“Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” -Ann Voskamp

You can’t learn every improvement strategy in a book.

Some take real-world, particular, persistent effort to improve as both a musician and a person. Some, you could say, are so esoteric you would wonder why or how someone could love something enough to stick with it every day and find new ways to reinvent it, especially something as seemingly straightforward as a harmonica.

Yet what I’ve found in both my playing career and teaching career is that everyone has their own system for improvement, some more by the book than others. No one style fits all.

In today’s article, I’ve assembled what I think are helpful but slightly unusual tips to implement into your practice life. I didn’t come up with all of these. I’ve had great mentors throughout my life and some wisdom has trickled down to me.

I hope they are helpful and humorous. I hope they can get you out of a rut, get you practicing, and thinking about your harmonica in a more fun and creative way.

Practicing With Mic In Hand…But No Amp

Sadly, if you live in an apartment building like I do, you know not every neighbor is cool with loud, blaring amplified harmonica at 8am. However, nothing can stand in the way of us obtaining that velvety, buttery amplified sound we all crave; so how do we achieve it without getting sued by our neighbors or violating a noise ordinance?

Well, I have a story for you.

In 2024, I got my puppy Rosie. While being one of the greatest events in my life, it, at times, really fucked up my harmonica practice for a while. Even the slightest loud noise would send her crying and yelping. 1st Position blow-bending? It would send her running for her kennel to cower in the corner. So, in spite of my new furry surroundings, I knew I had to make a change. I began a new way of practicing my amplified tone.. with no amplification. In blues harmonica, without even being hooked up into the amp, you can hear if a player has good tone.

What’s good tone?

I’ve always used the acronym BARF (Big, Air-Tight, Round, Fluid).

All these elements go into a player’s sound, and the beauty of each one is they don’t require hooking up into an amp.

I’ve found a simple practice to be holding your mic in hand while you learn licks, and having a keen awareness for how much breath you’re losing between your fingers. With a proper cup on a mic, that natural compression can be heard even without turning on the amp. It’s quieter, cheaper, and gets you used to holding the weight of the mic without needing to blow out your (or your neighbors) eardrums.

I’ve done this practice for years now, and Rosie, now three years old and quite used to the sound of harmonica, is very appreciative for the silent pivot. Sometimes, better amplified tone is not a matter of turning the amp up: it’s a matter of hearing how compressed your hands are on the microphone.

Learn Every Lick…Forward and Backward

A few months ago I felt like my playing was shit. I was repeating myself all the time, the same tiered licks over and over again. One day, after watching a video of myself at a show, I finally heard a solo I liked. I thought to myself “I wonder if I could learn this solo note for note”. I eventually did, but that wasn’t enough. I began to pick out specific licks I liked, and learn them in reverse. Doing this allowed me to not only approach my improvisations with a new angle, but with breaking the muscle memory I had built up for such a long time. I began to do this with every lick I transcribed. It became an endless source of licks and ideas. Sure, they won’t all sound great, but it gets you out of the box you’ve been playing in.

There’s science behind this. Research tracking individuals who practiced “mirrored reading” (reading text that is completely inverted and backwards) for 15 minutes a day over two weeks showed visible changes in brain activation patterns. Because it strips away autopilot processing, it forces heavy engagement from regions related to attention and higher-level cognition.

As harmonica players, muscle memory is both a gift and a curse. It allows us to rely on set, stock licks when we get into a rut. However, it also limits us, and unless we make an active, concentrated effort to break it sometimes, we’ll find ourselves in a rut very quickly.

Becoming a better harmonica player is a matter of fighting what is easy. We are keen to slide up and down the instrument in the same set of patterns, licks, and phrases because it feels familiar, but not necessarily because it’s what we want to play.

Studies mapping brain activity during backward movement show that walking backwards significantly increases activity in the prefrontal cortex—the area responsible for problem-solving, logic, and decision-making. Training yourself to learn licks in reverse during practice engages this same part of the brain. When you go up to improvise, you become accustomed to the stimulus of soloing. It’s not just something you’ve drilled; it’s something you understand. There’s a difference between developing the physical ability to play an instrument and the decision making behind making great music.

A solo is a repeated act of decision-making. The best improvisors make melodic and rhythmic choices based on how they feel in the moment. In other words, they have control over their instrument and their bodies, instead of the other way around.

Keeping a Practice Journal

If the last section was about eliminating autopilot in playing, this is about limiting it when you sit down to practice. Journaling forces intentionality not just in what you practice and want to improve on, but how seriously you take it.

I’ve always thought of my harmonica journals as investments in myself; little trophies and memories I could stack on my shelf and have a visual motivation to see how far I had come and what I had learned. It allowed me to track my progress, become clearer on what I needed to woodshed, and allowed me clarity and calm, limiting my range of focus to just what was on the page.

A journal allows you to create micro-specific goals. The macro circumstance of “getting better” begins with the smallest step. I like the visual of journaling because my goals for the day can’t be any bigger or smaller than the page they’re put on.

Keep your goals small but your consistency steady.

Don’t worry about the player you’ll become in ten years. Focus on the here and now, the present moment of practice and what you do and don’t have control over. A journal reminds you that taking practice seriously is the first step towards improvement. If you want to accomplish anything in life, it begins with consistent, tiny, actionable steps.

Musicians are prone to subjective discouragement. Many days, it can feel like you aren’t getting better, that you aren’t moving the needle. A practice journal provides physical reminders of how far you’ve come. It’s data you can’t run from. If you have bad habits, they will show up in your journals if you’re honest enough.

The easiest way to get started with harmonica journaling is to keep a log of your practice and write down three things for every session:

• The Goal (What specific issue am I working on today?)

• The Data (Specific exercise, scale work, arpeggios, position work, tabs)

• The Pivot (What needs to happen next? What should I work on tomorrow?)

Learning Songs in Multiple Positions

There’s more than just 2nd Position. Sometimes, harmonica players need to be reminded of this. Due to how user friendly it is, it can be tempting for people to get lost in cross harp: the bends are in juicy places, the warbles readily available, and we have the comfort of knowing that almost all the draw notes work. In other positions like 3rd, 1st, 12th, and 5th, we need to be more cognizant of where we are. We need to be more aware of where the bends sit and our likelihood for improper note choices goes up.

In other words, learning more positions means higher risk of failure.

A few years ago at a workshop down in New Orleans, I heard someone say they had taken a melody and learning it in every position. While not every one worked, they remarked how interesting an intellectual exercise it was. Learning the harmonica is learning all the key harmonicas, all twelve of them. Each one has a different tendency, tone, color, strength, and weakness. So do positions. It’s our job as harmonica players to understand what the pros and cons are of each harp, each position, and each choice we make as musicians.

Take a song like “When The Saints Go Marching In.” It sounds great in 2nd Position. But maybe, just for fun, why not learn it in 3rd? 1st?

You might be surprised by what you find.

Practicing Standing Up

A few years back, I took lessons with Rob Paparozzi. I asked him what advice he would give to someone learning how to play harmonica. His answer always stuck with me; so simple but spot on:

“Practice like you play.”

For me, that meant practicing in the position I was most accustomed to performing in: standing up.

Almost all of us sit down when we’re practicing. If you spend several hours a day practicing, it can get pretty exhausting standing all that time. However, for the harmonica player who only has 10-20 minutes a day, it’s very doable and crucial to conduct at least some portion of your practice time to standing up. It’s the easiest way I know to not only improve your tone, but also to adapt your body to the stimulus of performing without needing a live audience or a band.

Research on wind musicians published via The National Institutes of Health shows that standing increases upper and lower abdominal muscle activation by roughly 50% (to about 12% maximum voluntary contraction) compared to sitting (about 8%).

In other words, standing produces more air, and more air equals both endurance and phrasing. Having a more open posture relaxing your neck and jaw, and growing accustomed to moving around in the standing position are all very important for long term harmonica health.

In addition, playing harmonica is a very physical act beyond just the breath we use. Look at someone like Rick Estrin; able to move around the stage with ease, interacting with the crowd, all while playing his instrument at a high level.

