never go wrong with that.

SPEAKER_39:

Bertram

SPEAKER_37:

Basher. This is easy to answer for me because I think what is mostly missing is is rhythm skills. Practicing on the right rhythm or on syncopes or on exact, for example, if you play... These are all the right notes, but it's not at all interesting. What I'm thinking is like...

SPEAKER_43:

Like

SPEAKER_37:

this, you know, like funny rhythm exercises. Gerhard Muller.

SPEAKER_15:

At this moment, I only can talk to chromatic harmonica players because I'm not that familiar with these tenor diatonic harmonica players. For chromatic harmonicas, first of all, no question. Also, a good hint for tenor diatonic players, please warm your harmonica. The difference, cold instrument, warm air, it's too much. So please hold your harmonica for a few seconds before you start playing the instrument. As a chromatic harmonica player, I would say, yes, start in the middle position, play simple major scales, play a G major scale. So simply play scales. when doing this. And then, of course, also check out that you are, especially chromatic harmonica players, that your slide mechanism works well and also that you are able to have the correct presence exactly when you need the slider. I can just give an example. I have just some practice things which I'm doing when I have 10 minutes to start playing, performing with a bicycle. It's very simple how I start playing the harmonica, of course. Then afterwards, I also then play the songs like, for example, this one. This is a favorite tune I always play because this gives me personally a good mute to play the harmonica.

SPEAKER_39:

Wade Schumann.

SPEAKER_30:

So we're going back on tour. This is our first tour in three years, the longest I have not been in Europe in my entire adult life. And we have 29 shows in a month. It's kind of insane. So this time I've decided to try and bring an amp instead of using Backline. I have a modified 185, which is the Gibson. It's a Charlie Christian amp. It's literally an 80-year-old amp. So I'm trying to get that together with a pedal board that I've made myself for traveling. So at the moment, in terms of that, I'm trying to get the sound together, get everything working. I'm having trouble with the hog. I don't know why it's not working. I've also got an Ottawa pedal, which I really like. I'm just trying to get all of the gear to work together perfectly. If I had 10 minutes to practice, which I was doing today, I'm just trying to see if I can get this amp to work, how the hell I'm going to get it to Europe without it being destroyed, and how I'm going to tour with it. You know, I've kind of made my own thing, this 80-year-old amp with an auxiliary speaker that goes on top. So, you know, as usual, I'm making a synthetic mix of modern and old. Pedals are contemporary, the amp is ancient, and I'm kind of in between.

SPEAKER_39:

Will

SPEAKER_06:

Wilde For me, it varies. I don't really ever have like scheduled sort of routine, like planned out, you know, now I'll practice this kind of thing. It's really just if I get an idea in my head that I want to be able to do, or if I just hear something on a record, I'm like, oh, what's that? This week it was, I heard Gary Moore doing a thing. something like that on the guitar. I was like, oh, I haven't really heard someone do it quite like that on the harp before. I wonder how that would sound on the harp. So yeah, it's trying to get that up to speed and the sound right. But the main things I tell people to practice are, one, is scales. And these are all things I'm going to go into on my course when it comes out. One is scales. You know, as harmonica players, we're really just soloists, you know, especially as a blues harmonica player. It's not about learning scales. songs you know it's about improvising solos over blues songs you know and to do that you definitely need to know need no scales you don't need to know very many just the the blues scale and the major pentatonic scale that that's pretty much it you know you don't really hear anything else other than that so scales get them you know so you can move around them at speed fluently and you Then just working on your sound and all the nuances. And so it's one thing just playing the notes. But getting the vibrato and the scoops and the tone and all these little inflections that make it sound focal and soulful and interesting rather than just playing the notes.

SPEAKER_18:

Jens Bunga. So actually, I always say you should practice the songs you want to play, you want to be able to play. Practice slowly and increase the tempo. Increase the tempo day by day or week by week. Use a metronome or play-alongs like I use with Band in a Box where you can really monitor your progress. And sometimes I even do two steps forward, one step back. Always consolidate what you already have reached. Sometimes I also say 10 minutes spent on the stuff is better than half an hour. Also, maybe split up 10 minutes into two times five minutes. Don't lose the contact with the harmonica. That's important. And the harmonica is so easy to grab and always have with you so that there should be no excuse to not to practice.

UNKNOWN:

.........

