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Location: Kyoto, Kyoto-Fu, Japan

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Sunday, November 12, 2006

Welcome to the class

Dear friends,
I welcome you to the very first lesson of our “Learn Mouth Organ Online!!!!” community.

This small, inexpensive and very melodious musical instrument Mouth Organ (Harmonica) can be used to play anything from nursery rhymes to classical music. You can use it to play simple songs or complex songs, old songs or modern songs.

I’ll not make the learning of this instrument very complex or will not tell u “Arey yaar isko sikhna to bahut mushkil hai (Its very difficult to learn this instrument)” like what most of our friends who know a bit playing scare the basic learners.

Believe me; you don’t need years of music lessons to begin to enjoy your Mouth Organ (MO). With a couple of lessons and a few minutes of practice each day, you should be playing simple tunes in no time. And if you continue to learn and practice new songs, you can become an expert player, very soon.

I have divided this Blog in some chapters. U may encounter some new words during my write up so I have made a section Introduction to new Terms at the end where u can find their meaning.

Click here for the brief History and Types of Mouth Organ
http://onlinemouthorgan.blogspot.com/2006/11/brief-history-and-types-of-mouth-organ.html

Details of the MO system or its (in Biological language) Physiology:

(I’m using TOWER brand for explaination so please refer it accordingly)

The MO is having 24 windows as shown in the figure. I have tried to make the picture self explanatory. This MO is having 3 octaves (1-8; 9-16 and 17-24). U can see that there is a repetation of the same notes starting with ‘C’. In simple words, u can play a song at three different places with the same pitch/scale.

I think I should not explain so many things in one post bcoz it may eat ur BHEJA and can make u to just close this file or through the mouth organ on bed and do some other work so I control myself and rest we’ll talk in next week.

How to hold the Mouth Organ?

Actually there are very techniques to hold the MO properly for different effects like the one ‘Tremollo’. But we’ll discuss it later.
In simple words, at this level u don’t need to follow any specific style of holding. Just hold it(of course the windows of the MO should be towards ur mouth…..hahaha).
One more thing, actually in musical instruments the lower sound is always at ur left side (ex. Harmonium) so u can follow the direction as shown in the picture. It means the scale changer knob shud come at ur right side but guys like my dimag I hold the MO in reverse side, means the knob is always at my left hand side (u can see this in my video posted on YouTube).

Song of this Week (Home Work….hahaha):

The first song we are going to learn is,
Hai Apna Dil To Awara, Na Jaane Kis Pe Aayega.

Today I’ll give the notes of only first line of that song. B4 starting first hum the song and try to analyse where the sound is long and where is short.
This line is played between the windows 5 to 11 (Refer the picture).


Hai....Ap-----na.... Dil..... To...... Aa----wa~~~ ra,
G......CC----- D.......E-...... C......... D”----C~~B~A


Na......Ja-ne ~~~ Kis..... Pe...... Aa-ye-ga !
A-....... G--A ~B~ CC........ D........ E--D--C

Blow (Blow the notes shown in red color)
Draw (Draw the notes shown in blue color)


U should practice this line until next week. Feel free to write in the community if u feel any difficulty.

All da best !!!

Introduction to New Terms:

I'll post all da words in a special blogs.

3 Comments:

Blogger Saurabh said...

hi chaitanya,

I was searching online for resources on the chromatic. I had started learning the harp earlier but had to relocate and so stopped the classes. I really appreciate the effort you have put in to initiate and endow this knowledge to others.

Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 3:38:00 AM PST  
Blogger Saurabh said...

hi chaitanya,

Wanted your advice on a query that i had

I searched on the net for the books and came out with these popular
titles:

1. The idiots guide to learning harmonica

2. Mel Bay's complete chromatic harmonica

and online lessons at harmonicalessons.com, harptabs.com, etc.

I read a few pages of the idiot's guide on google books but they say
that you need to have a diatonic for this book. I wanted your advice on
which book or resource should a beginner look at? - someone who wants to
learn the harp seriously and not just a few songs.

Thanks.

Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 3:45:00 AM PST  
Blogger lalee said...

Hi Chaitanya,

what is D"???

Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 4:38:00 AM PDT  

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