I luckily didn’t form a lot of bad habits, but there was one I developed and had trouble breaking out of when I first started learning. Not counting the obvious “relying on Facebook groups for advice” thing that messed up my mental health and stunted my growth as a harmonica player. But my worst bad habit was having an embouchre that was too tight.
For reference, I’ve been a mostly pucker player ever since I started out a little over seven years ago and knew even further back (when I was 8 years old), that I wanted to play the harmonica like Terry McMillan. What made me turn my attention to the instrument was his powerful tone and a soulful playing style that imitated the human voice. It’s well-known that I didn’t grow up listening to the blues, but my love for those lonesome wails run really deep as I grew up with more of the outlaw country players like Terry and Don Brooks. That was the kind of sound I wanted to have on the harmonica. It took me around five years to get the sound I wanted (most of it dealing with very rude people online), but it was entirely worth it in the end.
My tone, especially before I started my lessons with Todd Parrott (any of my Youtube videos before July 2022), had this very reedy texture to it that made the harmonica sound “thin”. I hated how bright and tinny it was compared to the warm, powerful sound I wanted to have. The main reason why I think my harmonica tone shifted the way that it did had to do with the actual pucker I use while playing becoming more relaxed. I achieved this by playing with a tall and round mouth shape, an open throat, lips forward on the cover plates, and diaphragmatic breathing.
I now place the harp back to the avoid air leak, get richer tone and increase the volume inside my mouth as much as I can, especially on notes like *1. This was my biggest change that I had to made. It seemed like as a new player I wanted to get the harp out, which kills the quality of a note. Bending never took much time to play but learning how to go quickly into a bend from another note consistently is the challenge. Not much room for error in noted like a =3//. Mt favorite harp is a Rocker and a close second a crossover. The Rocker takes very little effort and is quick to . Both are great but the Rocker is louder and takes less effort but I’ll always play both.
Bad habit I had years back before / during in high school ( I graduated H.S. in 1977 BTW ) ………………..
Keeping an uncased harp in my back pocket