Blues Harmonica Bk/CD: For Beginners

I enjoyed this book along with the companion Blues Harmonica Licks because the one page lessons focusing on one lick were simple enough to feel like you were accomplishing something. This layout fosters confidence in harmonica playing such that by the end of the book I was comfortable improvising to the backing music with the numerous riffs and techniques learned in this book. The shortcoming of the book is that the volume 1 stops right at bending. This wouldn't be that bad, but as I understand it, volume 2 was never finished or published. Without bending, you really are not playing the blues. I would still recommend this book over other beginner books because it sticks to teaching licks without all the goofiness of books like Gindicks. I am left though to ponder how much less of a struggle learning to bend would have been had they published volume 2.

This book is perfect for a beginner to blues harmonica who is also a beginner to music theory. The tunes in this book are easy and progressively get more challenging. I could play decent sounding stuff from the first attempt but had to work hard to do the harder stuff later in the book. If you already play another instrument and/or can read music another book would be better as this one doesn't use standard notation. This book is best for someone who has no musical experience. Also, If you have no experience playing with other musicians the CD is very helpful - you play along with other musicians (drums, guitar, bass, keyboard etc) on the CD so that you will learn correct timing and rhythm. And with the CD you can listen to the harmonica on the CD, play with it and then play on your own as the CD leaves a verse or two free from harmonica for you to play along. Great value for a harmonica beginner who is also a musical theory beginner. I also have the accompaning book "Blue Harmonica Licks Vol.1 - it has more of the same but doesn't feature bending notes. Some of the tunes are simple and you may want to move onto something by David Barret or Jerry Portnoy later.