Rhythms of the Breath Vol. 1 by Howard Levy

Technique
42

Volume 2 of Rhythm of the Breath is available I’m thinking about buying both books from Amazon.
What’s your experience with them and how are the exercises? Are they doable at a beginner level?

Ciao

Stefano :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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This depends entirely upon your definition of “beginner level”. Although Mr. Levy seems to think that Vol. 1 (I have not seen Vol. 2) is appropriate for beginners, you need to understand that probably most professional diatonic harpists, when compared to Mr. Levy, are only at an “intermediate level” :exploding_head:

Somewhere on this forum @Luke described his progress using Vol. 1 – and it is a real, honest, eye-opening report about what to expect with Vol. 1.

1 Like
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Here is a link to what @Luke had to say about Vol. 1 and his experience using it.

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@Stefano I would say just buy volume 1 for now. As others have mentioned here, what Mr. Levy considers a beginner level (doing his exercises at 90bpm) is absolute no joke. It is really hard. As I was mentioning above it took me 6 months to king of be able to do exercises 1-4 (the easiest ones) at 90 bpm. Now that I am switching to tongue blocking, I started back at 30bpm…
All that said, even if you can’t match what he considers beginner speed, I think there’s a lot to learn from these exercises. So I wouldn’t worry about level and speed and just practice the best you can. But I would just buy the first book. Because unless you are a genius with plenty of time, it is probably going to take you a long while to do everything that is in the first book alone.

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I think I’ll buy volume 1 and see how it goes from there. Thank you guy for your precious help.

Ciao

Stefano :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

1 Like
47

@Luke What do you think about applying the same approach (with the necessary modifications) to a classic 12-hole chromatic harmonica with a slide?

Does this improve the ability and flexibility to navigate the entire range of the harmonica, both with and without the slide, as is the case with a diatonic harmonica?

What is your opinion on this?

I’m very interested in this because I have Howard’s books, as well as an EastTop ForeRunner 2 harmonica.