Harmonica Fever

Today's sax lesson is postponed to tmrw morning. And after the lesson, i'll be heading down to
Accent Music to get my Lebayle Hard Rubber Fusion mouthpiece. It's the same mouthpiece as the
metal one i got but alot easier to control. i decided to get it after seriously considering dat it could
aid me better than the metal which was more difficult to control.

Well, let me just state for the record dat the chromatic harmonica or any other type of harmonica
for dat matter, IS DAMN DIFFICULT TO MASTER :) PLAYING the harmonica is easy cos it's not a
challenge to get notes out of the harp~ MASTERING technique and achieving GOOD tone, now
dat is the real challenge and it's a really really challenging aspect of harmonica playing indeed! My
goodness, i wouldnt have known just how difficult it was to master technique on this small
instrument until i chanced upon this really comprehensive guide to chromonica playing. And if you
thought saxophone embouchure was scary (which is is really), harmonica embouchure consists of
3 or more different types! All these embouchures are used in different instances.

Man i dun wanna start looking for "how to play the flute" resources anytime soon cos i think i might
just get a cardiac arrest from all the new info.. It's like so deja vu today looking for harmonica
websites and online resources and wat not like 8 months back when i went on an intense saxophone
resource hunt~ and compiled a whole list of sax websites on me blog~ So deja vu the first time i was
learning everything there was about the sax, embouchure, finger placement, care and maintenance
etc etc. And now doing the same for harmonica brings back really sweet memories~ I just absolutely
LOVE learning about new instruments and how they work and how to play them etc etc etc!

Anyway, i think i'd save up for a pretty good Hohner 64X Chromonica, get it somewhere next year.
But right now, i'm concentrating on bringin my sax to a whole new level of skill. Concentrate on one
at a time~ But i am pretty amazed at the ability of a chromonica and the kind of music i can play with
it~ i've heard some really great harmonicists (yes, dat's wat they call the harmonica player i found
out~ hah~) and they are pretty mind-blowing. For example, the great jazz harmonicist Jean 'Toots'
Thielemans, and the harmonicist who played a duet with Nelson Rangell's piccolo in the track 'The
Journey' whose name i cant remember. Both are examples of AWESOME harmonicists.

I really look forward to the day i acquire a high level of skill on alto before i proceed to doubling on
harmonica and then later didgeridoo~ these two are by far cheaper than say a new flute or sax :D
but even so, the harmonica and the didj are WAY extremes when it comes to price. the 64X costs
like $300 plus while the didj costs me like slightly less than $2k which is.. well staggering to say
the least, and a new flute/sax will be double dat of the didj so it's basically money madness :D