So I want to play some contemporary worship music but I can’t find any harp tabs and aren’t good enough yet to hear and pick out the tabs. What can I do?
1 Like
Hi @hill.shayne91. I play some worship songs on guitar, harmonica and piano. That said, I, like you, have a hard time finding reliable tabs. There a few on Harptabs.com but sifting through and finding good ones has been hard.
For guitar I use “Ultimate guitar” app and I only select “Official tabs” songs.
The nice thing about ultimate guitar is they take every instrument in the song including voice/melody and give you the tabs as they relate to guitar. So what I’ve gotten proficient at is translating the guitar tabs for which ever parts I want into harmonica tabs. This process and engagement has improved not only my playing but my memorizing of keys, scales, chords as well as the instruments themselves.
The process is slow in the beginning but you get faster and faster as you start remember the details.
All that said - learning by ear is something I’m getting a little better at too. Ear to me is how really engage with the music… it opens up your creativity to cover songs “your way” not necessarily a copy of the or original…
Anyhow long answer - hope it helps
Mike
3 Likes
@hill.shayne91 sorry for the delay here my friend. Thanks for joining the forum! Yes, always check harptabs. If they don’t have, let me know the song and artist, include a YT or Spotify link. I’m happy to help.
1 Like
Hey Mike,
Would you care to share how you do that? The translation of guitar tabs or chords to harmonica?
1 Like
Hello @hill.shayne91
For example above is a snippet from ultimate guitar. It’s the guitar tabs for the melody of Skid Row’s song “I Remember You”
First part is G G D D D B
On a G harmonica 7 7 6 6 6 5
Make sense?
Also here’s a chart - it’ll help until you’ve memorized the notes on the harmonicas you use
Hope that helps
I also realize I didn’t share a Christian song - obviously same concept applies
This snippet is from “I’m gonna see a victory” by elevation worship
Tab this out for practice
One more thing depending on where you are at on your journey. A more flexible way to think about converting the tabs is to think in scale degrees instead of notes.
Using the skid row example above.
Instead of the notes G G D D D B think of it as scale degrees. The song is in the key of G so the scale degrees would be (g) 1 1 (d)5 5 5 (b)3
The reason why this is more flexible is you can play the song in any key now without transposing all the notes in your head. Same would apply to chords or single notes.
Tabs are the same in any key.
Make sense?
1 Like
Thank you it does very much!
1 Like
Yes it does thank you. So basically the Nashville number system in a way.
1 Like
Correct @hill.shayne91
U Tude via their search engine. Just type in what you want and it should come up. Silent Night and What Child Is This AKA Green Sleeves are there to be had.
Dear,
It’s very nice to meet somebody who plays worship music on the harmonica. I’ve been playing in church for more than 20 years. Firstly on accordion, then harmonica and other instruments. Now I’m playing mainly on piano. If I can advise You something: try to play by ear. Listen to popular songs and play along. Then buy a harp set with the most popular worship keys: D,C,G,A,E,Bb (ordered by usefulness in worship) and join the worship group in Your town. I think that You will be welcome in a baptist or charismatic church with Your harps.
Playing worship is a great spiritual and musical adventure for me. We still need to listen to other musicians, church and the spirit of Jesus, of course!
Harmonica is not the main instrument in a worship band, and we must play not too much, but good notes in a good moment can be inviting to open the heart for the Lord.
A couple of years ago, in our church, some boy asked me to learn harmonica. I made a little songbook for him. This book contains only Polish-language songs, but some of them are translations from original American songs:
Open the Eyes of My Heart, As the deer, Only by grace Can We enter.
All of these tabs are prepared to play first-position without any bends.
So pick harmonica with key of key of song and just play with band. Good moments for harmonica are intros and outros.
Here are tabs:
Hope this helps You 
1 Like
Honestly, I wish I had some churches up here where I live that have gospel bands that need a harmonica player. Sadly, hardly any churches around here are LGBTQ+ affirming so they’ll see me as a walking-talking sinner instead of a human. Even the ones that are affirming don’t have bands, they only have organ and traditional choir music. So I either have to deal with either boring music and be affirmed or be in a band and constantly be bullied for things I have no control over. I’m pretty much SOL.
2 Likes