Americana melody. Harmonica artists of today can inhabit and recreate Americana's earliest musical traditions; a combination of folk music and the blues, combining to provide a wide creative canvas to work. And while the pitches for creating memorable melody lines for both styles live in the exact same harp, to get to the core of the blue notes and licks, requires a different set of physical skills and approach to the instrument as described just above as 'bending' a note.

Straight up diatonic folk melodies are prolly the easier of the two, requiring breath in and out to make the pitches. Blues harp requires 'bending' notes to find the blue notes and blues 'hue' in relation to the common supportive V7 chords of many blues songs. I'd imagine having a mix of both under the fingers would provide a good palette of colors. There's a chromatic harp too, which stylewise might lean a cat towards jazz.

A gillion diatonic melodies. The notes to play diatonic melodies live right in any harp, just a matter of finding them. Breath establishes the rhythm of the notes. By defining a bit of the musical styles you dig, decide on a melody you know and love and master its pitches and character tones by ear. Once we learn one melody solid, and even start to jazz it up a bit, there's usually new melodies that just sort of come right along :)

Included diatonic melodies. Included are 50 diatonic Americana melodies to choose from, pick one an master it best you can, maybe use an i-phone to record your progress ... ? Play this melody for your mentor, or any music lesson, and get some feedback and ideas for moving forward ... knowing there's way lots of cool melodies to explore and interpret. A diatonic harp.

Crossharp in Americana Blues. Due to manufacturing intricacies and in 'theory', 'crossharp' is the way we trick a harmonica built in one letter name key to play all manner of 'Americana blues musical coolness' while the band plays in a different key ... yikes :) 'Special 20 C.'

Pitches.

Blues crossharp. Common practice says we use a harp built in 'C' and 'cross its notes' to play blues in 'G.' By 'drawing air in' and bending at the two hole, the 'Two Draw Bend' lick, gives us the b7 blue note of 'F', with the tonic note 'G' the next note up, sounded by blowing out thru the three hole.

This 'b7 to tonic lick' is a true honk of a riff, quite naturally at the center of the blues by proximity; a tension just before resolution. There's a few other essential 'interval licks'; 'minor 3 / major 3' and surely the '#4 to 5' tritone motions, both by half step. These notes, found in between the diatonic pitches and are the locations of the blue notes built into any harp, and all instruments for that matter too, crossed or not :) !

Authors note. I do not play harp and to figure this architecture out I used masking tape to block off the holes for certainty and was also sitting at a keyboard playing appropriate changes to measure the intervals and their degree of blueness in relation to standard tuning.

'Knowing that its pitches are physically located in the same places on a harmonica built in different keys, and that the blues love the guitar keys too; so 'E, A, G, cats might get a few harps to cover a few keys, one of which probably will become a fave.

That the technique to sound out the cross harp blue notes is the same regardless of the key of the harp is just cool and good to know too :) 'Two draw with proper bend' will always cross as 'b7' regardless of the key of the harp. So grab a 'C' harp to play crossharp on an Americana blues hue'd song with the band playing in the key of 'G', and what the harp don't know won't hurt one bit, (that the band's not playing in 'C.') Promise :)

draw bend blues

Cool with the theory of 'blues cross' harp? So yea it gets through all 12 pitches, crossing over by perfect 4th to accomodate the harmonica's magics and finding the blue notes within the diatonic tones.

"One good thing about music; when it hits you, you feel no pain."

Bending notes on a harmonica. According to those in the know, when we bend a note on a harp the pitch goes ... down. Crazy huh ? But that's the case so it seems. Not being a 'harpist' meself, not all that sure of the physical mechanics of all this.

Thus; 'two draw with a bend' gives us the 'flat 7' essential blue note. For many artists, this lick / technique / pitch is a pillar of blues harp.

Thus; 'three draw with a bend' gives us the 'flat 3' / the minor third of the key of the song. In our equal temper tuning system both of our 3rd's are a bit wonky. The major 3rd is plain sharp, by six cents or so. The minor 3rd is flat by a few cents, so needs a push up a wee bit. Find your sweet spots by ear. Knowing that rubbing major and minor 3rds together brings the essence of Americana blues, there's a hundred licks from 100 different cats, on all instruments, that bring this often 'hair raising' color.

Thus; 'four draw with a bend' gives us the '# 4 / b5 / tritone' of the key of the song. Know as the 'diablo de musica' from the olden days, this is one powerful note that helps make the blues the blues. And there's a 'two pitch tritone' we use for making V7 / dominant chords. So ... very very handy to say the least.

'2 draw bend'	'3 draw bend'	'4 draw bend'

Cool ? Once the technique for bending comes together for you, sky's the limit for searching the nuances of blue notes between the pitches. May take a while but it'll happen if you want it to happen.

Review. So with this in mind and thinking U want to play some blues harp, master the root note of 'two draw' and find a way to bend it down to 'flat 7.' Same for the 'three and four draw with bends.' Just ask around, seek a ye hall find yes ? These pitches should be enough to get ya started, master them and start sitting in, jamm with records or the radio.

References. References for this page come from the included bibliography from school and the bandstand, made way easier by the folks along the way. In addition, books of classical literature; from Homer, Stendahl and Laudurie to Rand, Walker and Morrison and of today, provided additional life puzzle pieces to the musical ones, to shape the 'art' page and discussions of this book. Special thanks to PSUC professor Dr. Y. Guibbory, who 40 years ago now provided the spark to ignite a love within me of the weaving of the history of the arts into the evolutions of Americana musical art.