Why? Because he practices like he plays.

I’m not saying you should only practice while standing up, but certainly adding a bit into your practice will make a big difference. If you want a non-financial, non-technical way to improve your sound, get your butt out of the chair.

See if it helps.

-Shane

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." -Galatians 6:9

As harmonica players, we all have our favorite stylists.

Some prefer others for different reasons. Discovering your influences is one of the most important ways we spend time as musicians. Speaking for myself, my main guys have always been Paul Delay, William Clarke, Little Walter, Stevie Wonder: players who continue to fascinate and entice me every day when I pick up my instrument.

However, if I had to vote for one who’s had the most prominent impact on me as a musician and creative person, it would be Jason Ricci.

Jason is one of the finest diatonic harmonica players in the world. His technique, innovation, and ability to dazzle isn’t just awe inspiring by harmonica standards, but by all musicians. Blending a background in traditional blues music with a voracious and endless inspiration from both classical and jazz, Ricci’s voice on the harmonica has become synonymous with the new paradigm of twenty-first century harmonica playing.

Look at any player under the age of thirty-five, almost anywhere in the world, and you will hear in some form Jason’s influence.

His YouTube Channel has fostered the growth of a whole new generation of harp players, all eternally grateful for his wisdom, humor, technical fluency, and humanity. He is a patron saint of this instrument, always willing to dedicate his time and effort to the improvement and growth of others. Speaking as someone who would not be where I am today without his YouTube videos, I know I speak for everyone when I say that the world would be a much less harmonica-heavy place without the guidance and wisdom of the Moon-cat.

Attention to Detail

Attention to detail separates good players from great players, and the great from the all-time great. Jason’s ability to not just play at blinding speeds but with the accuracy and technique of a surgeon allows for greater musicality, expression, and style. No note is out of place. You can hear the sheer amount of hours spent practicing, perfecting, and testing. From a slow blues to a lightning fast swing, his calm attention to both breath control and dynamics allow him to express at the highest levels.

Due to such a high degree of precision, his use of overblows and overdraws don’t sound like “last notch on the karate belt” upgrades, but like fluid, beautiful musical vocabulary. He’s not just using them because he can, but because they contribute to the story he’s trying to tell in any given solo. Blending both traditional Chicago style mastery with jazz and even classical music, he winds up sounding totally original and unique, a result of tireless dedication to craft and a belief in one’s never ending ability to evolve.

Evolution and Progress

Anyone can be good at harmonica. Evolution and adaptation are harder to pull off.

Personally, I love when musicians have chapters in their stories; clear points in time when you can hear their styles shift. As students, we can look back at our heroes as people to learn from, as well as to understand the choices that led them there. When I first heard Jason, I was taken back by how technical he was, but what kept me listening was how he adapted that technique over the years to new styles of music he found himself influenced by and wanted to emulate. He strikes me as a chameleon- able to blend into whatever musical style you drop him in and play with musical knowledge and confidence.

He is a great example of an artist who doesn’t rest on laurels, but continuously works to perfect their music; not because they believe in perfection, but because he has a high standard for himself. Reinvention is one of the hardest things for an artist to do, and as harmonica players, perhaps one of the biggest lessons we can derive from Ricci’s brilliance is his ability to adapt, learn, and grow from every gig, obstacle, and solo he plays.

Un-Dogmatic Approach To Craft

Being one of the most multi-dimensional players in the game, not only can he play traditional blues harmonica better than almost anyone, but he has evolved a fluency and musical repertoire to play in many other genres beyond what the harmonica already does well. Classical, Funk, Jazz, Zydeco, and so many more go into the gumbo that make up a Ricci-style solo. They are filled with the hard work and pushing of boundaries not always found in an instrument so rooted in “tradition”. Even to this day, you can still hear his solos evolving and see him branching out into other styles, not as a way to show-off, but as fuel for his creativity.

Rhythm

Perhaps the most under-looked aspect of Jason’s playing that makes him so legendary is his dedication to the groove. One of the reasons we revere the great blues harmonica players like Little Walter and Paul Butterfield is not just their licks, but how they played them on, behind, or ahead of the beat. Their sense of time is what gave them style. Ricci is the same.

One of the crucial aspects of his style is how he chops, plays, and dances with the groove, from a funk tune to a hard-rocking one. While his solos are also filled with interesting harmonic and melodic choices, it’s his rhythm that has fascinated me more than anything. By the way: that doesn’t just equate to playing fast. Having good rhythm applies to slow songs just as much. Put him in any position, and he doesn’t miss.

Humility

Above all else, what I admire most about Jason is his humility. It would be easy to be arrogant, being as accomplished and great a musician as he is. But he isn’t. What does he do instead? He works overtime, sharing his wisdom and skills with the world at large so that we may become not just better harmonica players, but better people. In his hundreds of free lessons on YouTube, he laid a pathway for thousands of harmonica players to walk down, shinning the light forward for a new generation, paving the way for hungry young lions, and always with his trademark humor, endless stories, and compassion.

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It says

“All you can take with you is what you have given away.”

Jason is the embodiment, not just in his music but in his teaching, his interactions, and his commitment to the craft. Pieces of him are implanted in harmonica players from all around the world. His legacy is secured, and he will go down in history not only as one of the best to ever pick up a harmonica, but the main reason why so many people stayed with it.

Sure, there’s an endless amount to take and study from his records and his live shows, but perhaps the biggest lesson is how he shows up every day as a man, as a musician, as an educator, and as a friend. As harmonica players, maybe what matters most isn’t the chops or the licks, but being endlessly curious, relentlessly humble, and open to whatever life has in store for us.

The greatest philosophies are the ones with practical application in our lives. Jason’s is always one of action, rooted in a deep respect for the instrument and a love of people, allowing him to spread the gospel of harmonica to the world at large, and always with a signature smile, huge heart, and steadfast dedication to improvement.

Thanks J.

-Shane

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
-Henry Ford

I’m sitting in a Holiday Inn on a bright, shining day in Concord, North Carolina.

My belly is full of homogenized vegetable oil, salt, and discarded animal parts. The hazy yellow invitation of the Waffle House down the road has beckoned my drunken self the last several nights, feasting on sunny-side-up eggs and toast till the wee small hours of the morning.

My brain is tired and ringing with the sharp sounds of phantom squeaky harmonicas, echoes left over from classes, concerts, and jams. My head feels burned out from drinking whiskey out of paper cups till 3 am with my fellow instructors. My lips are chapped, my harmonicas are in disarray in my case, and my eyes are heavy and swollen from late nights, early mornings, and endless, tear-filled laughs.

It is the final day of the Carolina Harp Fest, and despite the mileage, dehydration, and exhaustion, one emotion stands above all the rest: absolute, unbridled joy.

Amid the echo chamber of 3 draw bends, failed intonation, and embouchure debates, the air hangs heavy with the smell of fresh coffee and communal sweat. Students cluster into pairs or trios, asking questions and chatting about gear, favorite players, and life back home. Some pull instructors aside; others sit and look on, feeling out of place and out of their league among different skill levels, reclining on dusty chairs and fumbling through harmonica cases for position tables.

The dimly lit church at 7568 Ruben Linker Road has hosted this harmonica horde for the past several years, a sanctuary for all who have come to learn, grow, laugh, argue, and belong at this expanding, endlessly inspiring event. For attendees and teachers alike, this is our Jerusalem. We have traveled from across the country, from diverse backgrounds, and arrived at this hallowed hall to appreciate and better understand our fellow harmonica brothers and sisters. Welcome to Planet Parrott.

Every year, Todd Parrott’s Carolina Harp Fest reminds me that harmonica’s beauty lies in endless gratitude for everyone involved. It takes a village to sustain this instrument, and it takes saints to put on events like this that glorify and push the pursuit of excellence. Todd is one of those people with an endless passion and a tireless commitment to improving others.

As a harmonica player, I find it endlessly inspiring; a true mark of love for both the instrument and the community involved. Without him, an oasis like this wouldn’t exist, and we as harmonica players would all be lesser for it.

