Oh man, my spelling errors.

since I'm new....means...

Thanks. I found that site already. Didn't know it was yours also. Followed the tootorials (nice spelling, eh?).
Just tell me, for my understanding, sind I'm new to overblowing: The overblow beans bending down just the blow reed, a half note at least, right?

I'm playing the blues harp for 50 years now, only of overblowing I got aware of in the last years. Never actually needed it.

Only sometimes, when I was playing the higher notes whil blowing, I found myself, that I could squeeze out other tones which turned out to be useful for the melody I just needed.

Using overblowing as a general technique to reach every note on a diatonic harp is an interesting approach and opens new horizons to explore to me.

Thanks for your site(s).

The chrome somehow dissolves from touching it. Yes I do adjust my harmonicas, in fact I made a website about it: http://www.overblow.com

Have you eaten up all that chrome from the Meisterklasse surface:)

Just another question: Do you do special treatment of the harps for better overblowing capabilities?

--
Christoph

Nog uitgebreider? pff dit was al zo'n gedoe, kom op er zitten zelfs filmpjes bij

Dus......... als ik voor 15 jaar m'n leven uit het raam gooi en op sta en naar bed ga met een harp in m'n mik.

klink ik als wat ik jou zie en vooral hoor doen op diverse videos en geluids bestanden....

hahahaha not in my lifetime


serieus man, respect voor jouw passionele obsessie

oh en nog een klein dingetje

harmonica customizen..... een wereld aan info op overblow.com
heeft me al 3 harpjes gekost
als je de tijd de zin en de motivatie kan vinden
zou je dan een uitgebreide HOW TO willen schrijven

thanx for your music

To my shame I have only just discovered this site. It is a phenomenal resource, on which you are to be highly congratulated. I will enthusiastically work my was through its contents in the near future. Many thanks.

i "ve just bought a diatonic harmonica

Just a note......
Norton Buffalo passed away Friday Nov 30, 2009.
Anyone who plays harp has got to be aware of his talents.
In many peoples minds he may be the best harp player
...at least he is the most versital player..and one of the sweetest guys ever...
RIP
Norton Buffalo

@Ed I think you are right. I was a bit busy what with the World Harmonica Festival and all :)

I think the agenda needs to be updated. ;)

On a regular C harp middle C is the blownote in hole 1.

Tinus,

this has been puzzling me for a while, where is middle C on the harp?

Micheal

ok...brothe´!!!

Porn rocks :)

Amazing what you do with this little thing, called harp. I've got problem with 3rd whole draw, can't find a way how to make tose tunes clearly, 3rd whole three band posibilites, can do hmmm, maybe two of them. But, don't bother yourself, I'm very satisfied with this site. All the best, Sebastian.

Live and learn i guess.I had just bought my fabulous and could hardly wait to play an out of the box harp that would respond properly to my style ,which is an easy blow and draw tongue method.Boy was i disappointed,#2 hole had a problem,i had to send it back,they saidthere was an obstruction on that reed.That was in April 14/09,i am still waiting for my replacement,i'm not happy.I could have bought 3 or 4 Seydels for what i paid Canadian.I know i am green ,but i am a 30+ yr musician and know what an instrument should sound like.Thanks for letting me ramble...Carl

Most of the more expensive harmonicas only differ from the more moderately priced models in cosmetic sense. The reedplates are often not different from other models. However the claim is that the fabulous has better reedplates than the other suzuki harps. How much better they are remains to be seen.

I am a fairly new player of the harp.I play guitar,etc,sing an so on.I have purchased a suzuki fabulous,suzuki proharp, hohner golden melody,seydel silver,hohner special 20's.I love my seydel the most.Can anyone tell me what makes the suzuki fab,soooo much more in price as i think the seydel for $200.00 less is a better harp.What could they possibly do to make the harp that much more expensive..I hope someone can answer this.Thanks,greatsite...Carl

keep me informed

@ Big Al:
Your friend's view of second position scales is very different from what the rest of the harmonica playing world calls a second position scale. There are a lot of scales that could be called second position scales (some 29 different scales) and they all have one thing in common: they all start on the 2 hole draw note. That is wat makes them a second position scale, the root of the scale is the 2 draw. If a scale starts on the 3 draw triple bend it is not a second position scale but a 9th position scale. Clearly he defines 2nd position as something other than "starting on 2 draw"

