Got a New Harmonica? Start Here

Step 1 Check your harmonica

Start the microphone and play one note at a time: the dial names the note and how many cents sharp or flat it is. Audio is analysed on your device and never leaves it.

A new harmonica reads a little sharp — on purpose

Playing harder pulls a reed flat, so most makers tune above concert pitch to land near A = 440 at playing volume; many diatonics are tuned around A = 442. Measured softly against a tuner set to 440, a healthy new harmonica reads a few cents sharp on every hole. Open the tuner’s settings, set concert A to 442, and play gently. What you are looking for is one reed far from where all the others sit, not zero cents everywhere.

5 draw reads flat, and that is right too

The draw reeds are tuned as a chord, and 5 draw is the seventh of it, set deliberately low so the chord sounds smooth. Leave it alone: there is nothing on a harmonica a player is meant to adjust, and a reed filed “up to zero” cannot be put back.

A hole that will not sound

A reed that plays no note at all has a mechanical problem, not a tuning one — most often a hair or a piece of lint in the slot. Play the same hole in the other direction first: if that reed speaks, the comb and plate are fine. Tapping the harmonica, holes down, against your palm clears most of it. The harmonica tuner page has the full checking routine, and the repair guide covers reeds that really have failed.

Step 2 Learn the layout

Ten holes, and every hole has two reeds: one that sounds when you blow and one when you draw (breathe in). Harmonica tab writes them as numbers: a plain 4 is hole 4 blown, −4 is hole 4 drawn. The instrument above draws both rows — blow on top, draw below — with the hole numbers and the notes.

On a C harmonica the middle of the instrument holds a whole C major scale: 4 −4 5 −5 6 −6 −7 7. Learn that and most beginner tunes are already under your mouth. The apostrophes you will see later in tab (−3’) are bends, which come after the first week.

The full instrument, with every size and key, is on the online harmonica page.

Step 3 Your first five songs

Easiest first: the library marks each tune easy or harder, and within that the songs covering the fewest notes come first — on a harmonica, range decides more about how hard a tune is than speed does. Every one is a public-domain melody.

Every harmonica song · Christmas songs for harmonica

Step 4 A seven-day plan

Ten minutes a day is enough, and the same ten minutes every day does more than an hour on Sunday. Tick each task as you go; this page remembers where you got to.

Sizes and types of harmonica

The beginner’s harmonica is the 10-hole diatonic in C, and every tab and song here assumes one. The same instrument comes in all twelve keys with the same layout shifted, so a tab learned on a C harp works on a G or an A one; players buy other keys to play along with songs in those keys. Which key a song needs is a table on the harmonica tuner page.

A chromatic harmonica has a button on the side that raises every note a semitone, and a tremolo harmonica has two slightly detuned reeds per note for its shimmering sound; both are laid out differently from a diatonic, so diatonic tab does not transfer directly. The online harmonica plays all twelve keys of the diatonic.