To many people, the harmonica isn’t a serious instrument. Ask any harmonica player what they play, and there is always a pregnant pause, out of fear of judgment. From the newest beginner to the consummate professional, pursuing something so culturally cast aside and misunderstood carries an inherent shame. As harp player John Gindick once said, the harmonica suits the musically hopeless. Arriving at harmonica means you have exhausted all options, but it also means you’ve found an instrument of limitless possibilities.

There is no “one” type of player. Many of us picture a romantic version of a harmonica player. We imagine the long shot of a cowboy riding into the sunset or a fedora-wearing bluesman on the Chicago bandstand.

It’s tempting to dismiss harmonica players. I certainly did. I thought it was a cheap, rough-and-ready instrument played by grandpas, cowboys, and homeless people. The beauty of a harmonica? All those things can be true…and yet so much more resides in twenty reeds, a comb, and a set of cover plates.

This varied community of humans comes to the harmonica for different reasons. Some players I know come to harmonica on their way somewhere else, maybe to another instrument or another chapter in their lives.

What binds us is never knowing exactly where the instrument might take us.

When I first came to the harmonica, it felt like a defeat. My fingers were broken, cast in bandages, recovering from bone-melding surgery. To ease the crushing void of six drumless months ahead, my grandfather, in an act of generosity, took me to the music store down the street and bought me my first Marine Band harmonica, the only suitable instrument for a boy with one hand.

Seeing it, shining and brilliant in the afternoon sun, I saw what my once promising drumming career had been reduced to: becoming a fucking harmonica player. I viewed it not only as a failure, but as a joke I would tell myself repeatedly the next few months: that I was still a musician playing music. I saw harmonica as the end of the road, not a rebirth.

In a mystical way, a harmonica tends to find the player more than the player finds the harmonica. It falls into our lap at crucial turning points in our lives. Like any sign from the universe, we can choose to read into it or not.

Many of the players I speak to now talk about the harmonica as something that changed their life, giving them a reason to be creative and access music when they had given up all hope. If that isn’t some mystical shit, I don’t know what is.

Imagine paying forty bucks for something that can change your life forever, and all it takes is pushing past some discomfort for a month or so.

Sounds like a cheap way to reinvent your life.

If you had asked me, as a beginner player, whether I would find some of my best friends through this instrument, I wouldn’t have believed you. And if you had asked me whether I’d one day attend a multi-day extravaganza that glorifies the consistent practice, technique, specifics, and showmanship of a child’s toy, I really wouldn’t have believed you.

Yet I can say that, now that I've been a professional for more than twelve years, the best thing about harmonica isn’t the instrument: it’s the people you meet through it, the adventures it takes you on, and the obstacles it poses.

At events like Todd’s, you can feel a palpable sense of returning to the tribe. The prodigal sons and daughters, alone in the world, come back together for several days of intense harmonica talk; a deep resetting of intellectual and musical camaraderie.

I’ve often thought of these events as harmonica’s answer to Comic-Con: individuals who can be their fullest selves immersed in their passions for seventy-two hours with like-minded people, enough to fill them up and keep them going for another year.

Whatever you might say about harmonica players, one thing is certain:

We need each other.

No matter where you are on the journey, beginners, pros, and everyone in between will always long for someone they can chat harp with. In every person I interacted with this week, I saw an undeniable twinkle in a player’s eyes when they found someone who understood them not just as a person, but as a harmonica player.

It’s like someone has turned on a light in a room that’s been dark for so long.

A distinct distance builds in each player’s heart in the 362 days after this event: a loneliness that only harmonica players will understand; cast back into the cold world of judgment, riddled with individual identities. For a few days, we gather and enjoy the best part of playing harmonica: feeling fully alive and fully ourselves.

It’s not about the chops or the technical proficiency you learn, or don't learn, at these events: it’s about connecting with people who appreciate this little instrument as much as you do.

Over three days, I gained a newfound appreciation for my colleagues: teachers I have looked up to for years and harmonica idols I have worshiped since I first started playing. Some of the biggest highlights of the event for me weren’t grandiose technical moments or performances that rocked the students’ socks off: they were sharing in laughs and discussions at the bar across the street from the hotel, standing outside, having a cigarette, and choking on our own laughter between jokes.

To my great friends Adam Gussow, Hank Shreve, Jamey Garner, Lauren Williams, Mitch Kashmar, TJ Klay, Jerry Fierro, and Todd Parrot, you all made this not just one for the books, but imbued every lesson and laugh with love, knowledge, and empathy. I am forever grateful to you all and for all you continue to do for this misunderstood, magnificent, colorful community.

Through life’s difficulties and challenges, we all arrived at the same place: holding on to an object deemed disposable long enough to fall in love with it. Harmonica is our way of dealing with the world, of understanding it. It’s our gift, our therapist, our voice, our vessel for self-expression. Thankfully, there’s a whole world of people just like us. We don’t have to do this alone. Sometimes being reminded of that is what gets us through the lonely existence of being a harmonica player.

The real gift of this week isn’t just what happened at the event—it’s knowing that when we return to our separate corners of the world, we don’t carry the silence alone anymore. We leave with our cases full, our lips chapped, and our cups empty, ready to take up the mantel once again.

My bags are packed. The hangover is starting to subside, or maybe I’m just numb to it. I wipe the tiredness from my eyes and step out into the North Carolina sun, bright, hot, and merciless on my sensitive constitution and pounding head this early. The Uber is waiting for me. Back to New York. Back to reality. Three hundred and sixty-two days of quiet, solitary practice lie ahead.

For now, the shrill phantom harmonica ringing in my head doesn’t feel like an inconvenience; if anything, it feels like home.

-Shane

Shane Sager: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you find the harmonica?

Jamey Garner: The harmonica and I sort of found each other. I literally found my first harmonica lying in the backyard of the very old house I grew up in. It was an old instrument, just lying there for me to pick up. I tapped it out and started blowing in and out. Later that day, my mom took me along on a grocery run. While waiting in the car, I taught myself how to play “Taps”. I have no idea why that tune, but that was the start. It’s played such a massive role in my life since then that I can’t help but look back on it as something almost mystical.

Shane Sager: The history of the harmonica is filled with graveyards of instruments left to rust in drawers. What kept you coming back to it?

Jamey Garner: I started singing in church around five or six years old, so the love of vocal performance came first. I tried piano, but it didn’t take. The harmonica, though, gave me an instrument I could add to that desire to be a singer. For years, I just fooled around with it. In my early teens, I watched the movie Crossroads. Seeing the older mentor character playing blues harp completely changed my perspective. I broke open an old pair of headphones, plugged them into a stereo speaker like a microphone, and blew into them with a B.B. King tape playing. That was the night I figured out bending. Once you learn to bend, it unlocks the expressive voice of the instrument, and you’re hooked. Later, during my freshman year of college, I saw a player named Tim Beatty live in a honky-tonk on the Kaskaskia River. Hearing what was truly possible on the instrument was the exact moment I got serious.

Shane Sager: When you were first learning, did you have formal training in music theory?

Jamey Garner: Very little. In fifth grade, I joined the school band playing saxophone. I learned the basics—reading the staff, 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures. Our band director would play vinyl records of the pieces we were assigned, and I discovered early on that I had developed a good ear. I could listen and follow along, which probably hindered my sight-reading because I relied on my ear instead of learning deep theory. I know enough theory to get by, but I don’t have an extensive background in it. If I could go back, I’d take the time to learn the fundamentals properly.

Shane Sager: Do you consider theory essential for harmonica players?

Jamey Garner: It’s not make-or-break, because plenty of incredible players have little to no theory background. But when you want to transcend to another level—especially communicating with other musicians in diverse settings—it becomes very important.

Shane Sager: For a harmonica player sharing a stage with a full band, finding your role can be tough. What advice would you give players about how to fit in?

Jamey Garner: Music is a conversation, and good conversation requires etiquette. When I step on stage—especially sitting in on a tune I might not know—I don’t try to jump out front and dominate.

