Lay Down My Burden – Grant Dermody and Friends Grant Dermody is a Seattle based harmonica player, music instructor, vocalist and song writer who has honed his skills over the years playing with acoustic bluesmen John Jackson, Guy Davis, Honeyboy Edwards, John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, Louisiana Red, bluegrass
Read MoreA while ago, there was a lively debate on Harp L about who were the real geniuses. The general direction that this thread was going in was that some people were geniuses, and others were not, and that this would be a good thing to argue about. I insist that
Read MoreI would like to reflect today on how terrible I was for a few years at tuning harmonicas. I have come up with a short list of some of the really dumb things I have done when tuning harmonicas. There are plenty more mistakes that I don’t have space or
Read MoreOne of the wonderful things about playing blues harmonica is learning how to improvise over a 12 bar blues or some other structure that becomes familiar to us. Improvising is related to being creative, and “being creative” becomes a problem for some people, mostly because they do not believe that
Read MoreIt Hertz to Have No Cents I am in the process of reading through about 60 pages of feedback, ideas, and questions on harmonica technology and music- notes copied and pasted from your emails into a word document. Thank you for this overload to my questionnaire! While I was studying
Read MoreTags: Blues harmonica, Blues harp, gershwin, Harmonica, Summertime
This is one of those songs that has been kicking around in my head for years. I heard a version of this by the Modern Jazz Quartet many years ago and they used a repeating riff to set the mood. I have played with this on long car rides, on
Read MoreTags: Harmonica tools, Harmonica tuning fixture, Harp tech, Tuning harmonicas
Click on the link below to see the video: tuning fixture
Read MoreTags: Beginner harmonica, Blues harmonica, Custom harmonicas, Harmonica, Harp tech
I just got an email from a slightly nervous new customer. He just got his custom harmonicas and did not want to play them in a way that would damage them. His question was: what is the best way to break in a custom harmonica? I don’t believe you need
Read MoreTags: Beginner harmonica lessons, Blues harmonica, Blues harp, Harmonica basics, Rhythm harmonica
I tried using a metronome many years ago. I did it out of a vague sense of duty. That somehow it was good for me I bought a mechanical metronome called a Mini-Taktell. I never liked it . It seemed cold and heartless. Then I found out the metronome was
Read MoreTags: Brendan Power, Canned Heat, On the road again, Powerbender, Richard Sleigh Blues Harp
On The Road Again. My Friend Jamie Rounds is a songwriter living in Nashville. He recently invited me to add harp to a cover of the old Canned Heat classic “On The Road Again”. We did this through file exchange online – he sent me his recording, I sent him
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