SPEAKER_43:

Jaw

SPEAKER_39:

Powers.

SPEAKER_32:

I mean, recently I've been spending a lot of time kind of working on bebop improvisation. So that's, I mean, that's what I personally would do. I'd probably kind of work on some rhythm changes, you know, improvising over rhythm changes or some standards, some bebop stuff.

SPEAKER_39:

Sure, yeah. So does that mean you're, you know, you're getting more into jazz? Obviously you already play jazz, yeah, but are you focusing more on jazz at the moment?

SPEAKER_32:

I think I'm always working on improvisation because I just love it. Whenever I get a chance, I'm always working on jazz improvisation. But yeah, if I I'm on a tour playing tango music, sometimes I get pretty busy and I don't always have time to work on it. But yeah, it's always what I like to go to and work on. I just love improvising.

SPEAKER_41:

Joel Anderson. If you're talking about me, I would be concentrating my time on repeating and trying to re-memorize tunes. Because the thing is that with Irish music, you have to learn a lot of tunes because there's no improvising in Irish music. One tune is played in one key in one kind of way and Yep, that's about it. Then you have to learn the next and the next and the next and the next. And then, of course, the problem is that you have to be able to remember all these tunes. Human brain is somehow magical on how many tunes you actually can remember. But then, of course, some of them slips away sometimes. So it's nice to refresh the memory on them.

SPEAKER_43:

¶¶

SPEAKER_41:

But also practicing, again, like breathing techniques and just simple train rhythm things and stuff like that to keep the breathing techniques going. Because it's, again, doesn't matter what kind of style you're playing. It's so important.

SPEAKER_39:

Jason Keen.

SPEAKER_45:

Honestly, I've been married to the Jamie Aebersold band. Dominant Cycle book for like 30 years because essentially I just run the whole thing. So what they have is they have all 12 keys and each of those keys are about three minutes long. But then if you want a quick study, so to speak, that the next track after all those is basically, okay, now we're going to run all of them and we're only going to do eight bars a piece. I get a big kick out of, you know, the Dominant Cycle kind of thing is just sort of endless exploration. And then I start We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_39:

Cheryl Arena.

SPEAKER_01:

Basically, I tell people to practice at least 10 minutes a day. What happens there is if you practice every day, you're going to get better faster than if you practice a couple of hours once a week because it's almost like starting over again. Your muscle memory is going to forget. You have to start from the beginning. To keep that working, you should do it every day. What happens is if you pick it up for 10 minutes, it's going to go longer. I don't think I've ever practiced for 10 minutes. Once you get started, it's going to keep happening. So, but if I was absolutely limited and I couldn't, you know, for me, for myself, maybe I would tackle a lick that I was having problems with phrasing and just sit there for 10 minutes and play the same lick over and over and over and over and over again until I get it.

SPEAKER_39:

Herbert Quelle.

SPEAKER_19:

If I have only 10 minutes, I would still do chord and an octave playing practice or maybe playing maybe fifth practice on Irish tunes because I attended a class with Joel Anderson whom you also had on your great podcast. I just find Irish music with the accentuation, the rhythm and the melody so appealing to harmonica playing and I got some easy third tunings that I just love because this minor sounding harmonica is just fantastic.

SPEAKER_39:

Yeah, no, it's great. Like you say, those Irish tunes and other sorts of tunes work so great in the harmonica as well. Ricky Cool.

SPEAKER_23:

Well, if I'd only got 10 minutes to practice, I'm pretty certain part of my head would be thinking about, oh gosh, what have I got to be doing today? And all the other things I'm supposed to be doing and I can only fit 10 minutes in. So the first thing is just breathe in and out through the harmonica and work from the low end to the high end, just playing chords in and out for one minute, just to sort of settle my breathing and to settle my head. I think that's really important and it'll warm the instrument up as well. And And then I might take a particular lick that I want to sort of work on and really practice that lick or motif and then try applying it to a backing track and play along with a backing track. So yeah, if I was particularly had those Mississippi saxophone videos in mind, I would do my little breathing exercise first through the instrument just to get myself in the zone, if you like, and then work on one of those little licks and motifs and try applying it to a backing track.

SPEAKER_39:

Josie Smith.