First, take inventory before playing a single note. Look at the instrumentation. Who is handling the rhythm? Is there a keyboard player or a horn section? If there are no horns, I might approach my part like a saxophone or trombone, laying down pads like an organ. Other times, I lock in with the drummer’s snare and kick to build a percussive chug. It’s always about supporting the song rather than being the star of it, until it’s your turn to solo.

Shane Sager: As a singer and harmonica player, what does your songwriting process look like?

Jamey Garner: I start with lyrics. A lot of writers begin with a guitar progression or a melody on the piano, but I open a notes app and write words. As I write the lyrics, the cadence and delivery inform what the melody needs to be. From the melody, the chords and instrumentation fall into place. When writing with High South, the guys often bring in guitar-driven structures, but on my own, everything traces back to singing the idea first.

Shane Sager: In this era of AI, how do you stay motivated to keep writing original material?

Jamey Garner: I don’t think about it too much. Real creatives are always going to have something personal to say, and they aren’t going to rely on a machine to say it for them. Some writers and producers in Nashville treat AI like another production tool—similar to how Auto-Tune or drum machines have been used for decades—maybe throwing an idea into a program just to see a different interpretation. But true art requires human lived experience. Trends swing on a pendulum, and while technology changes, the core drive to express something real doesn’t.

Shane Sager: What is the hardest aspect of live performance for you?

Jamey Garner: Allowing myself to simply be in the moment. The desire to be great can backfire if you get too trapped in your own head. The real goal is to be fully present, listening to the band and participating in that shared energy with the audience without overthinking.

Shane Sager: Touring can become a real grind. How do you stay grounded and maintain your sanity on the road?

Jamey Garner: Having my own space to recenter. When you tour, you travel together, eat together, soundcheck together, and do meet-and-greets. You are constantly surrounded by people. I need quiet time to pull back into my shell—whether that’s a hotel room or a bunk on the bus—to read, watch a movie, and decompress before going on stage. When you return home after months away, there’s always a period of “re-entry” where you have to readjust to normal domestic life. Having the discipline to recharge makes both touring and coming home manageable.

Shane Sager: Through your work hosting Hohner’s Harp On This, you interact with players from across the spectrum. How has that exposure influenced your perspective?

Jamey Garner: It proves that the sky is the limit on this instrument. Outside of the harp community, people often reduce the harmonica to a narrow blues stereotype. But the players I admire most treat the instrument as an extension of their personal voice rather than trying to imitate Little Walter or anyone else. Years ago, Cary Bell told me that we’re never going to sound like someone else—you have to find your own tone. You can study the greats, but ultimately, your job is to bring your own sound to the table.

Shane Sager: You act, write, sing, and play harp. How do you balance those disciplines?

Jamey Garner: For me, they aren’t separate boxes; they live in the same sandbox. Acting, singing, and playing an instrument draw on the exact same creative muscles. Whether delivering a lyric or a line in a script, it comes down to listening, reacting honestly, and telling the truth in the moment.

Shane Sager: How do you deal with performance nerves?

Jamey Garner: Preparation is everything. When you know the material inside and out, the anxiety fades, and you earn the freedom to just play.

Right before hitting the stage, I get physical—shaking the tension out of my muscles, rolling my neck, loosening up. Once you step out there, it’s about treating the performance like an honest actor treats a scene: listen to what’s happening around you, focus on lifting the audience, and let go of the need to control the outcome.

Shane Sager: What would be your dream gig?

Jamey Garner: Contemporarily, I’d love to share a stage with the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Their musicianship and soulful approach to arranging are right in my wheelhouse. Historically, singing with Frank Sinatra would be the absolute pinnacle. In terms of rooms, playing an arena like Madison Square Garden remains on the bucket list.

Shane Sager: What keeps the fire burning to keep doing this?

Jamey Garner: An internal drive. I call it the “want to”. I still want to make music at the highest level possible, collaborate with great players, and perform on big stages. Every so often I wonder if I should slow down, but within a day or two, I realize this is why I breathe. That desire hasn’t gone away.

Shane Sager: My last Substack featured an interview with a student, Iana Laxer. I really appreciate her consistency; that was one of the big reasons I wanted to interview her. As an educator, that consistency drew me to you as well. When I first started playing harmonica, resources were pretty slim. The only guys I really found on YouTube were you, Ronnie Shellist, and Jason Ricci. But with your playing in particular, the overblow drew me in. I started on diatonic, moved to chromatic fairly quickly, but that gray area of learning overblows on the diatonic pulled me toward your work.

Between you, Jason, and Ronnie, I think you’ve all taught more harmonica players than almost anyone. You have real street cred. With all the people you’ve taught—whether in workshops or one-on-one—what is the most common issue you find with beginner or intermediate players?

Adam Gussow: I should clarify that I think about teaching in three categories. Years ago in New York, I taught private students one-on-one, and I taught weekly classes at the Guitar Study Center where I could track ongoing progress. The second category is YouTube teaching, where I don’t actually see the students. Once in a while, someone steps out of an elevator and says, “You’re my harmonica teacher!” but you don’t meet most of them, so you can’t track their development. Then there are the weekend workshops—Hill Country Harmonica, the camps with Ronnie, and others—where you work with people intensively over a few days. Because I’ve been a college professor for the past twenty years, my experience is a mix of those formats.

Thinking about your question, two things stand out: lack of precision in blues pitches—especially with the 3-draw bends and the 2-draw—and lack of precision rhythmically. Getting blues pitches right and locking in rhythmically define my style, and I know Ronnie and Jason emphasize that too.

Blues harmonica players often connect with the primal scream of the instrument—the unburdening, the wailing. It feels great to let that out, but it can cut against pitch and rhythmic precision. If I have a limitation, it’s that I’m not as strong on slow blues because it requires floating around the groove. My strength is driving the groove. The groove is the single most important element. If you have the groove, the space between the notes becomes meaningful music.

Years ago on Bleecker Street, I heard a New York player named Anthony Kane. He wasn’t playing anything overly complex or using overblows, but his tone was big, his pitches were dead on, and he was completely locked into the band’s groove. It sounds simple, but aligning your internal time with the band so you can push, pull, or swing behind the beat is a magic trick. When players lack that, they tend to substitute too many notes and sloppy pitches—like wild, unfocused shaking on the 3-hole. It’s too many notes, not enough groove, and no alignment.

Shane Sager: That’s so true. Even with players I admire, when they slip out of the groove, it breaks the trance immediately. It reminds me of that video of Little Walter playing with Koko Taylor where he just locks into the bassline and stays there. Copying basslines was one of the most useful things I did early on.

That leads right into my next question. When I ask what harmonica players need more of, the answer is usually rhythmic awareness or general music theory. What do you think harmonica players need more of, and conversely, what do they need less of?

Adam Gussow: Players need to think more about their role within a specific ensemble. Are you playing solo? In a duo? With a full band? If there’s an organ player trilling on the 4- and 5-draw, you can’t do the same thing; you have to find a different sonic space. If there’s no organ, maybe you provide that texture.

I learned this playing in Senegal. I was invited onstage with a local band from the Casamance region. I only had a C harmonica, and they were playing a diminished fifth away from my key—a key where I theoretically shouldn’t have been able to play. It was the most challenging performance situation imaginable. Instead of worrying about scales, I locked onto the rhythmic motif they were laying down and mirrored it with root notes, completely matching their feel. Because the rhythm was locked, the dissonance sounded intentional and bluesy.

Players need more situational awareness and a deeper understanding of how to serve the ensemble. Less overplaying, and more listening. That also means getting basic chord theory down. I don’t read standard notation, but I learned chord charts studying jazz guitar at Berklee. Knowing what a major triad is, or recognizing the dominant seventh chord and where those tones sit on the harp, is invaluable. Every harmonica player should take a basic Harmony 101 class.

Shane Sager: Having a foundation on another instrument makes a huge difference. I started on drums, and once I learned the 12-bar blues form, everything clicked.

Before we started recording, we touched on overblows. What I love about your diatonic playing is its fluidity. When people ask how I gauge an intermediate versus an advanced player, I look for fluidity—the connective tissue between phrases. Learning to overblow gave me some of that connective tissue. When you first incorporated overblows, how did that transition affect your style?