Got a question regarding second position scales. I got a good friend of mine who also plays harmonica. He says that there are seven second position scales that one can play.
For example, on the C harp, on can begin with the basis Blues Scale starting on draw 2, 3' 4 blow, 4 bend, 4 draw, 5 draw, 6 blow. The next scale would be starting on the 3 triple bend, 3 draw, 4 blow, 4 bend?, 4 draw.... The third scale would be starting on the draw 3... the fouth scale would be starting on the blow 4?
Anyway... if you are aware of the "Seven Second Position Scales"... I would love to know what their tabs are. Thanks so much! Big Al

This is a great site. You give me so many ideas. My son has a degree in jazz bass performance and my best friend is an unbelievable piano player. She won the competition in Brussels at age 14. My son wanted me to go back to piano at my advanced age and for some reason my teacher and I became friends and was more intrigued with the harmonica playing.
By the way my late mother had been a trumpet player.
Anyway I tried nature Boy on the Low F# diminished Seydel and it sounded great.
another song that worked out well is Autumn Leaves adn St; James Infirmary.

Thank you Ben, great to hear that you are playing C only, not very many people doing that. I'm very curious as to what you are doing with the harp. Glad you found the site helpfull.

Great site, Tinus, and nice work--never mind what our friend Bill says below (he should do more learning & less writing...) I play everything on a C diatonic & recognize your accomplishments when I hear you play those bird tunes. Well done! I referred to this site extensively when I was learning about gapping my harps & I'm just getting around to saying thanks! Keep up the great work!

Ben Graves, Nashville, TN

I truely appreciate your attempts to advance the state of the art diatonic harp...People like you Levy, DeLay, open others imaginations as to whats possible with a harp. I see one thing repeated by people that struggle trying to bend notes.. ( and hitting the notes on the bends, tightly )..Maybe this can help some strugggling players...consentrate more on starting wih less air volume/ space, inside your mouth before you pull your tongue back...then make the real estate inside your mouth smaller as your tongue goes to the back of your mouth..Extra hard wind actually will hurt the accuracy of your bend....another thing, the bent note must come into tune on the beat....nothing sounds worse than an unresolved out of tune bent note....I hope this helps people....you have a great website, thankyou....Ed

Thank you Bill for that very helpfull and constructive critisism....
Don't blame my teachers, the track was recorded long before I started school so it is not their fault. By the way my teachers don't play harmonica, just trumpet, so the certainly can use some harmonica lessons. Maybe you are right, maybe I should replace it with a more recent recording, but since I am in school I have difficulty finding the time to update the site and recordings.

Hi, I went to your site and listened to Nature Boy and found it to be most drab. If I were you, I would delete that from your site. For someone who went to school to learn how to play jazz harmonica, you should be much better than that. Perhaps that school teacher needs harmonica lesions too. I have been playing the harmonica sense 1941 and I think I was playing that peace in the early 1950,s. in all key's and without a rigged harmonica. You should do less writing and more learning.............Bill

Did the harmonica exam from 3rd to 4th year yesterday. Played with 2 great musicians. Was very tense and didn't play too well. Very much in the head, thinking about every chord change that passed. However it was good enough, well executed albeit stiff in the improv. So I am on to the last year of my studies at the koncon.

Hey Tinus, Read your trial and tribulation about your School. Wow, I'm just starting out trying to play my Golden Melody Harp. Just bought a Hohner 64 Chromatic just, Cause it looked good to me. Love my GM though! I am a BomB Dog Handler in Honolulu Hawaii and just picked up the Harp because I wanted to play...just playing Tabs right now, but who nows??? I'm 55 years old and feel like a young guy when I play. Hang in there Man. Just saying Aloha from Paradise... My Dogs are GSD's. Lux & Bronek say Wuff-Wuff,Too!!!

I'll ask him and I will give him your contact details.

Hi Tinus

You wrote to someone on your other site saying you had a student who can set up a harmonica for overblowing chromatic on a diatonic - Wondering if he has a waiting list - and if he is taking orders ? I live in nova scotia canada and am a tenor and percussionist - but heard Howard Levy last summer and now am keen to learn this technique -

thanks for your help

woody

The students area is for my private students. There are no online lessons other than the material you can find on the site. The area is there to enable me to share student specific material with my students.

How would I sign in as a student? I tried to login but was refused. Thanks for your help :)

As of september 2007 I will be teaching a harmonica course at the cultural center of the Technical University in Delft. For details about the course se the site of the TU Delft cultural center.

Wow, videos would be awesome, I really hope you make some!

Hmm, bending instruction. I don't know there is a lot out there already. But maybe if I start making overblow instruction videos I'll inlude a couple on proper bending technique.

