Rick Estrin was born in San Francisco, California in 1949. When he was 12, his older sister gave him a copy of Ray Charles’ The Genius Sings The Blues, and he became infatuated with the music. He got his first harmonica at age 15, and by age 18 was proficient enough to begin sitting in at [&hellip...

A fun song by Shawn Mendes is double fun when played on the harmonica 🙂. Using 12th position is going to make it expressive as you’ll have the bends on 1 and 3 scale degrees in the second octave. I used a Marine Band harmonica in A here which gave some texture, especially in the [&hellip...

Spoonful Spoonful is a blues song by Willie Dixon that was first recorded in 1960 by Howlin’ Wolf. Called “a stark and haunting work”, it is one of Dixon’s best known and most interpreted songs. Later on it was covered by Etta James and Harvey Fuqua as a duet , and it was popularized in [&hellip...

Jerry Portnoy discovered the harmonica at a friend’s house sitting on a mantle. He’d faltered trying to learn instruments that required his hands but something about the instrument spoke to him. Portnoy quickly became obsessed and, in the forthcoming decades, backed up some of the greatest blues musicians to ever live like Muddy Waters and [&hellip...

In this lesson, I’m going to help you understand how harmonica keys work so that you can always figure out the right harmonica to choose in order to sound great when playing with a band or a jam track. I’m also gonna teach you a killer 2nd position Blues riff that requires no bending. It’s [&hellip...

Here is Alex’s take on a sensational song by Billie Eilish called “Bad Guy“. Multiple harmonica layers are used here to create harmony with a roaring, yet smooth sound. The song is played in 5th and 3rd positions switching harmonicas where needed to create different textures. Tabs and the original song are below the video. [&hellip...