Adam Gussow: In September of 1987, I was twenty-nine and had been busking in Harlem for about a year. William Galison, a brilliant chromatic and diatonic player, called me to sub for him on the Broadway touring production of Big River.

While I was shadowing him in California, Will showed me the technique. He had worked with Howard Levy, who is the ultimate example of applying deep keyboard knowledge to the harmonica. Will took a C harp, drew on the 6, bent it down, pushed the air forward, and popped the overblow out. It blew my mind.

I picked up the 6, 5, and 4 overblows fairly quickly. From there, I started working out non-traditional melodies. I learned the sheet music to Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” and played Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.” I began adapting horn lines from King Curtis and Hank Crawford.

Around 1991, I brought a riff based on a funk guitar groove to Sterling Magee (Mister Satan) in Harlem. It used a D harp in third position with an overblow on the 5-hole. Sterling loved it, dubbed it “Thunky Fing,” and we played it the next day at the RiverBlues Festival in Philadelphia. The crowd went wild and made us play it repeatedly. That showed me you could innovate with overblows and still keep the grit and energy of the blues alive.

Shane Sager: Speaking of your time with Mister Satan, what’s the best piece of musical advice you’ve ever received?

Adam Gussow: The best advice is the old adage: take your time.

When I first started busking solo in the Village in 1985, I set up next to an older woman selling art and played frantically for thirty minutes. She finally looked at me and asked, “Couldn’t you slow down a little?” That was a version of “take your time.”

Measure your effort. Pick your spots. Don’t blow your whole routine in the first two minutes. When I started playing with Sterling, I was a young guy trying to prove I belonged on the bandstand with this master musician, so I tended to play too many notes. Nobody told me to stop; people just kept walking by. But the moment I relaxed, locked into his groove, and played only what the rhythm demanded, crowds began to stop and gather. The audience taught me the lesson: relax, take your time, and let the music breathe.

Shane Sager: The Latin phrase festina lente comes to mind—make haste slowly. Taking your time is essential, especially with an instrument like the harmonica.

Many students ask me about players to study to genuinely improve their playing, not just to listen casually. Who do you consider an underrated harmonica player that people should study?

Adam Gussow: Sugar Blue is worth deep study, specifically his early work. His album Crossroads, and his recordings with Brownie McGhee and Louisiana Red on Blues Is Truth, showcase his incredible high-end facility and bebop-influenced off-beat phrasing.

Another essential track is “Creeper Creeps Again” by James Cotton. It’s a masterclass in unamplified tone, dynamic control, and rhythmic swing. Years ago, I shared a dressing room with Cotton and Maceo Parker at a benefit in the UK. Maceo was warming up by running scales with incredible precision—serious jazz chops. Then I asked Cotton how he achieved that perfect studio performance on “Creeper Creeps Again.” He told me, “The band came out to my house outside Chicago, and we practiced hard for a week.” No magic tricks, no crossroads pacts—just focused, disciplined rehearsal.

Shane Sager: If a working player only has fifteen or twenty minutes to practice on a given day, how should they spend that time?

Adam Gussow: First, use a timer. Setting a timer for fifteen minutes makes the time feel expansive and keeps you honest.

I’d break a short session down into three parts:

• Warm-up and Scales (5–7 minutes): Work the blues scale in time, using a metronome. Do it across different harps—a low harp like a G, a middle harp like a C, and a high harp like an F. Moving between a G and an F harp requires completely different embouchure tension and airflow.

• Free Play and Discovery (5 minutes): Improvise freely. Follow a melodic idea somewhere new, and if you hit an interesting phrase or arpeggio, repeat it and record it.

• Repertoire and Song Study (5 minutes): Pick an actual song from your repertoire. Play through the melody, hold the groove, and outline the chord changes. Harmonica players often jam endlessly without ever learning how to play a complete song from start to finish. You have to be able to stand on your own and play a complete tune.

Shane Sager: That emphasis on metronome practice, discovery, listening, and adjusting to the physical demands of different keys is great practical advice.

Looking back across your career, is there anything you wish you had focused on earlier?

Adam Gussow: I don’t carry many regrets because my path unfolded naturally, but I do wish I had developed my third position playing further. Because I relied heavily on overblows to get missing chromatic notes in second position, I bypassed exploring third position the way modern players like Aki Kumar or Jason Ricci do.

I also love the sound of the chromatic harmonica. I played a little on the first Blues Doctors record, but I never dedicated the time required to master it. Overblows gave me my voice on the diatonic, but it came at the expense of third position and the big chromatic.

Shane Sager: You also have a significant career as an author. What can you tell us about your current writing projects?

Adam Gussow: My last book, My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir, came out in 2025. It explored my twenty-two-year interracial marriage, raising our son in Mississippi, and navigating the cultural conversations around race in America from a perspective rooted in Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideal of the beloved community.

My current project is entirely different. When I was nearly fourteen, in March of 1972, the deadliest school bus-train collision in New York State history occurred a mile from my home in Rockland County. An eighty-three-car freight train sheared a school bus carrying forty-nine students in half. Five students died, and dozens were severely injured.

I’ve spent the last two and a half years conducting oral history interviews with survivors, first responders, and residents. It examines suburban growth, community, and how catastrophic trauma echoes through people’s lives fifty years later.

Shane Sager: That sounds like a powerful read. To bring things back to music and look toward the future: with the rise of AI and digital media, where do you see the harmonica heading, and what keeps you motivated to keep playing?

Adam Gussow: AI is built to extrapolate from existing data in an efficient, orderly way. What it can’t replicate is the erratic human edge—the grit, the imperfections, and the hard-earned personal style that defines great blues harmonica playing.

Lineage will always matter. Who taught you? Who taught them? You can learn technique online, but you cannot download the experience of sitting in a room with a mentor, playing on the street, or locking in on a bandstand.

What keeps me playing right now is my band, Sir Rod & The Blues Doctors. Rod Patterson is Mister Satan’s nephew. We connected in late 2019, hit it off instantly, and have released two albums and toured together. My twenty-year-old son, who is a fantastic brass player, joined us on electric bass, and having him lock into the groove while I’m playing drums and harp is an incredible feeling.

Shane Sager: Any final words for the players reading?

Adam Gussow: If I have one final piece of advice for players looking to find their own voice: don’t just listen to other harmonica players. Listen to saxophonists, trumpet players, and guitarists. Transcribe their phrasing. Copying horn players like Houston Person, Hank Crawford, and King Curtis shaped my style more than anything else. Take the music from other instruments, adapt it to the harp, and make it your own.

"Taste cannot be bought; it is a discipline that must be learned, nurtured, and lived." -Andre Leon Talley

Phrasing is musical thought in motion.

Great improvisation relies on great phrasing- musical sentences we piece together to form solos, develop our sound, and communicate our emotions. In a solo, a harmonica player combines timing, technique, and a steady stream of pre-learned licks and riffs into their own story. This isn’t natural talent: it’s a learned craft.

Just as the great speeches of the past are composed of careful word choice, breath, delivery, practice, and cadence, great harmonica solos are built, not born. Over years of study, discovery, and application, you can develop your phrasing as well.

Here are three ways to start.

Prior Study:
Downloading and Understanding

Creating a unique style begins with a lot of imitation.

The best writers begin their careers by copying and obsessing over their predecessors’ work, understanding literary history, and taking on a few solid influences. Joan Didion spent hours retyping Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. When asked why, she said, “to learn how the sentences worked. How a sentence would turn, how the cadence would fall.” Much like music, writers must be as sensitive to the rhythmic flow of a phrase as they are to the genre they are writing in. In Gene Ramey’s account of Charlie Parker in the Ozarks in 1937, at just fifteen years old, Parker would obsessively transcribe Lester Young solos, trying to learn all the inflections and breath control. He even went so far as to learn several solos note for note in all twelve keys.

In terms of the harmonica, the best practices I’ve found are grounded in a deep study of both the history of the instrument and a rigorous practice regimen consisting of the following goals:

• Song studies of great instrumentals and classic solos. Transcribe, understand, rewind, try, rewind, repeat. Don’t just get the gist. Go deep.

