5 Subtle Changes From Beginner to Intermediate Harmonica Playing

“Change is slow, until it isn’t.” -Roger Spitz

Change as a musician is subtle. For days and weeks and months, we put so much time into getting better on our instrument, and it’s only in retrospect that we can see the progress we’ve made.

It feels like growth happens all at once…and also takes forever.

In my years of teaching harmonica, I’ve noticed five big but subtle changes that happen when a student goes from being a newbie to having some shit down, to becoming their own player. Some of these are personality shifts, some are more technical, but all of them matter. The journey of a harmonica player is long and fraught with peril, but having a steady feedback loop of consistent progress is one of the crucial ways we continue to have fun and grow with this instrument.

1. Leaving Intentional Space in Solos

One of the easiest ways to tell that a harmonica player is being more intentional in their playing (and therefore improving) is by leaving space between phrases. Space says a lot. The audience appreciates it, and your fellow musicians will appreciate a break in the action as well. Plus, space is one of the best ornaments you have to make your solos more unpredictable.

There’s nothing more surprising and intriguing than a harmonica player who takes it out of their mouth every once in a while.

Space is crucial in all types of music; Sonny Boy Williamson II said he would leave enough space to snap his fingers between his phrases. It doesn’t sound like much, but have you ever wondered why we enjoy his playing so much? It’s the spacing!

2. Tongue Blocking and Lip Pursing

In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield said,

“The professional masters the how and leaves the what and why up to the gods.”

As a harmonica player, the job description requires you to know the “how” of your instrument. It requires you not to become dogmatic or lost in meaningless labels, genres, or tribes. To fully express yourself and be the best harmonica player, you must know your instrument intimately and without ego. That means learning “how” the notes are produced in every possible way.

That means understanding both embouchures. Every situation will be different. Being one-dimensional is a surefire way to stall your growth as a musician and an easy way to lock yourself in an unnecessary box. The grey area of this instrument is the use of a hybrid approach. It seeks a balance between tongue blocking and lip pursing. It lies in knowing when to use each embouchure, which takes years to understand.

Intermediate players have at least learned some tongue blocking and use it to their advantage to balance and fatten up their soloing.

As a lifelong lip pursuer (until a few years ago), I can tell you it makes a huge difference. Don’t limit yourself.

3. Song Studies/Player Analysis

Harmonica players are essentially a mish-mash of song studies, technical study, and cumulative hours of practice. In the case of intermediate players, what you start to notice is not their own style emerging, but who they have studied.

You can hear it in their tone and phrasing. Back when I was an intermediate player, many of my teachers and fellow harp players told me I was ripping off Paul Delay and Stevie Wonder.

Want to know why? Because I was.

Becoming a good imitator is a crucial intermediate harmonica skill, and it’s one that you should spend a lot of time on. We all study at the feet of the masters. We all want to absorb their influence into our playing.

The better you get, the easier this process becomes.

4. Hand Technique

If there’s one thing we harmonica players can get lazy about, it’s the placement of our hands. While our lips, tongue, and breath make up much of the sound of our instruments, the placement of our hands matters a great deal too (hand wahs, tremelo, etc).

Don’t ignore this. Better hand placement = better expression. As you get better and want to utilize and discover new tones on the harmonica, hand placement starts to matter even more, especially when you have a mic in your hands.

5. More Comfortable Making Mistakes

There’s an old story about an Irish ship captain who was bringing his boat into port, and he needed to locate all the rocks before he could bring his vessel in.

Want to know how he found the rocks as he brought it in?

We used the bottom of the ship.

Mistakes are the key to growth. Where you mess up is where you start to improve. When I first started to get good on the harmonica, I would be hard on myself when I couldn’t get something; I still to this day make frequent mistakes, blow bending in 1st position, having thin tone into a bullet mic, or doing scale exercises in my practice space. When a mistake happens, it is merely a sign that I need to learn from it.

Most people, when they sit down to practice (myself included), practice solely what they are good at, because to the ear, a mistake doesn’t sound good; it’s disheartening and a blow to our ego; we all want to play what sounds good. However, I urge you to make more mistakes so you can create a roadmap of what you need to practice. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but if there’s something you are unhappy with, it warrants improvement and attention.

Winston Churchill once said that

“Perfection can also be spelled paralysis.”

As you move from beginner to intermediate, the best currency is what mistakes you make and how you learn from them. The better you get at something, the harder it is to improve. Mistakes offer wonderful moments of clarity about what you need to work on.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Breathe. Try it again. Fail again. Keep failing, and maybe you will one day get to a point where you look back and are giddy with delight at how important they were.

Don’t compare yourself to other players; focus solely on your own progression.

-Shane