About the Lessons
This book will begin by providing you, the beginning blues harmonica student, with a good technical and theoretical base from which to continue playing.
Lessons One through Nine will allow you to learn the basics, and to play a simple blues, with an absolute minimum of technique. Many enthusiastic students of the blues harmonica will study all of these chapters in a single long session. Readers who have already mastered the material in Progressive Harmonica Method may wish to skip the first seven lessons, and turn directly to Lesson Eight.
Lessons Ten through Nineteen will begin to require the ability to obtain single notes, and to maintain a variety of steady rhythms. A number of different approaches to playing blues, rock, and boogie woogie style harmonica will be covered, generally presented in order of difficulty. This progressive order means that simple blues songs will be presented along with simple rock and roll and simple boogie woogie songs, and the more advanced versions of each style will be likewise grouped.
Lessons Twenty to Twenty Seven will cover a great deal of difficult technical information, focusing primarily on the use of the advanced harmonica technique known as note bending, in a relatively limited number of pages. Mastering all of the material in these lessons could take many times as long as mastering the earlier lessons. Even so, these latter lessons are meant principally as an introduction to the advanced study of blues harmonica technique, since no single volume could possibly cover all the intricacies of this subtle and complex musical style.
For those with no musical background, whenever a musical term or concept is introduced, it will be explained. Standard musical notation (with notes and staff) is not used in this book, as very little blues harmonica music is available in the form of standard notation. Its use in relation to the harmonica is explained in the Progressive Harmonica Method.
It is recommended that beginners practice in short (15-30 minute) sessions, at least once or twice a day. You may enjoy reading about the lessons following the one that you are working on, so that you can see the direction that this instruction method takes. Remember: It is important to play both satisfying easy material and to practice unmastered techniques in each daily session.