• Technical practice and exposing the dynamic range of the instrument, the strengths and weaknesses.

• Finding players you love (around 3-4) who act as your primary influences and learning everything you can from their canon. I did this with Stevie Wonder, Paul Delay, and William Clarke. They had the most profound effect on my development because I spent the most time with them.

• Recording yourself. Listen for nuances and tone you are trying to emulate.

• Comparing and contrasting players; what do some do better or worse than others? How might you tweak their style slightly?

• Keeping a practice journal of insights, transcriptions, practice notes, etc.

I’ve found that the more I study and perfect my playing, the more I appreciate all the wonderful harmonica players who came before me. The idea isn’t to become a clone; it’s to have a wide range of inspiration to draw from and figure out how you want to sound.

Taste Development:
What You Do and Don’t Like

Just as important as studying styles and ingraining technical prowess is developing taste. Not every solo will be great. Most of all, not every classic harmonica player or genre of music will inspire you. When developing original phrasing, discovering what you don’t like is as crucial as appreciating styles you want to emulate.

When I was coming up as a harmonica player, I was ashamed to admit that I wasn’t a Little Walter fan. I knew he was “the guy”; everyone wanted to sound like him and would drone on about how influential he was. I didn’t get it. I thought it sounded outdated and was more intrigued by people like William Clarke and Stevie Wonder. So, I put Walter on the shelf. I came back to him in my mid-twenties, and that’s when I really began to understand and study him. I realized that, as a young man, my taste hadn’t matured enough to appreciate him or study him at a level where I could derive value from his records.

Taste, like skill, takes a long time to develop. Many times you’ll find that players or styles you didn’t like at one time start to make sense years down the line. Many of my students have felt this way about John Popper.

Taste is also about standards; raising them as you improve as a player. I’ve found great phrasing comes from awareness and the ability to grow from failure. For every great gig I had, there were five that were absolute shit. That’s taste: learning from mistakes and moments we want to forget, and understanding that everything we do as musicians is a work in progress; every gig is just a piece of the puzzle. Our phrasing is developed when we’re able to find what works for us as harmonica players, be it gear, genres, or players who inspire us.

Deeply inspired by Hemingway and Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver thought he had written a perfect collection of short stories when he turned in his manuscript for “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. His editor, Gordon Lish, thought otherwise. During editing, Lish cut almost seventy percent of what Carver had written. Instead of being crushed, Carver made a stylistic shift, leaning into the power of “less is more” and realizing how much could be said with so little. The pressure from this editor and the standard Carver held himself to worked together to create one of the greatest short story collections ever written.

Influence and hard work only get you so far. Developing great ideas, great stories, and tasty musical phrasing is a never-ending work in progress. It’s all drafts. No musical phrase is perfect; it’s only how you feel in that moment after years of work and preparation. One intriguing thing about developing taste is how constantly your perspective shifts. It makes the journey of being a harmonica player so exciting. Nothing is set in stone. There’s always more to learn. There are always more opportunities to fail.

In fact, failure is a perfect place to start.

Ideas in Practice:
Real-World Exposure

You’ve done the hard work of learning older styles, developing taste, and becoming technically proficient: what now? Well, now, it’s time for some real-world exposure therapy. Scary but crucial to developing better phrasing is testing what you’ve learned in a high-stakes environment with nerves, tension, and live musicians. All the practice in the world can’t prepare you for this; it can only give you more to say. Developing phrasing in a live setting is like sparring: sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but you can always learn something.

Here are some things I like to keep in mind when phrasing on a gig or a jam:

1. Keep it simple. Often at jams, I’ll hang in the back with the bass player or drummer and only practice my comping/rhythmic playing. In my solos, I’ll take a heavy rhythmic approach to focus on my pocket playing. Not flashy, but always something I can work on. The best phrasing is almost always in time, so it warrants lots of unsexy live practice. I compare playing rhythmically to a jab in boxing: it’s the most common aspect of the sport, and while seemingly basic, it holds the key to great fighters’ styles.

2. Stick with the first four holes of the harmonica. A world of phrasing opens up between holes 1-4 on the diatonic. Bends, chords, double stops, tongue blocking, etc. Don’t be afraid to limit yourself. The less you have to play, the more you can relax and play each hole with intention rather than panic-playing the whole range of the harp to sound flashy.

3. Hold long notes. If I ever don’t know what to play, I’ve always believed the easiest way out of a rut is to play with long, exaggerated bent notes (4D’, 5D’, etc.). Legato playing lets you limit yourself even further and play with a different set of ornaments (hand technique, vibrato, dirty notes, etc.).

4. Repeating phrases to build tension. I’m a huge Sonny Boy Williamson II fan. He was the king of repeated phrasing to increase musical tension. When struggling to develop phrasing or nervous in front of a crowd, I use this strategy to guarantee a strong audience reaction.

There’s nothing like playing live. Woodshedding and studying records is great, but the stimulus of playing live develops your phrasing faster than any other practice. When you learn to speak a language, I’ve found the best way to become fluent isn’t with flashcards or Duolingo: it’s being in an environment where those skills are put to the test in real scenarios.

Great phrasing comes from practice, taste development, and real-world experience. Connecting licks and riffs is technically demanding. It isn’t about having every note in the dictionary at your disposal. It’s about knowing what you want to say, stripping away what you don’t, and delivering in real time.

Be patient. Trust the work. Build your vocabulary, muscle memory, and ears.

You’ll be happy you did, and so will your audience.

-Shane

A few weeks ago I got to sit down with one of my favorite up-and-coming harmonica players, Iana Laxer.

Documenting a harmonica player's journey has always fascinated me. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching. Over the last few years, I’ve seen Iana’s incredible progression online as a great example of what happens when you give yourself to the process. With wit and no sense of ego, she continuously strives to be the best harmonica player she can be, tirelessly challenging herself. It’s inspiring to watch.

We can all learn a thing or two from her devotion to our beloved instrument.

Shane Sager: I wanted to do this interview because of your consistency. It’s one thing to post a video every now and then, but your drive and the compound growth in your playing over time really stand out. How did you find the harmonica?

Iana Laxer: It was a completely random sequence of events. It actually started with an obsession with American country music and vintage style—pretty unusual given that I was living in the middle of Russia.

Most people discover the blues first and then pick up the harp; for me, it was the exact opposite. I started hearing the instrument in modern country and country-rock. My biggest early influence was actually a German band called The BossHoss, who play American rock/country/blues. Their harmonica player, Hank Williamson, blew me away.

Then I stumbled upon a local Russian band in my city that played American country in Russian, and they had a harmonica player too. Around that time, I found out my dad had bought a harmonica years earlier, couldn’t get a good sound out of it, and tossed it into a drawer. It was an obscure Hohner Alabama Blues model. I essentially stole it from his drawer and started trying to learn from YouTube until I blew out the 5-draw reed.

Shane: Russia and Europe definitely have a different cultural lens on American roots music.

Iana: In the US, people produce so much incredible music and cinema that they often stay within that massive cultural box. Growing up in Russia, we consumed the American classics, but we also absorbed a wide range of European music.

Shane: Was the harmonica your first instrument?

Iana: Yes, straight out of the gate.

Shane: For so many people, the harmonica ends up forgotten in a drawer. What kept you coming back to it?

Iana: Initially, I just thought it was really cool, and I wanted to be cool. I picked it up eight years ago, but I basically wasted the first seven years trying to teach myself. I had no direction, no feedback, and no idea whether what I was doing was right or wrong.

Right before the pandemic, Tomlin Leckie ran a 28-day February challenge where participants focused on one specific technique, recorded daily videos, and shared them in a private group. That group is actually where I met my husband. We bonded through the harmonica across continents—he was in Canada, and I was in Russia. We tiptoed around our feelings for two years. When the war started, I realized life was too unpredictable to hold back, so I told him how I felt straight out. Now we’re married.

