In the broad scheme of things, having regrets about missed educational opportunities doesn’t sting half as bad as some other regrets relating to family relationships and parenting. But, related to my harmonica education, I have a list of three mentors that I could have learned from if I was paying attention at the time. Ray…
A few months ago I started doing a series on my YouTube channel called Harmonica Books in My Library where I discuss some of the books I own as well as perform demonstrations of some of the material. Was I just hard up for content? No, these presentations came from a very sincere place as…
If you don’t know about Rob here is a link to his bio on Wikipedia and here is his website. Rob Paparozzi is an amazingly diverse and accomplished harmonica player on both diatonic and chromatic instruments and a fine vocalist as well. He has had, and continues to have, an impressive career with some pretty…
I have a teacher to recommend for you if you want to study jazz on the harmonica. My method, at this point, is about learning the basics of how the instrument is tuned, playing scales/arpeggios in multiple keys, and improvisation over the blues or funk tunes. I will point you to the astonishing Yvonnick Prene’s…
I kept running into Buddy at events and once on a hiking trail. So I sent him a demo cd with mostly harmonica playing and some of my flute and saxophone on it also. He sent me a note saying that the cd was damaged and wouldn’t play so… I sent another one. Then I…
I stumbled on this guy’s site from a Facebook post. There is a lot here that I will want to revisit later but here is a neat article encouraging focused practice time away from the internet and using flute books to get new practice material. Jon is a saxophone/flute/clarinet player and he seems to share…
I say living because Jean Toots Thielmans has passed away. There are three guys that I instantly think of and then there was one I almost forgot about and have added him to the list. I refer to these guys as the Spanish guy, the Swiss guy, the French guy, and the British guy. All…
On January 9th, 2017 I braved the New York Subway system and navigated my way to Manhattan from Queens in 2o degree weather for a lesson with the awe-inspiring Yvonnick Prene. Yvonnick first came on my radar way back in 2004 or 2005 when I discovered him on myspace. We corresponded a bit. He was…