SPEAKER_42:

Quite often, most of my practice is just 10 minutes because sometimes you're so busy with life and those 10-minute moments are the best ever because you just go, it's all I've got, so I'm going to just go for it. So if there's a song I'm working on, I'll just sit down, plug everything in and just work on that one song as well as I can. Or I'll just sometimes listen to a song and get an idea and then just try and work out that because then it's like you're always learning something. something new and if you learn something new it just sort of just takes your music to different directions and different ideas and you never get stale so you always feel like you're growing and it just is more exciting than ever if you just feel like you're growing musically yeah probably just set up my one man band if I had 10 minutes and just go for it just play a song that I love

SPEAKER_26:

well you know there's certain things I tend to have my habits of course and I still enjoy the vocabulary that I have seems to express things efficiently for me and satisfyingly. But I think to work out some new melodic parts or just try to find things I haven't done before with the notes, new patterns that I could add into the existing vocabulary. So I think it would be a case of just thinking melodically as though I were playing on a piano. What if I go this note, that note? then where would we go from that? Just to expand my vocabulary that way, if it were to be something productive. The other thing I'd like to do is to just play rhythm harmonica until I've reached a meditative state from breathing that way.

SPEAKER_39:

Adam Gussell

SPEAKER_38:

Well, I can tell you that. I'm going to do it by taking out three harps and showing somebody what I would do. One of the things that I think you should do every day, I'm going to take an A, a C, and an E flat, just for the heck of it, is you should play the blues scale. You should play it up and down, and you should certainly make sure that that three draw, the blue third, as I call it, that you get that right. You should make that blues scale sound good. So I might...

SPEAKER_43:

And

SPEAKER_38:

once I can get it on the A. Just making sure that those pitches, here's an E flat. Of course, you could hear that I pulled a little vibrato in at the end. But I think, especially for developing players, it's not obvious to developing players that on each harp, the bent notes, the blue notes, or every note, it's going to require maybe a slightly different mouth shape. Just very subtle kind of movements that will give you the best sound. So like the one hole on an A harp, if you don't know that... If you do know that, so learning how to drop the job so that when you're on a gig and you change harps, every harp sounds right. So that would be something that would make sense to do every day. I also think playing harp, although I do use an occasional custom harp courtesy of Joe Spires, I play mostly stock Kona Marine bands. And I do think it's important to develop a certain amount of lip strength. So I try to do runs. I have a couple. I'll take a C harp, for example.

SPEAKER_43:

Now,

SPEAKER_38:

I haven't warmed up. And I would start slow. Find something that will move you through the middle of the harp. I think that's a big weakness. Not only do most players not play the high notes melodically, anything that gets you doing that, even boogie-woogie... That's what I would do. I think a lot of players don't know how to move melodically through the middle, up and down with, say, the sixth blow as the note in the middle. Just learning how to move through that register, I would say that that's something every day would make sense to do.

SPEAKER_39:

Richard

SPEAKER_13:

Hunter. I tend to focus on one technical element in my playing that I want to improve. And I'll practice that for 10 minutes. And I do that, you know, I do 10 minutes of practice fairly frequently. You know, it's amazing. If you do 10 minutes of practice six times a day, you've got an hour of practice in. So I would, the first thing I would do is tend to focus on a particular technical issue, maybe a breathing issue, or a movement issue in a particular passage, or, you know, the head for little Walter's juke. And I just practice that for 10 minutes. And then as As I moved through the day, as I got more opportunities to put in 10 minutes, I might work on a piece of old repertoire, you know, something I've been playing for a while. And then I'll spend 10 minutes working on a new piece of repertoire and and so on and so forth. So take those 10 minute chunks and focus on one thing during each chunk.

SPEAKER_39:

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SPEAKER_29:

I think it depends on where you are in the music, because each period, each era in your musical learning is different and appeals for different types of work, of practice. So if you are a beginner, you should practice on simple things like major scale, minor scale... I mean, if you want to play jazz, it depends on what you want to play also.

SPEAKER_39:

Yeah, sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_29:

And rhythm, and like try to mix the work of the scale and both with the rhythm. If you do like, well, the metronome is like that, the beat is there, like that. It's cool, but rhythmically you play, which is not really fun. But if you change, if you do, you change the accent. Instead of doing the first, if you do it, it's on the beat. But if you do it after, You start to play rhythm. You play groove. So I think when you are a beginner and even an advanced player, you should practice the scale. And a good way to have fun when you practice scale is to practice it with rhythms. and good rhythms. And so when you are just practicing your basic scale, you groove, you know, and you have the body is moving and you have something is happening. And I think it's a good way to approach the basic work.