At that point, I felt I owed it to our love story to never give up on the instrument. Then, a year ago, everything shifted when I began studying with Ronnie Shellist and connected with JDR.

Shane: JDR makes fantastic harps. How did that partnership come about?

Iana: They actually reached out to me. I had taken a masterclass with Ronnie Shellist and Todd Parrott, which gave me the confidence to record a cover of “Folsom Prison Blues.” That video hit around 20,000 likes on social media. Shortly after, JDR messaged me offering to gift me a harmonica. I chose their Ninja model. When it arrived, I loved it immediately—to this day, it’s my favorite. I posted a video review, and they sent another, and another. Eventually, they asked if they could repost my videos, and I decided to be bold. I told them: “I love your harps and your company’s innovative mindset. Would you sponsor me?”

To my shock, they agreed. We signed a contract requiring a new video every two weeks. That external accountability was the best part; it forced me to practice consistently and achieve a tangible result on a strict deadline.

Shane: What does your daily practice routine look like now?

Iana: I had to change the language around it. If I tell myself, “I need to practice tonight,” or put it on a to-do list, I hit massive internal resistance. It turns into an intimidating, high-pressure event that requires an uninterrupted two-hour block of inspiration.

My guiding principle now is: contact matters more than reverence. Contact means picking up the harp even if it’s only for 30 seconds. I take my harmonica to my job operating an embroidery machine. If a thread breaks or a machine is running, I’ll sneak in 30 seconds to run a couple of licks into muscle memory.

When I sit down at home, I don’t call it practice; I call it “hanging out with Ronnie.” I put on one of Ronnie Shellist’s classes or an ear-training exercise to relax into playing. Then I drill targeted mechanics—specifically a clean 2-draw (which I tend to bend accidentally) and the 3-draw half-step bend. After that, I spend the rest of my time learning and polishing the material for my next video.

Shane: When you entered the broader online harmonica community, what was your initial impression?

Iana: In Tomlin’s small challenge group, it was overwhelmingly positive. Everyone was supportive and invested in each other’s progress.

The trouble began when I branched out to larger public groups and social media platforms. An 18-second clip I posted casually went viral—over 150,000 views—and the comments turned vicious. You quickly run into the gatekeepers and the loud minority.

I’m sensitive, so nasty comments do get to me. If it’s an irrelevant, creepy comment from some stranger, I delete and block. But the comments that really sting are from people with status in the harmonica community. I had a prominent figure essentially tell me: “Hide and disappear until you’re good enough to share.”

As a trained teacher with a master’s degree in education, that infuriates me. If a language teacher told a struggling beginner, “You suck, don’t speak until you’re fluent,” they’d be fired on the spot. Yet in the music world, some people think cutting down beginners makes them “tougher.” That isn’t teaching; it’s gatekeeping.

Shane: There’s an old guard that tries to pigeonhole everyone into traditional 1950s Chicago blues, asking, “What do you know about suffering?”

Iana: Exactly. When I played a solo derived from a Chinese melody, someone commented: “Go listen to the classics. Go listen to Paul Butterfield.” Or they ask, “What do you know about the blues? What do you know about suffering?”

Everyone has experienced pain and struggle in their own life. You don’t have to fit the demographic of an older American man to understand suffering. Right now, I’m learning the vocabulary of this musical language so that I can eventually express my own life through it. To tell someone they aren’t allowed to play the blues because they don’t look a certain way or haven’t lived in a specific box is absurd.

Shane: What responsibility do established luminaries have in this community?

Iana: The responsibility of a real teacher. They need to recognize that their words carry immense weight, and choosing not to be cruel is easy. Established players should use their platform to encourage and elevate people of all backgrounds, genders, and skill levels rather than gatekeep.

Shane: Looking back over these eight years, what’s one thing you wish you had done differently?

Iana: I would have found a qualified teacher immediately.

For seven years, I tried to piece together free YouTube clips. I accumulated random licks from different players without any structural foundation, and I couldn’t connect any of it. I would get frustrated, feel like I sounded terrible, and put the instrument down for three to six months at a time.

My husband actually gifted me my first two lessons with Ronnie Shellist because he knew how much the instrument meant to me. I was so terrified of embarrassing myself that I waited three months before working up the nerve to schedule the call. But Ronnie met me with total encouragement and gave me laser-focused exercises. That single lesson changed everything. Having the right teacher accelerates your growth and protects you from years of aimless frustration.

Shane: What keeps the harmonica out of the drawer for you today?

Iana: The pleasure finally outweighs the stress.

For seven years, playing caused me more anxiety than joy. Now, after consistent practice and proper guidance, I genuinely enjoy picking up the instrument. I feel like an actual harmonica player rather than someone just struggling to practice.

Beyond that, the community of genuine musicians I’ve connected with makes it all worthwhile. Having Charlie Musselwhite repost my videos, messaging with Rick Estrin, talking to Boris Plotnikov, or being able to call Ronnie Shellist when I need advice—those relationships completely eclipse the online noise. That connection is something I would never walk away from.

I’ve made some of my best friends through the harmonica. A few days ago I was lucky enough to sit down with one of them. Based in Eugene, Oregon, Hank Shreve is one of the most dynamic, fiery, and soulful harmonica players on the scene today. With incredible mastery over both diatonic and chromatic, as well as a wide range of other instruments and a killer voice, he’s a force to be reckoned with. We’ve known each other for almost ten years now, and it’s always such a pleasure to speak with him, let alone call him one of my best friends.

Shane Sager: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you pick up the harmonica?

Hank Shreve: I was about eight years old. My parents were musicians, and during a rehearsal, a family friend came over. My dad was a carpenter at the time and had randomly recognized this guy on a job site from the Bay Area. He asked him, “Are you still playing harmonica? Come over to the house; let’s rehearse and jam.”

That was the first time I heard a harmonica in person. I was immediately taken by how big of a sound could come from such a small instrument. He gave me a harmonica—or maybe I stole it, I’m not sure—and just by watching him play, I picked out the basics: how to bend a note, how to get a single note. I watched his breathing and how his cheeks moved. I taught myself a lot in the beginning because anytime I asked questions about technique, I rarely got an answer. That became a huge motivation for me to teach—helping others figure out what is essentially a “blind” instrument where you can’t see what you’re doing.

Shortly after, Willie Weber, the drummer in my parents’ band—a fantastic blind African American musician who had played with The Coasters and Junior Walker—started going to the library every week to check out blues albums for me. That’s where I discovered my heroes: Paul deLay, William Clarke, Norton Buffalo, Junior Wells, Curtis Salgado. Through Willie, I also branched into gospel, jazz, soul, and funk. Then I joined school band, picked up drums, and the rest is history.

Shane: Prior to that, what were you listening to?

Hank: Motown, blues, old-school soul, and R&B were played in the house constantly. Louis Prima and The Coasters, too. In fact, King Curtis was an early influence. When I started on harmonica, I’d try to copy the saxophone lines he played on those early Coasters and Robins recordings. Years later, I realized so many harmonica greats were heavily influenced by sax players—especially King Curtis and Louis Jordan.

Shane: You played drums in school band, and your parents are musicians. Looking back, how much did that formal ensemble experience impact your trajectory on the harmonica?

Hank: Even though I was a drummer and percussionist in the school band, harmonica was still my first instrument. When I started playing in jazz band, every once in a while a bluesy chart would come up—”Night Train,” “Chitlins Con Carne,” or something out of the Real Book. I’d ask the band director if I could play harmonica on it, and to my surprise, they always said yes. That continued through middle school and high school.

Playing with a big band taught me about dynamics and being a team player. When you’re in a large ensemble, you have to be acutely aware of your space, avoid stepping on toes, and watch the conductor. It also introduced me to the foundations of music theory, even if the concepts didn’t fully click until years later when I dropped out of college and hit the road.

Shane: A lot of people treat harmonica as a secondary novelty or an afterthought. What made you treat it as a serious, primary pursuit instead of pivoting exclusively to something like drums or guitar?

