Hi All, in the age of tech, please allow me to mention "harpwise", a program to: "Practice scales, licks, intervals, bends or warbles using your microphone and speaker. All from the commandline. With various tools and players e.g. for basic music theory. For diatonic and chromatic harmonica. For Linux, MacOS and Windows (wsl2)." It can be found (and is extensively described) at: https://github.com/marcIhm/harpwise(https://github.com/marcIhm/harpwise) Installation and use requires some commandline-skills, but of course, me (beeing the author) would be glad to assist :-) Harpwise is free and open source; no strings attached whatsoever ... Comments would be welcome. regards Marc P.s.: Harpwise does not teach you anything; so you still need and want a teacher (Liam). But it can support your practice ...

Hi everyone, recently I have been reminded, that the flat sixth count among the blue notes (by some definition at least). One explanation of course would be, that it is not available in second postion: Because: g4 +2st +6st +8st +10st gives these notes: g4 a4 df5 ef5 f5 and ef5 (i.e. 8st above root, which is the flat sixth I think) is not on a richter harp key of c. But besides that, there might be other more musical reasons for this, which would then also applay to other instruments ... Suggestions and opinions welcome :- ) Marc

Hi Liam, I am just following your Blues Song Study "Walking by myself". It is really a great lesson and lots of fun to listen. However, as some passages are rather challenging I find my self constantly doing like this: Watch a few seconds then skip back 5 seconds by pressing the key "cursor left" and listening again (without pausing the video or using the seek bar at the bottom of the video) and so on and so on. This works fine. However, once I click into the video to pause and click again to continue playing, this skipping back and forth does not work any more (pressing "cursor left" or "crsor right" does not skip by 5 seconds, rather nothing happens). To make this work again, I need to click in the seek bar (trying to find the right position in time) to jump to the clicked position. After that skipping (cursor left/right) works again. So the bottom line is: Dont hit pause if you want to be able to skip back and forth within such a video ! Of course, this is undesired behaviour and should be fixed; but as I experience this in any browser (Edge, Firefox, Chrome), in Windows as well as Linux, I think this must be related to the encoding of the video or the html of the page where it is embedded. I have tried this with other Song Studies too (which are all rather long videos) and they share the same problem. Unfortunately I am not an expert on this, so all I can do is to give a hopefully precise enough description of the problem. Could you, or maybe your technical support have a look at this ? Best regards Marc

Hi all, just want to recommend a book (that many of you probably know already): "Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music" this gives me a great historical background when listening to classic harmonica. Or even, when I ponder about Liams excellent grooves-course and his lesson about the Hooker-Boogie: I remember, that the book talks (among many others) about John Lee Hooker and his Boogie (which he claims to have learned from his father ...). Just the right amount of information to make practicing and listening even more enjoyable ! I have this book as an audiobook, but it does not contain any music recordings, so every time I hear it (three times up to now), I keep switching back and forth between the audio book and a music-streaming service ... Anyway, I am a fan of this book (but not commercially attached to it) ! Do you have other books, blogs, podcasts, that you could recommend ? regards Marc

Just a quick double-like for video 4.7 in Blues Grooves for Harmonica (Module 2); this Rolling-R-Articulation is such a nice idea; never heard this before and its so simple. Really digging it ! Marc

Hi Liam, Hi all ! Still at the course "Blues Grooves for Harmonica" (https://www.learntheharmonica.com/bluesgrooves) I wonder if among the "Classic Classic Blues Song Studies" (https://www.learntheharmonica.com/blues-songs) there are some, which make particularly good examples to practice groove recognition. Something like "My Babe" is a "Slow Blues" (which is not the case, but you get the idea). Did anybody try this and can suggest an easy song to start with ? regards, Marc

As a new member of this school, I just want to poke my head into this forum :- ) Have been playing Harmonica in Mainz (Germany) for 6 years now; mostly blues. For some time now I feel somewhat stuck on progress and a bit low on exchange with other players, so I decided to join Liams school ! My Photo is recent so you may correctly judge, that I am in my fifties ... Beeing a linux-guy by profession, you may see me posting some odd harmonica-related computer-stuff now and then :- ) Best regards Marc And this would be an example of "odd stuff" for linux: Play an interval (e.g. C4-C5) to help with practicing tongue-splits: sox -n /tmp/foo.wav synth 5 squ C4 sox -n /tmp/bar.wav synth 5 squ C5 play --combine mix /tmp/foo.wav /tmp/bar.wav (works under Windows / wsl2 too)