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10-Hole Diatonic Harmonica
Generally speaking, I’d recommend any 10-hole diatonic harmonica that costs at least $30. That’s the pocket-sized, basic blues harmonica. I prefer harps with a plastic comb and removable screws, not nails. These features will make it infinitely easier to clean and maintain, and often they also reduce air leakage, which will make the harp more responsive and easier to play. Here are some harps with those features.

$35 – $45:
Hohner Special 20
Lee Oskar Major Diatonic
Seydel Blues Session
Suzuki Harpmaster

$50 – $60
Seydel Session Steel
Suzuki Manji

$80+
Hohner Crossover
Seydel 1847

Why Spend More Than ____ for a Harmonica?
Any harmonica is better than no harmonica. However, super cheap harps are harder to play and don’t sound as good. A better harp will be easier to play and sound better. Get the best you can afford within your budget, keeping in mind that you’ll probably end up getting harps in several different keys, over time.

What’s the Cheapest Harp That Works?
Depends on how you define “works.” The $5 Hohner Blues Band is the best budget harmonica I’ve played, and it’s no problem to replace if lost. However, it’s leaky and not always very well tuned. The cheapest harp that won’t slow down your progress will probably cost $30+.

What Keys To Get?
Start with a C, and when you’re ready to expand your collection, get an A, D, and G. The key of A is good for jamming with blues guitar player friends, and it’s pitched lower than the C, so any melodies you play up on the high notes will be easier to play and more mellow-sounding. The D gives you experience playing a slightly higher harp, and provides the second most common blues key, and G is just about the most common key for non-blues guitar strummers. G also has the distinction of being the lowest-pitched harmonica widely available, and you’ll enjoy it as a contrast to your higher harps.

Value Kits
A number of manufacturers make sets of 7 or more inexpensive harmonicas in a variety of keys, often in a handy travel box. The Hohner Piedmont is one such kit. If you’re starting to jam with more people and are learning songs in lots of keys, a kit is a good option which will quickly open a lot of doors. You can replace them with better harps gradually, as you get around to it. Just remember, you get what you pay for, and cheaper, leaky harmonicas are harder to play.

Brands
Hohner, Lee Oskar, Suzuki, and Seydel are probably the biggest names in the US. Bushman and Hering are also out there, but less available. Most US stores carry Hohner and Lee Oskar only, if they carry harmonicas at all. You’ll probably end up buying online if you buy a lot of harps. I like to shop local, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Pricing
Intermediate-level are $35-50. Professional-level instruments start around $60, but beginners won’t be able to tell the difference. Even more refined models are available for $70 to $150 and up, if you want to treat yourself. That might seem a lot, but $100 is actually reasonable for a really good musical instrument. In my opinion, a $100 harp is the same value and quality as a $1,000 guitar. Just remember, you’ll eventually want harmonicas in all 12 keys!

My Gear
Because I’m mostly a single-note melody player and improvisor, I mostly play Hohner Golden Melodies, which are tuned to Equal Temperament, which favors melody notes. My Special 20s have a compromise tuning that sounds a LOT better than the GMs when I chug on chords. Lately I’ve also been learning about doing reedwork to improve performance, and that’s helped a lot with developing my bending and overblow technique.

I played a Suzuki Firebreath in C for about three years, learning overblows, but I’ve since replaced it with my own customized Hohners.

For Irish fiddle tunes, I have two Suzuki Promasters in D and G set up by Brendan Power. They’re half-valved and in Paddy Richter tuning. Valves allow more bending possibilities and made the tone reedier, more like a sax or uillean pipes (great for Celtic). They don’t allow overblowing, but I do like how responsive they are. Paddy Richter tuning is the same as standard harp tuning, with the three blow tuned up a whole step to avoid having to bend when playing fast.

Other altered tunings I mess around with: Spiral, Dorian, and Natural Minor, plus a bagpipe drone tuning I learned from James Conway.

Custom Harmonicas
There are a handful of technicians who modify stock harps professionally for high-end players. In the US, the biggest names are Filisko, Sleigh, Spiers, and Gordon. Additional techs are out there who do this work as well. Good luck placing an order with the top 4 customizers, since they usually have long waiting lists, but I’ve heard their harps are worth it if you have the time and money, especially if you’re serious about the overblow technique.

My advice: learn on a good stock harp and learn to do a bit of reedwork yourself as it becomes necessary.

Sometimes it helps to have a roadmap.

1. Breathing comfortably.
2. Single notes.
3. Bending.
4. Tongue, Hand, and Breath Effects.
5. Overblows.

Breathing Comfortably
Just by breathing in and out and sliding back and forth, the harmonica makes musical sounds. I mentioned this in the What You Need post. You’re allowed to just mess around and make sounds. Play long notes, play short notes. Make “Tah-tah-tah” sounds with your tongue. Explore. Enjoy it! By the way, even without single notes, you can play recognizable songs. Just aim approximately for the hole numbers on the tab page and you’ll be able to hear the song start to emerge. Good enough. We’re here to have fun, you know.

Single Notes
As you learn to play clear single notes on the harmonica, your melodies will sound better and better. Play scales and scale patterns, too, they’ll help your basic technique a lot. Single notes represent a really exciting stage, since there are now hundreds, if not thousands, of melodies you can play which don’t require anything more than single notes on holes 4-10. You still have to develop your ear – it helps to sing along to your melodies and learn to tap your foot.

