Can everyone stop sharing very cool songs I then badly want to play! There are just 24 hours in a day, how am I supposed to keep up and do it all… 
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I have a hard time with harp prices. Its bad when it is easy to drop $50-60 on a new harp!
At least Seydel reedplates are still reasonable, but options like Hohner and Lee Oskar reedplate replacements don’t make sense anymore financially.
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Humour aside, I totally feel your pain there @Mugen. I’m out of control with learning new tunes and it’s starting to feel like a monkey on my back to play them all regularly. Which is exactly what I didn’t want from the harmonica. I’m still having fun with it, but I have reached a point where I need to make a decision about shedding some tunes from my repertoire to fit some news ones in.
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@PapaCurly I started learning harmonica 1 year ago. And I had the same struggle, but based on my limited experience, I made piece with that feeling. I don’t think “shedding some tunes from your repertoire” is the way to look at it.
My take, is that
- if I practice something for some time, even if I stop, it will come back when I need it. The more I practiced it, the faster it will come back for sure, but the important thing is that it will come back.
- practicing other tunes will also help quickly get back the tunes I stopped practicing. By “mastering” the harmonica more and more it will be easier to reproduce a tune just from hear. A good example of that are pro players who can reproduce a lick just by hearing it once.
So I don’t think you need to think of it as “shedding some tunes”. They are just archived for now.
In his book “No seriously, I play harmonica” Rolly Platt, says about experimenting new licks: “I find that even after repeated practice on a new idea, a couple of days later, it can get lost from memory, seemingly never to surface again. That can be discouraging, but I also came to know that somehow, all these practiced ideas, forgotten or not, contribute to our creative stockpile of possibilities and will appear again but in different forms.”
I think the same can be said about tunes and we should not worry about forgetting them. I hope this helps.
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Too true. And annoying.
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@Mugen great quote from Roll Platt book! Well done. Yes, @PapaCurly I was gonna say the same thing.
It doesn’t hurt to have a huge list of songs. I have ones and I’ll lose the drive to work on some of them for weeks months, or years, but then something will happen and I’ll want to work on it again. Having a big list ain’t bad. The key is just to work on what inspires you to work on in the moment. Keep it light. Keep it fun. The whole point is to have fun!!
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And another one…
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Thank You @Mugen and @Luke for taking the time to reply to me. I feel quite relieved now, having received your advice. Archiving rather than shedding is a much better way to look at it. I have thought that if I stop practicing and end up forgetting a tune, then I will have lost something and wasted my time learning it, but you have given me a different perspective. I like the Rolly Platt quote. Yes, the whole point is to have fun, and I don’t want to lose that.
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Yeah and science has shown that when you learn something and then forget it and then learn it again, you’ll be like 10X more secure in it after having learned it the 2nd time. Nothing is lost. Nothing is wasted.
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Even if you forget a tune, you still got valuable practice! Have fun with it!
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Talking about Bb harmonica playing in key of F in 2nd position and Slim Harpo, why is everybody playing King Bee in the key of E when it is originally played in the Key of F (so on a Bb harmonica)?
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Trombone is a non transposing (C) instrument. Yes Bb for trumpet and Bb tenor sax and Bb clarinet
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Any tune an be played in any key. It’s players choice. The reason so many use E instead of F is because (as I have been told) F is a difficult key on guitar and E is only a half step down. Had to change key from original many many times because of the vocalist’s range.
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@GmanG thank you. The vocalist’s range is a good reason, but that was not explaining why it seems everyone was changing key. I was suspecting the key was harder on the guitar but was not sure.
I have to say, I tend to be stupidly rigid about respecting the original key, but I guess I should also explore changing the key when singing is also involved and I am struggling with keeping up. That’s a good tip.
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