Hey guys I just finished reading Roly Platt’s new book No, Seriously I Play Harmonica
I was expecting to read a book with the kind of entertaining stories that invariably ensue from a musician’s life on the road, but what I got was so much more than that. Roly really drops a lot of nuggets of wisdom gained from his experience about the art of playing harmonica, the art of playing in a band, the art of practicing, and the art of improvising, just to name a few. I would recommend this book to anybody who’d like to read something that could help them become a better harmonica player. And I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to become a professional harmonica player, or to master the harmonica in a meaningful way.
Looking forward to hearing other people’s view of the book!
I just finished the book. God, those spaghettis cooked in a motel sink with running hot water sound tasty…
It was indeed a good book with plenty of good advice (and plenty of horror stories) and took many notes. Being still a beginner who went through @Luke 's course a year ago, I feel that a lot of them are not relevant yet for me (but I can get back to them later). But the idea of taking various tracks and trying to jam along trying to reproduce some of the licks would for sure help and be more fun than just “digging a ditch” while practicing technique.
The other very good advice from the book, I started to implement is to record myself. Not only we don’t really hear how we sound from the other side of the harmonica is indeed a great way to hear progress. I wish I hard recorded myself from the start on the 2 pieces I’ve been working on for the past 9 months…
Thank you for the recommendation.
I forgot to add, based on the editing/printing of the book, you can tell that harmonica is not a popular instrument . I guess when he went to look for an editor he was like “no seriously, I am writing a book about harmonica”
You just made the pile of books waiting to be read on my nightstand taller.