Today’s lesson is just a quick tip to show you how to check whether you are bending the notes properly on a harmonica. This is known as having good intonation. Unfortunately, you cannot just hit a bend really hard and expect it to actually be in tune.
Click here to get the note chart
Quite often, a player might not realise he or she is playing out of tune until the 1st time they play with a band.
Fortunately, if you practice with a tuner you can learn good accurate bends.
I usually use an app tuner on my phone. In this video I am using insTuner which is a free tuner in the App Store. You can download it by clicking here
If you don’t have a smartphone or a tablet you can always use a guitar tuner to make sure that you are playing in tune.
The most important thing you need to do is no what the note you are trying to get actually is. For example the 1st band on a 2 hole draw is a semi-tone down from the clean note. On a C harmonica that will be an F#.
Thank you
I hope this was helpful for you, please feel free to share!
thanks!
Hello Tomlin,
Thank you so very much. These lessons are so helpful. One by one. I have learned amazing things from you. Tabs are so helpful. Theory is the basic for our practise. Other teachers just wrote ” 4+, 4, -5 etc.” With your way we really learn. So, Thank you a lot 🙂
Best wishes.
Rosemary Christofaki
Thank you Rosemary! I’m so glad that you like the lessons and find them useful. Cheers, Tomlin
Geeze, Tomlin; I’m not sure if I love or hate this lesson. On the one hand it’s a terrific way to check the accuracy of my bends; on the other hand, I’m only getting about 80% of a true bend so I have some work to do. I’d thought I was doing pretty well with them but I guess I have to keep at it.