SPEAKER_39:

I

SPEAKER_28:

think it's about the tone for me and also not just tone, but about, you know, what music am I enjoying at that time? So what would I spend my time doing? It could be Queen of Sheba by Handel, or it could be, I don't know, I could be writing a tune, learning to play a bluegrass lick, or whatever. You

SPEAKER_39:

know,

SPEAKER_47:

it really, I'm not a very disciplined player, and I'm not proud of that. I wish I had had more discipline to do with some of the great jazz and classical players do. So I'll sit down and work on whatever I'm into at the time, if it's a piece of music. Matter of fact, last week, my brother moved down to North Carolina. He plays with a keyboard player down there. They sent me a track of Blue Zet, which is a famous Tootsie Tillman song, right? And they said, would you want to play on this? You know, I never really even played Blue Zet. So that's what I was working on. So I work on whatever is on the table. And if it means practicing some scales so I can jam on a tune or whatever. That's what I do. I remember when I got a call to play with the New York Philharmonic to do Henry Mancini's Breakfast at Tiffany's, I wanted to work on that classic chromatic sound. And I wanted to sound like the guy George Fields, who was a session player from California back then. And I worked on that for weeks, getting my tongue-blocking chromatic plan to try and sound less like Toots and Stevie and more like this sound that we had remembered from this movie. I just practice whatever's on the table.

SPEAKER_39:

Marco Jovanovic.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's good to be aware what you're working on right now. So do I have a certain thing I want to develop, a certain technique? Do I work on a certain song? Do I work on a certain aspect in my playing? And if you have only 10 minutes, then just be aware of that 10 minutes and practice. I think it's very important to divide between the fun part. I'm just playing for having fun and whatever happens is good and I'm enjoying it. Or being aware, no, I want to use the 10 minutes of aware practicing on a certain thing. What happens very often is that you... practice this and you practice that and oh yes I forgot to practice this and then you're jumping between the topics and you end up not doing anything of this you're just wandering from one area to another and it's not a focused work I think the greatest challenge is in learning in general is to learn how to learn that is the greatest task to understand how do I function how How can I organize myself? What tricks, tools are necessary to create a structured way of my progress, of my learning? That's what we are trying to help in different kinds of ways in a school.

SPEAKER_14:

A rocky lock. Before the practice, of course, you know, you spend some minutes in warming up your chromatics, particularly the windsavers, allowing them to gain your body temperature closer rather than just in the room temperature. That is the pre-10 minutes. And then the first 2-3 minutes must be scales. Chromatic or diatonic scale, starting from whatever, a D, F sharp or A flat. starting with whatever scale, going up two octaves, coming down two octaves. So that is the unavoidable part of your practice. And then the remaining, you know, eight minutes could be four minutes for the fast passages, four minutes for those, you know, long notes, and, you know, the nice piece that you love most. And of course, you know, the fast pieces would be your most favorite of three. The soft pieces would be another three of your most favorite. So it is two, three, three, three, three.

SPEAKER_17:

Todd Parrott. I've had 10 minutes to practice, which is often when I'm waiting in the car for my wife. I like to try and play in other positions. So third position major is something that I practice a lot with the backing track, just to kind of see how everything lays out. There's some really, really cool licks and things you can do in third position major. And I would say also other unusual positions. One thing that I like to do is play on country tuned harmonicas and play them in sixth position. It sounds really weird, but there's a lot of stuff you can do in sixth position just from the harp being country tuned, which is really a bad name because country tuning has nothing to do with playing country music. It just gives you the major seventh note of the scale. So your five draw is raised a half step higher. And that opens up not only second position melodies, but sixth position minor melodies. So a lot of the songs that you can play in third position, you can try them in sixth position on a country tune harmonica. And it's quite remarkable the things that you can get and the sound that you can get all the way up to hole nine on the harmonica. So that's another thing that If I have time to just sit and practice, I'm going to jam. I'm not going to really run through scales, but I'm just going to try to play something in context with the backing track. Even if I don't know the chord progression, that's kind of fun to put on a backing track. And there's several of them that are not 12 bar blues and just see what happens. Where are the juicy notes? What are the chords? Oops, I have to avoid that note. Oh, that sounded bad. I'd rather work that stuff out. Ben Bauman.

