I started my harp journey about a year and five months ago and knew nothing about music or any instrument. I found a couple of lower end harps my brother gave me. One a nail down and the other needing reed replacement. I did not want to throw good money after bad so I got Crossovers and have NO regrets.
My question to all the grey beard players is has the harp lost or increased in popularity? I read about SPAH and it made me wonder if the harp was being pushed out by other high tech instruments. It seems like a majority of the really popular harp players were around many years ago. Just curious.
I was having this very conversation with a Bloke in the pub yesterday, our conversation got around to music and my Wife told this Bloke and his mate that I play harp, they said you don’t often see harmonica in blues bands now. But where I live that would be true anyway because most of the bands are guitar led, it only seems that bands out of our area put any stock in harp players. Which I admit is very frustrating.
Met Jason at spah. This blew my mind when I saw it the first time. This is part of what the future will bring us. Electric wind instruments are not really harmonicas but are something very interesting. It’s based on the chromatic and there are no reeds, just sensors.
Nope, to quote Paul Delay to Jason Ricci when he heard one of Jason’s albums he sent to Paul for review “Why are you so scared to sound like your playing F-----g harmonica” I’m afraid I agree, my wife and I have a friend ( whose name is Andy too) he plays something very similar to this a mouth synthesizer that he can imitate Hammond organ etc, he used to play harmonica on it, now the band he plays with get me up to play harp on those songs instead. I don’t think you can’t replace the sound, the feel, or the soul or the sheer beauty of a harp, my wife agrees too.
Happy wife happy life. I just like the harp and bought one. Watch Buddy Greene on U Tube light up Carnegie Hall with his solo. He is as good a man as he is a harp player. The harp is never going to be a huge draw but its just fun to play and progress when everything starts to make sense. I’ll but if you get really good and just start playing one in the pub people will buy your pitcher. Any time the Carnegie Hall people all stand up for a Georgia boy he has to be good and the harp a draw.
I love Buddy Greene he’s an amazing player. He also plays something for everyone. I’m more of a Blues affecianado but I appreciate what players from other backgrounds can do with the instrument and sometimes, I just fancy having a go at something different more for my own amusement than anything else, I do love Bluegrass and I also love Irish music I have been known to drop a reel in the middle of a blues set especially when I’m working with a good band who knows what they are doing and are well versed with my eccentricities
it may make the occasional tiktok trend or whatnot or may even become a fad for a while, but I doubt we will see tons of people on the street with harmonicas lol considering people just prefer browsing social media and vaping n’ stuff. Speaking of which, I think a way to popularize the harmonica would be to make harmonicas with integrated vapes, or V-Harps for short. I think a model like the “Seydel big six” combined with a vape would have the most success.
Here’s an opinion based on somebody who’s younger, but plays the harmonica.I very highly doubt it, especially when it comes to country music. During the time I grew up as a kid, the early 2000s through the mid 2010s, I was surrounded by a lot of harmonica playing. Not only was it in TV shows, commercials, and movies, but you can also hear it on the radio with players like Tommy Morgan, John Popper, and Terry McMillan. But its popularity sort of fell short when Terry McMillan died and after Blues Traveler stopped releasing original music. And with the rise of electronic and hip-hop influences in country, the harmonica just suddenly disappeared and became very niche into the blues box. Even then, a lot of the more modern players started sounding the exact same from each other that you can’t tell the players apart. And the new country “harmonica players” treat it like a toy instead of an actual instrument that goes beyond the “blow and suck” Bob Dylan trope.
This is why the SPAH Youth Scholarship exists, to bring younger players at the forefront of the instrument who are changing the landscape. I actually was a nominee for the Youth Scholarship in 2022, when I was 20. And the fun part about it is that they bring young players from around the world to showcase their playing. Kiersi Joli is one of my favorite players and she won the scholarship twice. She’s an in-demand session musician in Nashville at age 17 and also releases her own music. I found out about her through Facebook long before she became a Hohner endrosee and she’s incredibly nice. She’s also a student of Todd Parrott, my own teacher, so it feels awesome to see his influence rub off onto somebody else.
Another thing is that I’ve also been listening to some international harmonica players as well. My personal favorite being the Japanese chromatic player Mayu Shibuki who was the first virtual youtuber to have her content mainly focus on the harmonica. I’ve talked to her in the past on Twitter and she’s also very friendly. Mayu is very enthusiastic about the harmonica, including the chromatic, and wants to see it become popular among the younger generations before the instrument becomes long forgotten by the general public.
Scott4 – Qualifying as a grey beard (75, playing since age 16) I would say harmonica is less popular as a lead instrument than in the 1930s-50s. There are also less popular bands fronted by trumpet, saxophone, piano, or upright bass.