Now, after browsing this site and overblow.com, I'm really motivated to learn the harmonica properly. I'm still practising the bends and I'm anxious to start overblowing soon. However, I'm having a bit of a problem . I am using the electronic tuner of my guitar pedal to practise the bends, and whenever I try to bend the drawn notes more than half step, I'm forcing too much my tongue, mouth and even neck. If it's possible, it would be nice if you could add some simple bends methods and information to your site, in the same fashion of the overblow info. Until then, I'm going to keep practising to get to overblows as soon as possible.
Thanks a lot!

Thank you, the site was designed by Kamiel Naaktgeboren from tick.nl where I work parttime as a developer.

I just stumbled upon this site, and before I browse the actual content, I have to congratulate you on the page design!

Ja ik geef nog steeds les. Bel me vooral om een les af te spreken.

Beste Tinus,
Ik zag op het bluesharp forum een berichtje van jou dat je ook les geeft. Zou je mij willen mailen hierover als je dit nog steeds doet?
Groet,
Mirjam uit Delft

To say it is a jazz school for harmonica players is a bit of an exageration. It is a jazz school yes, but I am the first harmonica player to study there. It might be possible to get admitted to a conservatory like this in your country. I know there are and have been harmonica players that study music in a number of countries like France, Sweden, England and Finland. I don't think that the schools they went to were offering special courses to harmonica players. These were just harmonica players that wanted to study and decided to try and get in. Why wouldn't that be possible in Italy, someone just has to be the first to try.

Hi Tinus, I'm Franco from Italy. I've just noted that there's a jazz school for harmonica players in your country... you are a very lucky man! I mean, in Italy there's nothing similar!!!!

I had heard that there are old recordings of overblows beeing played but I haven't heard Blues Birdhead.

do you like blues birdhead?

>drew

Good luck with those overdraws, playing the diatonic harmonica chromatically isn't as difficult as you might think. Learning to set up the reeds properly is half the work, learning to play with good intonation the other half :)

hi I'm in Toronto and play diatonic ... want to learn how to overblow the top 4 holes and learn chromatic.

Thanks for you reply Tinus.

And Happy New Year!

> Crazyharp
I used to play through a Fender Blues Junior amp, a 15 watt tube amp. Very nice sound but a bit heavy to drag around to sessions. I used it together with a Astatic 200 microphone. Lately I have been using a small Beringer preamp with an AKG C 416 condenser microphone ( I'll post a picture of me playing it), they just fit in my bag and I use them to play through the PA. I don't have the tube sound anymore but have a lot more controll over the dynamics and I like the more accoustic sound for playing jazz.

Hi, Tinus

Thanks for your reply, and then another question. :) (I am writing a list of devices which famous players use.)

In your live performance or records, what kind devices do you use? Such as the brand of the MIC and AMP?

Thanks.

That is a though question. Tuned down to Eb from where? From E, from C? I would play on a C harp, but that doesn't mean you should. Does it have to be in 2nd position? Or in third or twelfth? Maybe it is easiest to ask the guys what key they are playing in and then pick a harp to match that key in your favorite position.

I play with some guys who are tuned down to Eb. Which harp should I use for a song oringally in key of G? Key of C?
Thanks

They live very long. When I started out playing overblows I would wreck a harp a month I guess, but now they last 6 months to a year. And I usually just play one harmonica at a time quite a few hours a day. If my harmonicas break it is always the hole 7 blowreed that goes. I am still doing someting wrong on that hole 7 overblow. Hopefully when I stop doing that my harps will last forever.

Hi, Tinus,

Good job! I 'd like to know how long did a harp of yours live? One week . one mounth or one year?

Enjoyed the 10 hole overblow,takes a lot of practice. I enjoy the chromatic.I love the old songs of the 40s up,also country music.I play a few gigs in my area,VFW,a place on Anna Marie Island called the Pier.Florida of course.I never go anywhere with out my ten hole or chrom.Great listening,thanks loads,Phil

Yes www.overblow.com does still exist although I am working on updating it so it might be down for maintenance every once in a while.

Tinus...does www.overblow.com still exist?

Overblows and overdraws can be played on most diatonic harmonicas. Most of the available harmonicas require a little regapping and some other alterations before they overblow well, but in principle you can play an overblow on any non-valved diatonic.
If you want to read about overblow technique then you should visit www.overblow.com.
I do not sell harmonicas but there are a lot of custom harmonica builders that make very good harmonicas for overblowing.

what harmonica do I buy so that I can get these overdraws and bends?
Or do you sell them ,
much obliged