Learn Harmonica in 7 Days

This is a complete 7 day practice routine for you 

to become a great harmonica player 

starting on Day 1

I’ve designed this for you to watch the video, pause it, go practice, come back the next day and rinse and repeat… (but of course you can watch it all in one go, how could I stop you? 😉)

So I got your back, we’re gonna take this slow, and you might surprise yourself at what you can do on the harmonica in just 1 week.

Playing the harmonica is one of the easiest and most fun things to do, but it’s easy to sound bad.

Why? Because the sound of the harmonica comes from tiny little reeds that vibrate when you blow in and out.

They make a very small, thin sound. It’s not until the sound resonates in your mouth, throat, and head that it sounds big and good and beautiful. I’m gonna teach you the #1 exercise you can do to develop this excellent tone, as well as great breathing, rhythm, and vibrato. It’s a train imitation groove called “The Big Tone Train.”

Day1The Big Tone Train

➡️ The Chugging

Here are the harmonica tabs for the chugging:

Important things to remember when doing this: 

• Relax!
• Breathe deeply into your diaphragm
• Sit up nice and tall with shoulders relaxed
• Keep your top lip deep over the cover plate
• Accent the first exhale the most loudly, and the rest more quietly
• Keep the shape inside your mouth the same on inhales and exhales

➡️ The Whistle

The harmonica train whistle was the first bluesy sound ever made on a record, whistle is gonna be anywhere above the -2: it can be -34, or -345, or -45.

I want you to work on being able to hold the train whistle for 5 seconds. If you find this to be impossible, it’s for one of these reasons:

❌ You are playing too loud

❌ You are leaking air (in thru the nose)

❌ You are not preparing (by emptying the the lungs before you start)

We want our train to sound as lonesome as possible. 

To accomplish this you can try the articulations TooWah or Gwah.

Inhaling the whistle sets you up for the right accent on the first exhale.

And that’s your Day 1 homework, and something that, if you can invest 5 minutes a day for the rest of your life, will build your breathing, rhythm, and tone, and turn you into a boss harmonica player!

Day2Rhumba

For Day 2 we are going to learn something that has a totally different feel, it’s called the Rhumba and if you’ve ever happened to have learned to dance the Rhumba, your teacher probably taught you the steps by saying “slow quick quick, slow quick quick”.

We’re gonna do that same rhythm all while inhaling on holes -123, using the articulations Yuh-ee-Yuh like this:

Now I’ve got a secret that’s gonna help you both with the breathing and the rhythm of this groove.

Here’s the deal. For most music we like to count to four over and over. It’s just what we like. And it’s as high as most drummers can count. 😉

If you listen to a drummer play a simple beat, you will notice that low kick drum is hitting on beats 1 & 3, and the higher pitched snare drum is hitting on 2 & 4.

Since we’re playing the harmonica on all draws on this song, it’s easy to start feeling like our lungs are overfilling with air.

The secret remedy is: right after our first “Yuh,” we are going to exhale by whispering “Tih” right where the snare drum hits on beat 2. 

If that feels overwhelming no problem, you can do it without the “Tih” just make sure you dump air out of your lungs (away from the harmonica) after the first “Yuh” like this:

By the way, the roots of Rhumba come from Africa via Cuba into New Orleans and that’s how it found its way into the Blues in the 1930’s and 40’s with artists like Louis Jordan and Fats Domino. 

Check out Eddie Chamblee’s song “Blues on Rhumba” from the 1940’s, and it’s in the key of G, so it sounds good to play along with on our C harmonicas:

So for Day 2 your mission is to practice this Rhumba groove. You can do it with just drawing, or drawing and blowing, or play along with “Blues on Rhumba.” 

Be creative with your harmonica practice routine. Make it fun and exciting for you. 

And I’ll see you Day 3 to take it to the next level…

Day3Folsom Prison Train & The Hard Shuffle

➡️ Folsom Prison Train

Welcome to Day 3. So far we’ve been focusing on relaxing, having good posture, breathing, and a nice deep mouth position on the harmonica.

For Day 3 we are gonna start to learn some articulations, what I like to call the harmonica player’s drum sticks: “Tuh” and “Kuh”.

When we put those two articulations together we have Tuk-ka. Just like our Big tone Train, we want to keep the shape of the inside of our mouth identical on the inhale and the exhale. Here are the harmonica tabs:

Alternatively, you could use “Yukka” on the inhale like this:

Now that’s plenty to learn for today, but if you’ve been playing awhile, or if you’re really into the Blues, I wanna show you the “Hard Shuffle” because it’s so close to the train…

➡️ The Hard Shuffle

On Day 1 we did our “Big Tone Train” just how folks used to do it way back in time in the early 1900’s, way out in the country, and as that train continued its journey into the city, it morphed into what we call “The Hard Shuffle“.

This rhythm moves us because it is literally the Heart Beat.

The articulation I find helpful for this rhythm is “Tuckit”. It’s the same as “Tucka” but just shorter and more staccato. 

For your Day 3 Homework, I’m going to recommend that you try a harmonica walk. What’s so great about the harmonica walk is you can use your stride as a metronome (plus you get some exercise at the same time).