SPEAKER_31:

If I only have 10 minutes, sometimes I just go to a harmonica case, I close my eyes and I pick up one harmonica without knowing which key. Could be a low key, could be a higher one. And I just sit down and play. It sounds simple, but that's really how I play. I hardly ever practice. I may, for the marble tones, we have a structure in the songs. Sometimes I need to open a song, then I do my opening lick. From there, every gig, every song is different when we play. And that's still how I play. When I teach, I do the opposite then. It's really about techniques that i do by that i demonstrate by using licks that will repeat and repeat and repeat until they get their breathing right their tone building right the embouchure right everything but when i play and i said it about my home recordings i just sit down and play it's it's it's not the best answer i guess but that's really how it is

SPEAKER_39:

Steve Geiger.

SPEAKER_44:

Very early on, and I was in college for a little bit, and we had an art teacher named Frank Miller. I didn't know Frank played flamenco guitar, and he was a monster at it. He did a seminar, and the one thing that took me out with him is he flipped the guitar the opposite direction. He taught his students, whatever you play with the neck on your left side, flip it over and play it with the neck going the opposite side. That always stuck in my head. So I said, if I want to learn something on a harmonica, flip it over. So I would play juke. I started learning juke, I guess, in the late 70s. I started getting into this. It might have even been in the 80s, but I can't remember. So I started playing the opposite direction and trying to learn how to do that stuff. Because a lot of those guys played upside down. Little Sammy played. I'm not sure. I think Jimmy Rogers, if I'm not mistaken, actually played upside down, even though he played guitar straight up. He didn't play left-handed. You know, he uses right hand for strumming and left hand for...

SPEAKER_39:

That's the first time I've heard that, Steve. Someone's saying that they'll turn the harmonica around and play it the other way around as well. Do you think that was a... Did that teach you a lot?

SPEAKER_44:

Yeah, it teaches you what you know. And I always thought if I ever had a stroke, I'll be one up. I won't have to stop playing. I'll be able to keep playing the opposite direction. But I haven't perfected it all the way. It does. You have to change everything. I tongue block. So laying the tongue on the aperture of the... The harmonica, you have to change that and different stuff. So it's pretty interesting. Once you start to hear, then you can go with it.

SPEAKER_39:

When

SPEAKER_48:

I play harmonica, when I practice, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll just pick a song out of the air, whether it's a shuffle or a rumba or some little rhythm part. And I'll just start playing a little rhythm, like the way you drum your fingers on a table almost. I'll just try doing that on harmonica, a little back and forth, blowing and drawing. Or if I hear a bass line, I'll play a bass line. So I'll start out by playing the rhythm part, and I might figure out what the bass line is to that rhythm part. These are not complicated songs. Oftentimes it's a one-chord jam. I'll start just breathing in rhythm. I can start embellishing on that. And once you have established a rhythm, you don't need to play it constantly. You loop that in your head and now you're accompanying yourself. Then from there, I might get an idea and I might stop and break it down and work on it if there's a tricky part or something like that. If there's a specific assignment to learn, say, a tricky part in a certain position, then I might need to just work on that till I get it, sing it to myself. or tab it out. You really want to throw everything you can against the wall and see what sticks.

SPEAKER_07:

Well, it changed over the years. Now, if I just sit down, I just play long tones and maybe slow ballads. I just like to enjoy the sound of the instrument. If I have something challenging coming up, I will make sure that I practice fast stuff, you know, and get back in shape. But I play harmonica for the sound. So, first, I want to get the sound. So, I would probably play for 10 minutes just something nice and in the low register just to get reacquainted with the instrument. That what I do now and back in the older days I was practicing all the hard and difficult stuff.

SPEAKER_39:

So like you said back then obviously jazz is pretty serious stuff so you know what lots of lots of scales practice and you know all the I think you were transcribing Charlie Parker solos and all that good stuff yeah?

SPEAKER_07:

That's what I did early on in my Berkeley days when I learned the language. I did everything any other jazz musician would do, except I applied it to the harmonica. But that's what you do. You transcribe the masters and try to copy it. That's part of the learning process.

SPEAKER_36:

Marcus Cole.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah, you know, now most of the time what I practice is like, for instance, they call me to record this or for this gig or whatever. And what I do is learn repertoires.