.Reality check: Band instrumentation and the sound of popular music typically changes every ten years or so. Think about the changes in one 40 year period. Big band (30s) to horn driven small combo (late 40s), to R&B, rockabilly, and early rock and roll (50s), to the British Invasion – guitarists rocking 30w amps and electric keyboards (60s). Constant revision to more popular and less popular.
There are still plenty of talented harmonica players but tastes, styles and venues have changed. Harmonica players often are part of a band or are session musicians. There are and have been numerous great players in blues, country, gospel, pop, and jazz (check some out). You have to find the music you want to play. There’s room for you to make the harmonica popular again.
I have to agree, plus when you listen to what passes for music these days, it’s all stolen, it’s mostly electronic, it’s mostly auto tuned. And it mostly has the same beat. It’s pretty uniform and no longer has individuality and that pretty much describes the people that listen to it. There really is no place for it now in popular music. But I’ve found that even the blues is now becoming more guitar driven thanks to the people who turn up the volume and crank it out loud, a lot of what’s called blues now is called blues rock, ( or it’s proper term is heavy or hard rock) this is due to the Nu metal craze there’s no room for guitar solos in that so these guitarists who would’ve played old school metal instead are now switching to blues. I find it irritating and depressing. I’m not in favor of putting rules on every one. But if late I think taste and subtlety has gone out of the window in favour of volume and speed.
They should. Just what does a person get out of a vape. Never smoked or vaped. Only thing you get out of cigarettes’ is cancer. Only legal product sold in every store has that is legal and used as directed will probably kill you. Never could figure this one out.
I smoked when I was in the forces but I quit when I lost a lung in action. Haven’t smoked since. I’m not sure we were designed to inhale crap into our bodies. Vaping, no, I don’t like it. The UK will be banning these soon and putting strict restrictions on smoking outside too. It may have an adverse effect on pubs and clubs for a bit, we’ll have to see.
I doubt it’ll every be a mass popular instrument but I’m quietly confident it’ll always have a healthy playing community and like was said above, they’ll be trends and fads where it becomes popular for a while.
I do think online resources such as this forum and others are really positive in the getting people through the (for want of better words) “playing with my new toy” to “learning an instrument” phase. I’ve no idea how many folks pick one up, probably cheap, expecting to be Dan Aykroyd out the Blus Brothers only to throw it in the bin/draw a couple of weeks later vs folks who pick it up and keep going.
Interesting. I live a wide variety of music but most of it has been around for a long time. It seems most of the best songs have been written. I play solely for fun and realize being a world beater is not in the cards for me. Don’t really care. Father time has taken the things I did well but that is life. The harp has been a real blessing and I may never hit hit another ball over the fence but I am not sad but glad I was able to do other things well aas long as I could.
My opinion is that the Harmonica is the instrument of the future. Why?
Wages are being suppressed globally and that trend will continue. Low cost instruments will increase in popularity over time.
People’s time is increasingly robbed by work and addictive media. As a result, they won’t have time to sit down and practice an instrument. Therefore, instruments you can practice on the go become more practical.
A revolt against AI-generated music is coming. 5 years, I’ll wager. There will be a backlash towards simpler more acoustic music. All the groundwork is there, and the trend of overly-similar popular music is well known and factually documented. People are going to be getting interested in music that defies current trends.
Higher quality instruments are being produced at lower cost due to robust R&D. As the associated technology becomes adopted, harmoncias that play very well will become a norm
However, it will depend on a few things:
More harmonica players becoming versatile in many genres.
Increased skill. More players need to treat the harmonica with the same systematic seriousness that is associated with other difficult instruments like the violin.
Growing the concept of mentorship and teaching as the normal route. The “learn on your own” tradition shoots everybody in the foot.
I’d like to see more music that isn’t generated by AI. From what I tried with generative AI for music is that it all sounds the same. I have a lot of experience with singing synthesizers like Vocaloid, UTAU, and Synthesizer V and they are completely different from AI-generated vocals, even though the vocals can be tuned like a human singing it. The difference between singing synths and AI voice conversion is that singing synths are ethically sourced and you can input pitches like a MIDI keyboard then tune it the way you want it to be instead of feeding the AI audio which may crackle or lose a lot of emotion in the original vocals. The reason why I use a virtual vocalist instead of my own voice is because I can’t sing very well and my voice is too low for songs that go to very high pitches. So I wanted to create songs with contraltos (my voice type) and other lower voices like Baritones and Basses in mind so we can have songs to sing as well.
The issue I have with AI is it can borderline be unethical, especially when it comes to art and videos. If you don’t know AI-generated art, if it’s fed with data from other artists, it could be used as part of the art without their consent. This is why people are against AI-generation. Coca-Cola released a 100% AI-generated commercial yesterday and people are not happy about it at all. So I agree about a possible revolt against generative AI in the future.