If you’re into the blues – go for that hard shuffle groove: breathing in “tuckit” on one step, and out “tuckit” on the other.

With the Folsom Prison Train you’ve got 3 gears you can go to:

1️⃣ 1ST gear is playing ONE note per step (Tuh on one step, Kuh on the next).

2️⃣ 2ND gear is playing TWO notes per step (Tucka in on one step, out on the next).

3️⃣ 3RD gear is playing FOUR notes per step (Tucka Tucka in on one step, out on the next).

So go have some fun, and then come back on Day 4 to learn the rhythm that shook the world.

By the way, if you’re enjoying this lesson, and you’re serious about becoming a harmonica boss you might wanna check out my Beginner to Boss course where I take you by the hand and literally take you step-by-step along the musical journey. 

Day4Bo Diddley

Congratulations – think about all the amazing progress you’ve made in just 3 days!

Now for Day 4 let’s learn the rhythm that shook the world:

Some people call this rhythm the Bo Diddley.

Just like the Rhumba, this is rooted West African and Central African rhythms. When Africans were enslaved in Cuba it became known as the Clave. In America some plantation owners forbade their slaves from playing drums, which led to the Hambone.

Whether you call it the Bo Diddley, the Clave, or the Hambone, it’s the same rhythm. 

We’re gonna play a group of 3 inhales saying “Yuh Yuh Yuh”, and this is that same “slow, quick, quick” rhythm that we learned on Day 2 in the Rhumba. But we’re gonna add an “Ee Yuh” to the end. Here are the harmonica tabs:

But we’re gonna do this on all inhales, so as with so many things on the harmonica, we have to be strategic about our breathing.

We’re gonna exhale in 2 places when playing this groove:

• after the first 3 “Yuh’s” 
• and at the end of the phrase

Now if you’re a little more experienced, for extra credit, you can play with adding mouth sounds, like whispering “tukka” or even “tuh-kuh-tuh” on the exhales.

But otherwise, just dump your air in each of those 2 places, and have fun with this groove.

So for your homework play with this. Work on the breathing coordination that this groove demands.

If you’ve been playing harmonica for a while try on working on adding the mouth sounds, try it on a harmonica walk, or for a real challenge try playing along with the Bo Diddley video above (and remember YouTube allows you to slow down the speed of the videos using the gear icon in the lower right corner of the video).

Day5“Not Fade Away”

Welcome to Day 5. Building off of yesterday’s groove, there are lots of songs that utilize this rhythm, you can see a list of some of them here:

• Women are Smarter – Grateful Dead
• Willie & the Hand Jive – Eric Clapton
• She’s the One – Bruce Springsteen
• I Want Candy – The Strangeloves
• Magic Carpet Ride – Steppenwolf
• Not Fade Away – Buddy Holly
• Faith – George Michael
• Magic Bus –The Who
• Iko Iko – Traditional
• Desire– U2

I’m sure you can probably recognize at least a few of these songs.

“Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets is perfect for us on harmonica because it just goes back and forth between the 2 chords available us. We are simply going to add the blow chord.

I think this makes the song more fun, but it also makes it easier because we’re not just inhaling over and over and over… The articulations on the exhales are the same as the inhales. So here are the harmonica tabs:

If you sing, you could actually do this as a performance, or if you have a friend who sings, you could actually jam with them. 

We’ve gotten thru a heck of a lot in 5 days, and the best is yet to come…

Day6Hoochie Coochie
Chords

Now for Day 6 I’m gonna show you one of the most iconic blues harmonica riffs of all time, but I’m gonna simplify it so that you can play it today.

This is of course Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” and this is a riff-based groove that can grow and evolve with you over time and your technique grows and evolves.

We are going to inhale through the harmonica right before the downbeat, and then exhale on the downbeat. Next we change our vowel to ‘Hoo’, and then breathe in on ‘Ee Yuh’. So the harmonica tabs are:

Then there are two beats of rests between each time we play the riff. (We may say “Rest, Rest.”) If you change the length the whole thing falls apart. It’s like Negative space & Positive Space in design.

Ok I’m gonna leave you with that to spend as much time as you want to until it becomes easy, and then for finishing touch, our final day, our last step, we’re gonna go seriously next level.

Day7Hoochie Coochie
Double-Stops

Again big congrats on learning all this amazing stuff. For Day 7 we are going to refine this a little bit and try something really challenging.

Now in my Beginner to Boss course this doesn’t come until Day 17, but I’ve been working with the great Chicago harmonica teacher Dave Kachalon, and I think because of the way we’ve approached step 6, if you really took time to get that internalized, we might be able to fast-track it to step 7.

But I could be wrong, in which case be prepared to get very frustrated. 😉 Either way, please leave me a comment and let me know. Able to get it, or too much too soon?

We are going to bring the corners of our mouth ever so slightly closer together so we can isolate two notes at a time, but otherwise using the same syllables and breath directions as Day 6:

Even if this was too hard for you, look at what you’re already doing, after just one week! 

After this amazing 7-day streak, I hope you never quit playing the harmonica! 🎶❤️😎