Everything Else > Diatonic / Suck-harp

Relative difficulty of playing the diatonic harmonica

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Gnarly He Man:
As I stated on another thread, it’s easy to play the diatonic harmonica, as long as you don’t try to get it to do something it doesn’t want to do.
And it was designed to be easy to play, in the good old Tyrolean fashion. Oomp pah …
But a lot of people use the diatonic harmonica to play in what’s called second position , the inhale mode.
And that’s where the fun is… Microtones.
More later.

Gnarly He Man:
Blow three and draw two are the same note!
Large, robust sounding bends are achievable on these two holes.
Holes one and four also have missing notes hidden in the draw bends.
Granted, important notes are missing from the bent and unbent notes, including Fa and La on the bottom and Ti on the top. Modern players use extended techniques to try to turn the diatonic into a chromatic instrument with mixed results.
Still, you can have a lot of fun and produce good sounding music on the diatonic harmonica. Not just Blues, ask Bob Dylan.
These instruments are so very portable, every child deserves one.

Age:
I've always toyed around with doing the P.C.Gazelle setup on my suck-harps :)

Lockjaw Larry:
A few years ago I made my own windsavers and installed in several diatonics like PT does, referred to as half valving.  I prefer these to non-valved for most of my playing.  Highly recommend giving them a try, you may become a believer too.  Several YouTube videos focus on half-valving if you’re interested.

Age:
Yeah, and you play'em mostly in first position, right?

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