Product Description

The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Playing the Harmonica will be the ultimate learning text for the aspiring "harpist" (as harmonica players are called). The reader will learn to play the harmonica in three bsic stages beginner, intermediate, and advanced, with a heavy emphasis on actual practice exercises. The book will emphasize blues, rock, bluegrass, folk, and jazz; it is designed to appeal to the broadest possible cross section of players. Additional chapters will cover purchasing the best harmonica for you, harmonica maintenance, the art of playing with other musicians, and profiles of master harpists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39896 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author

William Melton received his musical training at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a multi-instrumentalist, having played clarinet, French horn, and classical accordion professionally. He toured Europe twice playing French horn with symphony orchestras. His current instruments are the harmonica, accordion, and keyboard.

Randy Weinstein is a nationally known professional harmonica player and has performed in a number of international music festivals. He also teaches music theory and can be heard on several jazz CDs.

Customer Reviews

idiot to pro?
Takes it from the stage before you even have a harmonica and helps you to buy one, giving recomendations right through to the more complicated techniques like note bending. Also has a good section on taking care and repair of problems, which stays useful, even once you've finished the book. Goes through techniques in depth, with good exercises to help you to master them and doesn't do what a lot of books do which is just to say "well you don't really need to know that". It teaches you them all. Oh and it teaches you how to read music if you want to know. Written in an easy to read way, and it doesn't take itself too seriously, which is nice (well could you with that title). Well, i found it useful. Nice mix of songs and teaching.

Very good as far as it goes
This book is generally very good for the beginer who wants to play blues on a 10 hole diatonic. It covers everything from buying and maintainence to music theory.But hardly recognises the existance of other types of harmonica; A couple of passing mentions of chromatics, and that's about it! I found some fairly minor gaps in the music theory,but important ones to the "Idiot",learner.
An exelent book for the beginner, but becomes a bit too specialised as it goes on.
All in, good value for the money,but if you want to play anything but blues on a diatonic, you will have to read something else before too long.

Excellent Information but needs supplementary information
I'm still reading the book but my point of view is based on someone completly new to the topic starting to learn.
The first few sections offer some really interesting information as to the history of the Harmonica, I wonder how much this is needed for you to learn to play, but I found it interesting nonetheless and easily read through those sections.

Once I reached the sections of the book which began teaching how to play I noticed a few things which, personaly, I thought could have been done better. All the information on techniques etc. is there and explained clearly, however there seems little in the way of guidance as to how long techniques will take to learn, and how long should be spent before progressing.

There are also exercises spread through the chapters which are clearly marked and well written. These you can find easily and use to help when working out your practice schedule.

Apendix B of the book has some great resources which help fill those gaps which I thought the book had.

All in all it is a good book but if you get it then be prepared to either buy another couple of titles or to make good use of the other resources provided to help.