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
Bad habits I suffer from:
- Lack of “ears” - If you can naturally “hear” notes and instinctively know what they are and where they fit in, you have something precious and don’t underestimate it. Specifically, my bad habit is not engaging in listening.
- Sloppy and infrequent practice
- Allowing frustration to get the better of me
- unfocused goals/lack of structured learning.
Things I’ve variously done to improve:
- I may be below average in pitch perception (and always have been) but trying to adopt a make the best of what I do have and spending time on engaged listening. I’ll never make a particularly good musician but we can all improve, right?
- Adding some practice discipline.
- It’s all about attitude. Spending 10 months building airfix models has been very instructional in patience
- This is where signing yourself up with a course/teacher can really help. I’m just feeling my way back into regally practice now, and I’ll have some more convenient time for practicing soon when a new project kicks off.