SPEAKER_39:

Spend the time working on the repertoire that you've got to practice and perform for, yeah.

SPEAKER_10:

80% of the time is what I do. Or trying suddenly comes an idea. Maybe first I'm not a piano player, but, you know, I have a piano at home. So maybe I played a little on the piano to see where the notes are or what position I should use more or less. And that's what I would do. But if I had the minutes, I would just play whatever I feel like playing at that moment. Probably something very rhythmic. Probably that's how I would use the harmonica, having the most fun possible, you know, because at the end, that's what music is all about, having fun and enjoying

SPEAKER_39:

it. Paul Harrington.

SPEAKER_08:

I like real fundamentals. I mean, you know, I like to play Don't Worry Me, Fasol, Latino in three octaves. If you can do that, you're hitting a lot of players, you know. It's not easy all the time, but... This disorder I've got is messing with my armature a little bit, but I can beat it. So I like fundamentals because I know for myself, I'm going to play the fun stuff anyway. I always play the fun stuff. Songs I love. Songs like we did to this bluesette the other day at this wedding party. Not wedding party, birthday party. Bluesette, and I had an upright bass player, and we had a Just the two of us were doing it and it worked out great. And we did it, what do you call that when it's not in time? I can't think of the word for it, but anyway, we played the song out of time. I like playing the bass. I wish I was better at it. Okay, so you practice quite a lot on scales then. I like scales. And then I'm going to, you know, I'm guilty of this. I tend to think of myself as practicing counts and not practicing doesn't count. No, you're always practicing. Whether you know it or not, you're taking information in and you're spitting it back out. And that's the best practice. So, you know, I try to play, I try to play fundamentals when I'm just rehearsing just for pure, get my face loose, you know. And the rest of it will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_39:

Jim Hughes again.

SPEAKER_16:

First of all, I would say practice slowly. The slower you play, it's like a magnifying glass being put onto what you do, and you're able to observe the way you move from one note to the next. Practice scales all the time. I can't stress this enough. Playing scales and arpeggios are so important. Practice in a very relaxed way. If you start to play intensely, as if you were doing a performance, you wear yourself out. I can play for hours and hours and feel absolutely fine at the end of it because I just practice very gently. See, I might have been saying that. I say I play very gently, just getting the notes in the right order. Be patient as well is my biggest advice. It's not going to happen overnight. The benefits of practice don't become manifest until a long time afterwards. I've practiced in the old days and still not been able to do something. And I think, well, I've practiced this for hours and I still can't do it. But the next day I can do it. It sort of needs to settle in, you know.

SPEAKER_34:

Mike Stevens. Yeah, what I would do is I would try and clear my mind, pick up a harmonica and try and groove, try and connect with that. I don't want this to sound new agey because it's not how I think about it, but it's to connect with music, to connect with what's happening and, and feel and groove. And it wouldn't be about memorizing and playing certain licks or practice things or anything. It's about trying to create a groove, something that moves me in that 10 minutes that that's exactly what I would do.

SPEAKER_39:

Yeah. And obviously the harmonica is good at that. Yeah, sure is.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_39:

Erland Westerstrom?

SPEAKER_11:

It depends. I would do probably one of two things. Either I would try to learn a new tune, because I think learning new tunes and songs and melodies, it really helps you. If you are always improvising, everything has to come from your own mind so to say but if you learn a tune you might have to learn something that you didn't think about so so it's always good to learn a lot of tunes and i mean 10 minutes is not so much but at least you can get started either i would do that or i would just do breathing and tone exercises i think

SPEAKER_39:

jason richie

SPEAKER_27:

Probably arpeggios and just taking them out of sequence or like trying to go from the third to the 10th or the two to the nine or whatever it is, you know, avoiding the root. What's happening, y'all? Jason Ritchie from Blue Moon Harmonicas, and I'm here to tell you that Blue Moon Harmonicas are the way. You can customize them yourself, or you can get Tom to do them. The website is a rabbit hole. We're talking about custom combs, custom cover plates, throwbacks, refurbished pre-wars, double re-plates, anything you can imagine, aluminum, ABS, plastic, phenolic resin, wood, any kind of comb you want, any kind of Covered Tom Halczak's your man. He's got you.

