Expanding to other types of music
I have been trying to branch out to other types of music. I have some family members that play instruments and would like to play with them but they don't play the blues too much; mostly folk, folk rock, and jam band stuff. I know a big part of it is just playing to jam tracks/recordings and putting in the work but I figured it wouldn't help to see what has worked with other people. Does anyone know of any good resources for branching out? Books, videos, or just good experiences that worked for them? Thanks.
Everything you know from blues harmonica can be applied to other styles of music. That said though, you can't do it just by bluesing it up. I mean, sometimes that will work, but you have to learn the melodies and the phrasing typical of those styles, which position(s) will best deliver the melodies and work with the chord changes, etc.
One way to get started is to just hum or whistle along with tunes you like or want to learn. Get the melodies to where you know them that way by ear. Figure out the key, then try finding them on the appropriate key of harmonica. If the tune sounds major, try first or second position. If it sounds minor, try third, fourth or even fifth position.
WillQ, there's this strange dude that shows up on this site from time to time named Barrett or something. As it happens, he wrote a good lesson book on this very topic:
https://www.melbay.com/Products/21979BCDEB/rock-harmonica.aspx
It's a pretty good intro to playing rock harp.
As a former rock band guy and longtime guitar player, I had interest in going into other harp genres as well -- especially rock. There's not a lot of resources out there for harp lessons for this genre (although Classic Rock has very much over the past few years been recategorized as "Modern Blues").
I found that trying to follow guitar solo material gave me the best insight on where I wanted to go with harp. Obviously we're missing some notes here and there, but learning how to play and familiarizing yourself with the pentatonic scale will help, since so much of rock and folk genres are patterned around it. And they are different from your Blues scales. Here's an intro by Howard Levy that describes the pentatonic scale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=jeASCY3S0dg
And some great material by that Barrett guy again here:
https://www.bluesharmonica.com/lessons/movement_exercises_study_2_scales
Going into these other genres also lets you play with some effects that most Blues players don't use. You'll find many blues harp players are content with a delay pedal or maybe a reverb. When going into the rock genre, I found myself repurposing all of my pedals to get some cool sounds out of my harp. Jason Ricci is big on this, and so is John Popper (among others). I have a Line 6 Helix effects unit that I'm constantly toying with to coax out some new, very cool sounds out of my tiny harp. It's actually pretty amazing what you can do.
When I play for people they enjoy songs that they know or like So I throw in a couple of pop songs. All of the ABBA songs (This shows my age) are both easy to play and are well known. My all time favourite is Dirty Old Town by The Pouges. Very easy to play except you will need to have multiple harps as the tune uses D G C back to G. The beauty of these tunes they are all easily learned just by listening. Try visiting the site Kareoke for backing tracks of the popular tunes. I focus on the listeners music era. Not everyone likes ABBA.
ps Accompianment is genre neutral and good fun.