How to Play the Blues Harp

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Instructional Videos.

Thanks to YouTube, learning the harp is now really easy. Every facet of harp playing has been covered in detail by top players like Adam Gussow and Ronnie Shellist and other contributors are adding to the pool of information with each week that goes by

Adam Gussow (AKA Kudzurunner) is probably one of the best known YouTube-based harp instructors to date with over 150 videos to his credit. Adam covers a whole range of techniques so that you can pick up some really great tips as well as admiring some of Adam's fine collection of Hawaian shirts.

Here is his Blues Harp channel on YouTube.

Ronnie Shellist has produced more than 60 videos. Here he is demonstrating how to play octaves.

Here is his channel.

A relatively new YouTube resource is Harmopoint which is a beautiful idea designed and created by French harp player Waldek Preyzner in collaboration with Mox Gowland. A graphic representation of a harp is displayed and as a tune is played by one of the collaborators, colour coded indicators show which holes are being played as well as the air direction and the degree of bending applied. Just follow this link to see it in action.

The Harmopoint stable of harp players producing instructional pieces includes JJ Milteau and Greg Szlapczynski as well as a virtual Little Walter and a virtual Charlie Musselwhite.

There are not too many free sections but Mox has informed me that they are likely to intriduce more in the near future

Still in France, check out this instructional video from JJ Milteau. Fourmi Diable!!

New

And now, from Sweden: Hakan Ehn shows us how to play the Charlie McCoy classic Stone Fox CHASE.

(You'll understand the capitalisation of the word "Chase" once you've followed the 2nd of these links)

First, here he is playing it in a tunnel somewhere in Sweden - This is even better than the original Area Code 615 version which was adopted as the theme tune for the early seventies UK rock programme "Old Grey Whistle Test"

and here are parts 1, 2 and 3 of how to play Stone Fox CHASE - a very useful feature of these videos is that he includes the tab in the "more info " section for each of these videos.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 - This includes a very good demonstration of octave playing

If you want to see the master himself playing Stone Fox Chase follow this link - outstanding!!