How to Play Steve’s Lava Chicken on Harmonica

Steve’s Lava Chicken 

might seem like a random song 

to learn to play on harmonica, but actually it

is a great song to perform for people (which makes you GROW!)

It works really well played in 3rd position, and

is a very bluesy tune, so

LET’S DO THIS!

😎 🎶

I played a Bb harmonica in the intro to this video, in 3rd position, so I could play it in the original key of C that Jack Black sings in this song. 

But like usual, we’ll do this lesson on our trusty C harmonicas, in 3rd position, key of D.

We’re doing this in 2 levels:

Level 1: Beginner

For Beginners who know how to isolate notes, we’re gonna do this song without any bends. If you don’t know how to isolate notes, check out my lesson on Single Notes for Beginners.

Level 2: Intermediate

For Intermediate players who have begun to work on bending, we will explore some nuances to take your performance of Steve’s Lava Chicken on harmonica to the next level! If you are very comfy playing single notes, but have not yet learned how to bend notes on the harmonica, you can check out my lesson on Bending for Beginners.

Here are the harmonica tabs for how I recommend you to practice the 3rd Position Minor Pentatonic Scale:

Playing this scale over and over again will build up the dexterity you need to pull off this song at the original blazing tempo at which Jack Black sings.

Level1Beginner

The first two lines are simple and identical:

And the first 3 notes are very short so I’m using “tut” to keep those short:

The next 4 lines are very similar. First we have this one:

The next line is exactly the same until the last 2 notes:

For level 1, we’re gonna play the 3rd line exactly the same as the first:

And then the last line will also be the same, except for the last 4 notes we’re gonna jump to the draw 8 four times.

A lot of beginners struggle with the -8. The keys are to keep your jaw and inside of your mouth very relaxed, and use a gentle air pressure. Less is more!

Level2Intermediate

We’re gonna add in some more details to Steve’s Lava Chicken to make this more authentic to how Jack Black actually sings it.

The first 2 lines we bend off the last -4 at the end a little bit, which is why I made the tab blue. Because we’re not doing a full half-step bend -4’, but we’re just ever so slightly falling off the pitch at the very end of the note.

Next, we are gonna add a full half-step bend into the first -6 of each remaining line.

At the end of the first line we’re gonna bend off of the -5 kind of like we did on the -4’s at the end of the first 2 lines.

Because the -5 doesn’t bend down a full half-step, I’m gonna go ahead and notate it as a half-step bend, because trying to do that on the -5 will only yield the result of approximately a ¼ -step, about the same amount of pitch drop we’re aiming for on the -4’s that I colored blue above.

At the end of the next line we will add in an embellishment that Jack Black sing on the -4 by simply hitting it, bending it down, and then releasing it:

Beside the bending, this next bit is the trickiest part of level 2.

We’re gonna mimic Jack Black’s trill on the lyrics “now you’re having a snack” where on the word “snack” he hits the note, goes above it, and returns to it, which in musical terms might be called a “trill”.

To do that we’re adding blow 6 and -5 to the end of the line:

So the trill from the -5 to the 6 and back to the -5, and the challenge here is to be able to play it fast enough. I can think of no other tips for you to get this up to speed other than just practicing it one million times! 😂

And then for our last line he kind of bends into the last note. We can’t bend the -8, but I think it kinda sounds cool if we just change the 2nd to last note from a -8 to a 7.

And that vibrato I’m doing in the video on the last note is called a “chewing vibrato” where the jaw just moves up and down. It’s really the only way to add vibrato to notes that don’t bend, which are blows 1-6 and draws 7-10. When we take it really slowly, you can hear that the pitch is actually fluctuating a tiny bit. 

Chewing vibrato takes lots of finesse.

Again, as with all techniques, start slow and relaxed, and build up speed slowly.

OK, here are the advanced harmonica tabs for Steve’s Lava Chicken:

Congrats on learning Steve’s Lava Chicken. I hope you can perform it for somebody. Please leave any comments or questions below.

Need some more songs to perform for your family and friends? You can mine for some gems in my lesson 5 Stupidly Simple Grooves.