How do you play sharps and flats on a diatonic harmonica?

Question

How do you play sharps and flats on a diatonic harmonica?

Answer 1

I already answered this one recently, so I will just cut and paste.



Everyone's mouth is different. Everyone plays differently. Most teach differently. Harmonicas vary somewhat. So I will keep it short and give you some citations to free lessons. You get a bend by opening your mouth while you draw air through the harmonica. This slows down the reed by decreasing the turbulence. The next slower reed starts to vibrate in sympathy, and you get a tone somewhere between the tone of the two reeds in the same channel. You can also over-blow. I over blow by blowing into the harmonica like a trumpet increasing the turbulence. Some people roll their tongue in a roll and blow air through the roll. You can also do this on a draw. The trumpet method won't work on draws. The rolled tongue method is necessary for me to overdraw while playing harmonicas made in Japan, "Lee Oskar," "Suzuki." I can do overdraws with a flat tongue on Seydels, Hohners, and Herrings.



If you are talking about a chromatic harmonica, you get the sharps and flats by pressing the button. You can read about that at Angelfire.com/music/harpon

Answer 2

There's no way to "flat" a note, but you can pull a note sharp by sucking harder - you can "overblow" a note also but it's harder to get it all the way up a half step. This works well for Blues - but for regular melodies it's much better to switch to a harmonica in the key of the song. Also, Lee Oscar makes minor key harps - really cool for those minor key tunes.

Answer 3

You gotta learn to 'bend' the notes.

Search yahoo or google for 'harmonica bend note' and you'll find plenty of pages telling you how to do it.

Have patience - it takes a bit of practice.

Answer 4

That's called bending. I do it by moving the middle part of my tongue up or down as I draw.