SPEAKER_04:

Michael Rubin. Right now, what I'm focused on is if each chord has, let's say, three notes, like a C major chord is C, E, and G. I may take one of those notes, E, and find different ways to approach it. So I may get to that E from an F note or from an F sharp note. or from an E flat note. So I'm kind of surrounding the chord tone. And there's many ways to do this. So that's basically, you know, what I'm spending my hours doing is just getting real good at this method. It's called enclosures. You know, it's not like I wasn't aware of enclosures for years, but I'm getting real serious about it now.

SPEAKER_39:

Paddy Wells.

SPEAKER_22:

I mean, I'd like

SPEAKER_04:

to say...

SPEAKER_22:

that I'd be mega focused and practice skills for 10 minutes and then, you know, position work. But it doesn't really... I mean, I make myself sometimes, but I tend to be... I will try and play in a few different positions and try and play things that are just slightly different. That's what tends to happen, really. But you know what it's like. Sometimes you just pick a harp up and 10 minutes you're just playing kind of... what you feel like playing, without trying to structure your practice. That's how it is for me,

SPEAKER_33:

anyway. Yeah. If I had 10 minutes to study, it depends on the period of the year, you see. If I had some concerts very hard, sometimes I have some pieces that I'm working on, so I would study that particular passage of that tune, for example. But if I'm just relaxed, if I'm with my family in the countryside, in holidays, in vacancies, I would just improvise. I love to improvise freely. Once thing that I love to do is starting to improvise and I start to modulate from the most crazy modulations. You see, I try to modulate a lot using all kinds of different scales, all kinds of different measures. So I really practice to be free with my harmonica all the times.

SPEAKER_39:

Dennis Grunling.

SPEAKER_12:

If I had 10 minutes to practice, I would probably spend five minutes listening and five minutes playing music. You know, whether it's trying to improvise or just kind of trying to duplicate something new if I was learning something new. And when I go through this with students, you know, I tell people you got five or 15 minutes a day or you have three hours a day. Either way, you can still learn a lot and progress a lot. It's all about how and what you practice. And the most important thing. is you practice what is level appropriate for you. That sometimes is hard for players and or students to figure out what do I want to do that's within my grasp, maybe not too far ahead of me, but not something that I already know where I'm not learning at all. And that I think is the key that helps people learn so much. And I've always tried to keep that due. I always have my sights a little bit ahead of where I am with what I'm learning and practicing. So I'm just reaching, you know, a few steps ahead. That's the most important thing, really.

SPEAKER_39:

Christian Marsh.

SPEAKER_20:

I tend to sit down and play a classical piece because with classical pieces you need to keep working on them, otherwise you lose them. And so I tend to sit down and just play one of the classical pieces that I've got up my sleeve. I would play usually a jazz tune, something that I'm aiming for. I spend time getting jazz tunes together and trying to get them working for myself. So I might spend a bit of time on working through a jazz tune, getting it sounding good.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_43:

And

SPEAKER_20:

then I try and do some diatonic harmonica as well. My diatonic harmonica practice revolves around a bit of scale work these days and getting the overblows really clean, getting the overdraws really clean. Because I find that if you don't play really clean overblows to the audience, it can sound like a bad note. So you've got to get them clean. And the other thing that you have to do with overblows is is that you have to get them into the melodic structure of whatever it is you're doing so that the overblow is a stepping tone to the next one. Just playing overblows and overdraws because you can, for me, doesn't work. They've got to be part of the melodic scale or the melodic idea that you're expressing. When you use them as a stepping stone in the melodic idea, they give you a much broader palette on the diatonic harmonica. And so I work on that stuff.

SPEAKER_39:

Constantine Reinfeld.

SPEAKER_40:

I feel like I would definitely focus on rhythm because that's the most important thing. Yeah, it would be very rhythmically based and very few notes. I don't know. I would just start out playing stuff with three notes and... just squeeze out all the possibilities I can get. Are you talking about chordal rhythms? I'm talking about three notes, like actually melodic stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_39:

And so now you've got your classical hat on as well, do you think about the rhythms as kind of written rhythms, or do you think of them more in a slightly looser jazz way?

SPEAKER_40:

Oh yeah, definitely slightly looser jazz way.

SPEAKER_35:

Mike Turk. If I have 10 minutes to practice, so it's virtually not enough time at all to practice anything, but I go to the piano and I practice Cherokee, the changes to Ray Noble's Cherokee in various different ways, because it helps me think about how to make all the key change transitions of which there are many in that tune. which has always been like a sharpening stone for many jazz musicians, horn players in particular, and even pianists, you know, at breakneck speed. Of course, trying to play it at breakneck speed on a harmonica can be daunting.

