Tunes for Harmonica

Whistle
1

I’ve been getting back into my harmonica playing recently and, to add fuel to the fire, I just got a Suzuki Humming Tremolo G harp which sounds great on Irish tunes. Although many of the faster tunes, especially jigs, are very difficult to play, a lot of tunes, like reels, seem to work really well on the harmonica. I know some of y’all play harmonica, so does anyone have any tunes they recommend?

2

Bartleby - Try “Irish and American Fiddle Tunes for Harmonica” by Glenn Weiser (http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/) Great also for whistle and flute. Has over 100 tunes, reels, jigs, hornpipes and waltzes. It’ll keep you busy for a while.

BillG

3

‘Give Me Your Hand.’ Not too hard and that bent F nat is a killer.

Any concertina tune that isn’t too fast will be reasonably playable on a standard diatonic harmonica and you can bend notes on harp so you can do things you can’t do on 'tina. You can’t play difficult double stops or fast triplets unless you are a virtuoso, but why bother—use the ornamentation that suits the instrument.

Better still, have a listen to Jim Conway’s great CD Mouthbox and get inspiration and a bit more repertoire. He plays a great version of Give Me Your Hand. I don’t have time now but do a search for reviews of this CD by many of us and details on how to get hold of it. There are several other harmonica players I could recommend if you want to pursue this seriously; just say the word and I’ll give you details.

4

I used play a lot on a modified D/D#. Hohner tech recently told me that he would custom modify the 240 models into a standard trad tuning such as C#/D.

It is a great compliment to any TW player’s bag of tricks.

Two great Jigs for the metal sandwich is ‘The Jug Of Ale’ (crossed into G on the D iron ) into ‘Kitty Lie Over’ ( D standard scale)

But you need to be at a while to play them well.

A nice reel is ‘My Love Is In America’ if you want to develop good chromatic technique where the drive of the setting IS off the button.

Finally there never was a better Randay in Ireland than with a band playing Irtrad on the Clarke’s whistle and the Hohner Chrometta - a tamborine OC would be in the middle of it.

But that is a very long time ago.

Good luck

5

polkas. I play John Ryans and Maggie in the Woods on harp in the WhiskyTones. Conway’s are kinda hard for the tyro.

I got a fancy Aminor harp and can play Julia Delaney on it.