What's the strangest thing you've ever heard about the harmonica?
People have a lot of strange ideas about the harmonica, and as a player I'm sure you've heard one or two in your time.
The oddest one I can think of (though in a story told by someone else) was of a woman who worked in a nightclub and would watch the guy playing harmonica, holding it in his hands and making all sort of hand shapes. One night they got talking and she asked him if you got different notes by squeezing it with your hands, sort of like a rubber duck toy. (Hey, it was a logical deduction.)
So what's your oddest harmonica story?
Long before I discovered David's website I was trying to learn harmonica from a classmate, she played chromatic in the school band or something, I never even got pass the 2 hole draw on my C harp because she kept telling me it was broken and I kept buying new harps and she'd be like 'this ones broken too, why'd you keep buying broken harmonicas?' She had a pretty expensive hohner chromatic and she was convinced that cheap diatonics all sucked. I never got round to buying a chromatic like hers and eventually gave up on harmonica. Started again 5 years later after discovering david's website. I hope in a years time I'll be able to kick her ass on the harmonica.
Tristan, you can at least go back and tell her the diatonic harps don't suck!
I don't know if this counts... but it's a funny one. A gal emailed me about wanting to learn how to play harp. In her email she said, "by the way, my boyfriend says I have a lot of spit, that should help, right?"
Does she think you have to spit in it or blow in it? That is funny. Is she a member now?
It wasn't me. :-)
Ok this might not be the oddest but it sure got a laugh out of my friends. Before I actually started playing the harp many years ago, my friends and I were at a club in Atlanta listening to some hot blues. We sat at our table in the back of the room drinking beer and chasing it with fries. I was so impressed by the blues sound that I mimicked as hard as I could someone playing the harp, simply but moaning and "Wah-wahs" included. The lady beside our table blurted out "Wow man, get up there and jam". All my friends turned around and I asked, "With what?" They all proceeded to crack up. Well that story didn't involve an actual harp, but it did get me started playing.