SPEAKER_39:

So you're playing the chords on piano when you do that, are you?

SPEAKER_35:

Yes, I'm practicing the harmony on it. And if I have 10 minutes more, I'll practice it on the chromatic chords. And it's nice to even try to play the thing in all 12 keys, which you can do with play-alongs and teaching aids and have that soundtrack.

SPEAKER_24:

One of the things I like to practice at the moment is I've been playing guitar and harmonica solos, like single note solos on the guitar and doing the same notes on the harmonica for quite some time. You know, so one of the things I might practice is playing both together, just doing scales, for example. And the scales I'll do will be the blues scale, will be the Mixlodeon mode. Those are the main ones really I use. But I'm practicing harmonizing as well. So if I'm doing a single note on the harmonica, I'll play the harmonica, a third note above it. I haven't actually recorded this at all yet or even done much of it live, but that's one of my new practice goals is to be able to harmonize with myself doing simultaneous

SPEAKER_09:

soloing. Sound, for sure. Long notes, connecting with the instrument and finding your sound on it. There's a tendency with the harmonica because it seems so easy to produce the note, the sound, you just blow. You know, every kid could do it. People that play this instrument forget about the depth of the sound, actually, and how unique it can be. like each person's sound on the instrument is unique. Yeah, for sure, if I have 10 minutes, I would turn off my phone and practice this. Rolly Platt.

SPEAKER_05:

Jamming, just jamming. That's what I spend my 10 minutes on every day. And it's more than 10 minutes, but it's this stage for me, that's where I grow the most is when I'll put on that little Walter song. I'll put on a bluegrass tune or I'll put on a shuffle or something and I just play to the track. I turn it up, I put the headphones on or whatever method I've got to have it nice and loud and I play hard and I play as creatively and experimentally as I can possibly come up with. And that's how I find my licks and my ideas. That's the creative sandbox that I'm playing in.

SPEAKER_39:

Yeah, great. And I think a lot of harmonica players learn in that way, but I think it sort of simulates a performance quite well, I think, doesn't it, if you're playing along like that, jamming along?

SPEAKER_05:

Absolutely. I mean, I believe you're learning, subconsciously learning a whole bunch of things without even trying. I'm not trying to do a performance, like it's a little different when I'm doing my videos because I am trying to get one good version down. When I'm practicing, I'll do a little bit of that, but really really every other lick is if not every lick is I'm trying to step outside of my box of my comfort zone and experiment I'll go aiming at notes that I don't normally use I'll try a timing thing that I've never tried that you know I'm not thinking about but I'm just experimenting experimenting experimenting with slight variations on what I are what the collection of things that I already do but I'm also learning good time I'm also learning you know it's fine-tuning my phrasing and my syncopation in the music. That's something that I focus on a lot when I'm playing is phrasing and timing. It's all phrasing and timing as far as I'm concerned. So all those things, you know, and how to interact with other instruments and different things that are happening in the music, those are all things that take place while you're jamming, if you're doing it properly, if you're listening.

SPEAKER_25:

Clint Hoover. probably if I have 10 minutes I would I would try to play a bebop head and then you know play it a number of times or maybe a couple of them those are such great warm-ups

SPEAKER_39:

and that would be on the chromatic and diatonic or would you choose one

SPEAKER_25:

yeah yeah I've got some bebop heads worked up on the diatonic in different positions and I'll do that I mean I can't do like Howard Levy does is play confirmation in all 12 keys as a warm-up I saw him do that at a at a workshop but But in a way, that's where I got inspired to do that as a quick warm-up, is just run through something like Donnelly or Confirmation as a warm-up, you know. And it gets you going, for sure.

SPEAKER_39:

Once again, 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. Hope you've enjoyed this compilation of the 10-minute question. It really took me back as I put these two episodes together, thanks to every single person that I've interviewed so far. And remember, 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 website player page. Thanks to Nick Smee for the donation to the podcast. I'm excited about episode 112, which should be out back on the regular schedule of every two weeks. I'll leave you now with Mr. Joe Powers playing us out with some of his fine tango playing on the chromatic harmonica. This one is called La Yumba.

UNKNOWN:

La Yumba