Harmonicas are wonderful musical instruments. They’re versatile, they’re relatively inexpensive, they fit in your pocket, and their music can evoke a wide range of feelings. Harmonicas – or harps, as they are commonly called – are used in a wide variety of musical genres, such as bluegrass, the blues, folk, rock, country, Gospel, jazz, and even Classical music. If you want to learn to play the harp and are planning to take instruction, you should understand the different types of harmonicas that are available. The leading makers of harmonicas include Suzuki, Hering, Hohner, and Bushman. Beyond brands, though, there are other differences you should know about. The harmonica that most people are familiar with is the ten-hole “Blues harp.” Each of the holes has two reeds, which are tuned to play different notes. Blues harps come in virtually every key, and each harmonica can play 19 musical notes. Blues harps are a subcategory of diatonic harmonicas, so named because of the two reeds in each hole. Diatonic harmonics generally play only one key. Another type of diatonic harmonica is the octave harmonica, which is tuned so that each hole plays the same note, only an octave apart from one another. […] read more
Curation of Knowledge
Curated database of articles
Last Updated:
December 2, 2025
Click here to submit your article
Choosing a Harmonica
Harmonicas are wonderful musical instruments. They’re versatile, they’re relatively inexpensive, they fit in your pocket, and their music can evoke a wide range of feelings. Harmonicas – or harps, as they are commonly called – are used in a wide variety of musical genres, such as bluegrass, the blues, folk, rock, country, Gospel, jazz, and even Classical music. If you want to learn to play the harp and are planning to take instruction, you should understand the different types of harmonicas that are available. The leading makers of harmonicas include Suzuki, Hering, Hohner, and Bushman. Beyond brands, though, there are other differences you should know about. The harmonica that most people are familiar with is the ten-hole “Blues harp.” Each of the holes has two reeds, which are tuned to play different notes. Blues harps come in virtually every key, and each harmonica can play 19 musical notes. Blues harps are a subcategory of diatonic harmonicas, so named because of the two reeds in each hole. Diatonic harmonics generally play only one key. Another type of diatonic harmonica is the octave harmonica, which is tuned so that each hole plays the same note, only an octave apart from one another. […] read more
Views : 582
Accordions are increasing in popularity
Although the mainstream music world has often relegated accordions to second-class status, squeezeboxes are once again coming into their own. Making appearances in productions ranging from those of Cirque du Soleil to albums from top name rock stars, the accordion’s unique sound is getting some well-deserved attention. Although most people can conjure up a mental picture of an accordion, many do not realize that there are several different kinds of accordions, developed over the years for specific musical genres. As free reed instruments, the opening and closing of an accordion’s bellows (or squeezebox) causes the air to flow over the reeds, which makes the sound. An accordion also has buttons, or both buttons and a keyboard. These serve to direct the airflow to certain reeds and not others, thereby controlling the tones played. Some accordions have one row of buttons; some have two rows of buttons; and still others have three rows. Accordions with one row of buttons include the Hohner Concertina and the Hohner Ariette. The latter is often used for playing Cajun, Quebecois, Zydeco, and Irish folk music. These buttons typically play the diatonic scale, with each button able to play two notes: one when the bellows is […] read more
Views : 552
What You Need to Know About Beginner Guitar Lessons
Beginner guitar lessons usually have basic music scales and how to position for certain chords; it is vital to have some amount of music theory so you can always fall back to it, this maybe even when you become an expert musician. If you are looking for beginner guitar lessons online it takes a bit more precaution than having private tuition at a local guitar centre or home visit. Online guitar tuition is an increasingly popular way to pick up the instrument, and to learn how to play competently. So you should always look for a book or piece of software that has been well reviewed, has good testimonials and has a 100% money back guarantee. Online guitar lessons are much cheaper and, many times, your introductory lessons are even free. Online guitar lessons offer way more bang for the buck.Online guitar lessons are made to allow you to have a great time while you are learning to play the guitar. I would also recommend that you take a look at some of the free lessons available but beware, they are very limited and the quality is often so poor it actually ends up confusing and slowing your guitar skill […] read more
Views : 558
Learn To Play Musical Instrument Sets
We all have a few of those childhood dreams that fell to the wayside as we grew up. We were either too busy or too involved in something else or were too poor or just kept forgetting about it. It doesn’t matter why we never learned to play the instruments that we wanted to, what matters is that now that we’re adults, are we going to learn to play the musical instruments we dreamed of? While shopping for the musical instruments of our dreams, we keep running across the “learn to play” instruments and book sets. They look like they were probably designed for kids, but the instruments look like they are almost high quality enough to get away with playing. So can anyone really learn to play a musical instrument from the “learn to play” series? To be honest, those who learned to play at least one musical instrument as a child most likely can learn to play another musical instrument form the “learn to play” series provided we at least learned the basics of reading music. Being able to at least read the basic scale from sheet music will help tremendously when trying to learn to plat a […] read more
Views : 599