About Written Notation Systems for the Harmonica
Most music instruction methods require the beginning student to learn the universal music notation system known as " standard notation".
However, due to the fact that each ten hole or blues style harmonica is tuned to a particular key as discussed in Lesson One, standard notation is not a useful or appropriate system for us. Why this is so will be explained in the Music Theory and the Harmonica Appendix.
All of the different key harmonicas can be easily played by learning just one simple notation system. A number of slight variations on this system exist, but all effective harmonica notation systems include the following elements:
- an element that indicates which hole number to use
- an element that indicates whether to inhale or exhale
- an element that indicates how long to hold the note for
The Notation System Used In This Book
In the notation system used in the rest of this book:
- The Numbers from 1-10 indicate which hole to use (referring to the numbers on top of the harmonica).
- The Letter "i" indicates an inhaled Breath.
- The Letter "e" indicates an exhaled Breath.
When writing the notes to a song or exercise, the hole number will be placed above the "i" or "e". For typographical convenience, when referring to a particular note in the text, the "i" or "e" will be placed to the right of the hole number.
For example, both 
and 1e mean: exhale through the number 1 hole.
Similarly, both 
and 3i mean: inhale through the number 3 hole.
With just a bit of practice, this system will become second nature to you. If you cannot answer the following questions, re-read this entire lesson from the beginning. What does 7i mean? How about 4e?
Chord Notation
Chords (notes that must be played all at one time) will be indicated by underlining them. So the rhythm of Lesson Three (in which we covered holes 4, 5 and 6 with our mouth, and played two inhaled chords and then two exhaled chords) would be notated like this:
Just as with single notes, if it is necessary to refer to a chord in the text, it will be written out horizontally. So the chords used in the Train above would be written out as 456i and 456e respectively.
The last part of our notation system is the timing slash. A timing slash shows you exactly when a tap of your foot should occur. For instance, in rhythm exercise number 15, you need to tap your foot once for each chord. Thus one timing slash appears above each chord. The distance between timing slashes has no effect on the timing (as illustrated in the song fragments in the following lesson), although whenever possible they will be kept uniformly distant.
Tonguing Notation And Lyrics
If song lyrics or tonguing instructions are necessary, they will be placed above the timing slashes. For example, here is the train rhythm written in tablature.
