David's Tip of the Day: Bending & Harmonica Visualization Software (HarpNinja)

Last year fellow student Hank Stefaniak reviewed the new harmonica pitch reference software HarpNinja for everyone (thanks Hank!). I've been using this with students at my School of the Blues for a while to test its effectiveness and have been working with the developer on suggested improvements (he's been great about implementing my suggestions).

This is the most effective tool I've found to provide a visual reference of the depth of your bends and to help you dial in your bends to a particular pitch (like the challenging degrees of the 3 draw bend). He uses my bending visual model, so there's no learning curve to deal with. I'll do a video lesson on this software by the end of the year, but in a nut shell... you play your harmonica and it shows you what note (or scale degree) you're playing on a visual model of the harmonica. It tracks the pitch of your bend, and when you play a bend in tune (to a particular pitch), the harmonica hole lights up to tell you that you got it. You can also click on that hole and a reference pitch is played (very helpful).

This program is currently $30 and is available for Mac, PC and iPad.

HarpNinja
http://harpninja.com