I’ve been playing harmonica for about a year, mostly in my apartment, and I’ve been thinking about moving practice outside while it’s still warm. The issue is that I came across a page about a patio furniture set while looking for a place to sit on my small Burlington balcony, and it got me thinking about setting up a proper outdoor practice corner.
What I’m unsure about is practical: wind noise messing with bends and tone, and whether leaving a harmonica out between short sessions causes problems with moisture or temperature swings. I don’t want to damage anything, and I don’t have a covered porch, just an open balcony that gets a lot of afternoon sun.
For those who practice outdoors regularly, how do you deal with wind and quick weather shifts? Do you keep harmonicas indoors and just carry one out, or is there a setup that works better?
Update after looking around more - Vongrasig 5 Piece Patio Furniture Set Review kept coming up while I was comparing seating for the balcony. Still unsure whether adding furniture is worth it when wind is my main practice problem, but I’m leaning toward keeping harmonicas indoors regardless.
Hi. Whether for me isn’t problem for practice. Sometimes ‘bad whether’ can be good friend for me . Best whether for practice outdoor is when I choose some good place and then starts to rain. Then I feel more freedom because there are no people.
More problems with whether is when recording outdoor. Wind can cause low frequencies noise. Microphone windsavers is some solution. But firstly I need to look for no-wind place. Near to dense deciduous trees is best place for me. Urbex places are also wind-safe but can be generally unsafe. Finally with noises I’m deal using lowpass and highpass filters after recording.
I tend to call everything on the harmonica, practice, but my real practice, learning new songs, scales and bends etc. is all done indoors. Playing tunes that Ive already learned is nearly all done outdoors, either on my patio or in parks. I don’t know what the climate is like in your part of the world, but it rarely gets very cold in my little corner of OZ, and I can play outdoors through most of the year. That said, not every day, there are still good days and bad days. Strong wind definitely spoils it, and I don’t play in rain. I recommend not leaving your harmonicas outside.
If there no wind or gentle wind, it’s amazing how far the sound travels. I’ve had comments from people who said they could hear the music quite clearly from 70 meters or so.
I go inside. The guy next door has four dogs that bark all night. I tried hitting the -10 hard but it does no good. If this was not an issue I would play down wind.
Going somewhere that has a good tile floor would be my choice but this is not an option.