Adam Gussow harp lesson on YouTube

Adam is a guy with harmonica in his blood. He looks like a mild-mannered college professor (which is what he is), but he's been AROUND!

Now sharing all his harp wisdom on YouTube, ten minutes at a time. Right now I think there is more than 60 there.

I'm working on three riffs I've picked up from watching his videos, all different skills.

-3 -2 -2b -1 -2 (quickly)
6 -7 -8 8 -9 9 -8 -7 (high end second position)
-1/4 -2/5 +3/6 pause -4/7 -3/7 (octaves)

Alton Brown plays the blues

If I didn't think there weren't a million cooking blogs, I'd probably start one of those, too. Because cooking forces you to 'practice' every day, I'm probably a better cook than harp player.

I'm a big Alton Brown/Good Eats fanboy.

Anyway, heard of the 'cutting floor blues'? Here's Alton's Cutting Board Blues. He actually plays a quick riff on the harmonica, too. Cool!

YouTube - Blues Harp Lessons

Ran across this by accident at You Tube. Apparently this guy has aspriations to put out a DVD. The Funky Blues Harmonica video gives a good view of his technique and overall talent. Looks like it's popular on You Tube with over 500 comments.

Here are all of his demonstrations and lessons (8 as of this writing):
YouTube - RonnieShellist

Wikihow harmonica playing

The very cool Wikihow has an article on playing the harmonica. It's real basic, but worth a look. Even better, because it is a Wiki, you can add to or edit it! I made some additions including:

"Beginners will often find that the 2-draw single note is hard to play and sometimes suspect that their new harmonica is bad--it isn't. Don't draw too hard and keep adjusting your embouchure and angle of the harp till it rings true."

BTW: Howdy RSS readers out there! I see 6 of you at Bloglines, hopefully there are more elsewhere. I'm going to post a few more articles here at the Cool Harp Blog. Drop me an email, if you like.

Cool stuff from JT30

Keith over at jt30.com sent me some links to some cool stuff on his website. Thanks man!

• Here is a link to some clipart with every harp created, it looks like.
  
• An old Far side cartoon (another reason to play the blues!)
  
• "Here are some stencils for spray painting blues artists onto your amps and cars and garage doors." Keith, did you mean the front of the garage door? ;)
  
• "And here are some harp mics that I've created, repaired, or restored." Man, you're killing me, these are sweet.
  
• And of course his collection of harp jokes. These are great.
  

Cool blues podcast at The Roadhouse

I've been listening to podcasts ever since I got my iPod in March. And I've been listening to The Roadhouse since then, too. Tony makes a nice show with 'undiscovered' blues music from garageband.com. You can usually get the actual tracks straight from garageband, too.

BTW: Life has been stomping all over my practice time, but its only made me realize how much I like the harmonica and how much I want to play the blues.

Cheap, legit, harp blues MP3s

I just rejoined emusic.com. Ten bucks a month for 40 MP3s (pretty much unlimited use). I have created a list called "Blues Harp Picks" to help find the good stuff there. A trial membership is free with 50 downloads.

Check out Blues Harp Picks on eMusic now!