Bends
Bending notes will give you bluesy sounds and fill in the missing notes from holes 1-4 which some melodies require. To bend, you gotta have your single notes nailed. If you’re trying to bend but you hear two notes coming through, your air is being cut in half and it becomes a lot harder to control the reed you’re aiming for. Generally, you want to get your draw bends down (1-6) and then your blow bends (7-10).

Tongue, Hand, and Breath Effects
I’m talking here about cupping your hands to make a “wah-wah” sound, touching the comb with your tongue so you play one hole out of each corner of your mouth, flicking your tongue to switch between notes, and pulsing your breath and bending slightly to get a vibrato effect. You can actually start on some of this stuff earlier than this, I’ve just listed it as #4 since Breath, Single Notes, and Bends are, in my opinion, more important in the long run. But these effects are really fun and sound cool, and are necessary for traditional blues styles.

Overblows
Overblows are an extension of your bending technique, and they fill in the rest of the missing notes on the diatonic harmonica. You have to be able to bend consistently and accurately in order to play overblows, and there’s a small adjustment we’ll need to make to the reeds, bending them slightly closer to the reedplate so they’ll choke more easily. Whether or not you even NEED overblows is a question for another day. They’re not terribly hard to play if you can bend accurately, but they do require some reed adjustment, and you’ll probably need to learn some music theory.

The Big Picture
We haven’t talked here about repertoire, but let’s just note: this list is about technique. At each stage, you’ll want to be learning songs, playing with others where possible, and using your new skills to make music.

If we’re talking about The Big Picture, the real point of technique is to broaden your ability to make sounds, and then use them in your music to express yourself and connect with listeners.

Harmonica tablature tells you which hole to play, whether it’s a blow or draw note, and whether a bend or other effect is required. In the system I use with my students, plain numbers are blow notes and numbers with a minus sign are draws.

Blows & Draws
1 means blow on hole 1
-1 means draw on hole 1

Double Stops
1,2 means blow on holes 1 and 2 together
-1,2 means draw on holes 1 and 2 together

Bends
-3′ means draw on hole 3 with a half-step bend
-3″ means draw on hole 3 with a whole-step bend
-3″‘ means draw on hole 3 with a step-and-a-half bend

Same idea for blow bends, except the number won’t have a minus sign.

Chromatic Harmonica
For chromatic harmonica, parentheses tell you to push the slider button:
(-1) means draw on the first hole while pushing the button.

Overblows and Overdraws
On the diatonic harmonica, I use parentheses to indicate overblows and draws:
(4) means play an overblow on hole 4.
(-7) means play an overdraw on hole 7.

There are a number of harmonica tab systems out there, but I prefer this one because it uses only ASCII keyboard keys, which makes it easier to type up songs and transmit them online. Other systems use up and down arrows, or circles around the numbers to communicate blows and draws.

Rhythm & Your Ear
Simple tab systems don’t give you rhythm instructions, so they work best to get you started on songs you’re already familiar with. It is possible to learn new songs using tab, but you’ll need audio examples to demonstrate how they’re supposed to go. It’s also not a bad idea to get used to listening closely to songs, tapping your foot, and singing along with melodies to develop your ear.

Standard Notation
I’m all for learning to read traditional music notation, since it communicates rhythm and articulations better than tab, and in the long term it’s a great investment in your musicianship. In the short term though, it’s probably more important just to get started playing music immediately, so you can get thoroughly hooked on playing your harmonica. In my experience, numeric tab requires less translation by your brain and gets the basic idea across more quickly.

Download my 58-minute lesson on single notes.

To play clear melodies, you need to learn to isolate one hole at a time. There are several useful embouchures or mouth positions, but I believe the simplest and most flexible one for beginners is a pucker.

1. Push your lips out and make a vertical oval.

2. Place the harmonica between your lips and press in slightly.

3. Keep your pucker firm!

Blow into the harmonica and listen. Are you getting a clear single note yet? If not, adjust VERY SLIGHTLY left or right while keeping the harp in your mouth. Remember to press the harp in a little bit and keep your pucker and your cheeks firm.

Experiment with this and you’ll get it. Once you have a clear single note, try alternating between blow and draw on the same hole, then doing the same thing on the next hole over. Have fun!

What do you need to get started learning with me? Pretty much just a harmonica and the interest.

The Harmonica
I recommend getting a Hohner Special 20 diatonic harmonica in the key of C or G. It’s around $35 and it’s a huge step up from the $5 cheapos – trust me, you’ll thank yourself.

The Interest
This is your instrument. Make some noise on it. Blow through it, draw through it. Slide right and left. Make some train noises. Cup your hands around it and flutter one of them to get a wah-wah sound. I’ll bet that as you blow and draw, moving left and right, you’ll start to find some simple melodies on your own.

We’ll add to that, but this basic sense of freedom is a gift you can give yourself. You don’t need me in order to start making music, or to start having fun. You can’t play a bad-sounding note on the harmonica. Mess around.

Possibly Technology
For Skype harmonica lessons, you’ll also need a computer, high-speed internet access, a webcam, and the free program Skype. More info on that here.

And of course, you’ll also need a harmonica, and the interest.