Hank: In high school, I actually got deep into guitar—heavily into Stevie Ray Vaughan—and seriously considered becoming a lead guitarist. But the harmonica is entirely unique; it sets you apart. There are millions of guitarists and drummers. The harmonica offers an unmistakable voice and identity. I still play a lot of guitar for my own enjoyment, but the harmonica allows for a level of raw expression that feels unmatched.

My drum teacher, Jim Douglas, always taught me that the number-one rule in music is to make people dance. He once heard me on harmonica and told me, “You’re good on drums, but you really shine when you play that harmonica.” That stuck with me.

Shane: When performing live, what are three core principles you keep front of mind?

Hank:

1. Timing. A former drummer in my parents’ band, Casey Forbin, once asked me if I practiced to a metronome. I hesitated, and he called me out immediately. He told me, “Metronomes are annoying, but they don’t lie.” Whether practicing to a click or playing over keyboard drum loops, internalizing rock-solid rhythm is non-negotiable.

2. Dynamics. Dynamics create conversation. If you blast at one volume the entire time, people tune out. It loses all meaning.

3. Intent and Meaning. Is what you’re playing coming from an honest emotional place? On stage, I try to channel whatever is there—humor, anger, sadness, joy. When you stop overthinking and just play, it becomes a trance-like, meditative state.

Shane: You’ve logged thousands of hours on the bandstand. What do you still actively struggle with as a musician?

Hank: Letting go of perfectionism. When you front a band, you hold high standards—for yourself and the players you hire. But if a tune takes an unexpected turn on stage, you can’t throw a fit or flash a look. Audiences pick up on onstage tension immediately. I’ve had to learn to accept that things won’t always match the exact arrangement in my head, and that’s okay.

Whenever students ask how to improve, I tell them to go to open jams. You test ideas, fail in real time, take mental notes, and refine it at home. It forces you to adapt and teaches you how to paraphrase ideas rather than just mimicking solos note-for-note.

Shane: William Clarke is a shared hero of ours, but Paul deLay is someone we’ve both studied obsessively. What made Paul such a singular force for you?

Hank: If I had to pick one influence above all, it’s Paul deLay. Beyond having incredible ears and fearless creativity, his songwriting was ruthlessly honest. His tunes without harmonica are just as powerful as his harmonica features.

The arrangements on records like You Got to Move or Ocean of Tears are masterclasses. Peter Dammann on guitar, Louis Pain on organ, and Dan Fincher on sax functioned together like an entire horn section. Dan told me their secret was splitting chords between the instruments rather than duplicating voicings.

Paul’s chromatic playing was also brilliant. A legendary interview exists where Tom D’Antoni asks him what “chromatic” means, and Paul deadpans that he has no idea. Lloyd Jones, his childhood friend, backed that up—saying Paul didn’t think in terms of half-steps early on; he just heard the music and found it. Even while serving time in prison, he wrote four albums’ worth of material, dictating chord progressions over daily payphone calls to Louis Pain and teaching the prison band members their parts note-by-note. That level of musicianship and narrative humor is rare.

Shane: In blues, there’s an ongoing debate between tongue blocking and lip pursing. What’s your take on the pros and cons?

Hank: You should learn both.

If you want to play fast, percussive, articulate single-note passages, pursing often gives you a snappier attack because your tongue isn’t tied to the comb. But if you only purse, as Joe Filisko famously put it, it’s like playing piano with one finger.

Tongue blocking gives you access to slaps, octaves, and splits—like the 1–4 draw split or the 3–6 blow split. Those partial chords provide harmonic glue and rhythmic drive. For full-band blues, tongue blocking is indispensable for that massive acoustic tone. Don’t limit yourself to one camp; use the technique that serves the music in the moment.

Shane: Moving between diatonic and chromatic can feel like training two completely different instruments. How do you approach balancing both?

Hank: The chromatic can be frustrating because it’s mechanically temperamental. Temperature shifts, wind savers sticking, or slide alignment issues can throw it off quickly. But tonally, it’s gorgeous and instantly turns heads because listeners aren’t accustomed to hearing a harmonica navigate complex minor keys and jazz changes.

To balance them, I lean on position playing. Every diatonic player should know first, second, and third position by heart without looking at a chart. Chromatic operates similarly. Once you learn first, second, and third position with the slide in and out, you suddenly have access to six keys right out of the gate. From there, I let the song decide: if a track is heavily minor, moody, or calls for broader chord textures, the chromatic usually gets the call.

Shane: What do harmonica players need more of?

Hank: Music fundamentals.

Shane: What do they need less of?

Hank: Ego.

Shane: Go-to diatonic?

Hank: Hohner Marine Band Deluxe. It takes the classic tone of an out-of-the-box Marine Band and pairs it with screws, an ergonomically sealed comb, and better durability. I’ve also been enjoying the Rocket lately.

Shane: Go-to chromatic?

Hank: Hohner CX12. It’s loud, projects well, and can take a serious beating on stage.

Shane: A player more people should study?

Hank: Alan Wilson.

Shane: One essential recording every student should study for blues harmonica?

Hank: “Rocker” by Little Walter for pure diatonic study, and “The Other One” by Paul DeLay for songwriting and phrasing.

Shane: If you could travel back in time to share the stage with one player, who would it be?

Hank: Paul DeLay. I opened for him a couple of times, but trading choruses with him on stage would have been the ultimate experience.

Shane: What drives you to keep picking up the instrument today?

Hank: Harmony. I’ve always been obsessed with chords, dissonances, and rich voicings. Trying to translate those sounds to the harmonica and keyboard keeps me curious. At the end of the day, it comes down to playing from the heart rather than just the head. Listeners can always tell the difference.

“To continue creating, a person has to maintain an essential discomfort.”
-Rachel Cusk, Coventry

I’ve struggled to write recently. The end of summer hangs over everyone like an extended Sunday-scaries feeling: the dreaded start of the school year, new leases, and a renewed sense of hesitation as autumn approaches. For the past few weeks, I’ve sat down at my computer, praying for meaningful words to reflect back at me, only to find myself rapping on the backspace button like a drum.

So goes the creative process.

Honestly, how much can someone write consistently about the harmonica? I can’t believe I’ve managed to get over 175 articles out over the last few years. But now, just like our tiny instrument, I find myself limited, stressed, and running out of ideas.

All creatives get stuck at some point. It’s part of the gig. As much as we want to produce shiny masterpieces and catchy tunes day after day, sooner or later there’s a big “fuck you” from that muse of ours, and ideas are harder to come by than fresh water in the ocean. These moments of pause create anxiety and fear, questioning whether we’ll ever create again; whether you’ll ever write another song, paint another painting, or, in my case, produce an article about life lessons learned through the exploitation and life’s devotion to mastering a child’s toy.

It is an essential discomfort, and the more we fool ourselves into thinking it’ll go away, the more we procrastinate the hard work of churning out crappy first attempts. The irony of writing an article about struggling to write is not lost on me. But maybe it’s the perfect cure.

Isn’t that what art is? Exporting your inner experience into a piece of work that gives people something to think about? Tolstoy famously wrote that art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings. Perhaps what we share most as creative people is not opinions or taste, but the inherent, essential discomfort that governs all our lives; the force that pushes us into unknown lands and extremes of expression.

If music teaches us anything, it’s that what we share doesn’t have to be some grandiose, shiny trophy: the space of three minutes, some chords, and a key change will do it. When you’re stuck in a deep, creative rut, just remembering that there’s absolutely nothing special about your slump helps: just do the fucking work.

Jerry Seinfeld once said:

“Just sit down, be mediocre, and realize you’re going to have to put a lot of effort into this to make it good.”

I know many harmonica players who start getting really good only once they’ve hit a massive creative block. The ones who improve are the ones who push through the wall, who respect and appreciate that mediocrity is both a starting point and a valley you trudge through. You can only get good one way for so long. Shaking things up matters as much as endurance. If you truly hate the process of becoming better, the problem might be the process, not you. There are many different ways to learn and create. Part of accepting hardship in the creative act is realizing that while the goal may be the same, the path changes over time. The good news? Most of the time, your brain is really good about throwing up red flags when you need to shake things up.

I’ve had many harmonica students over the years who have come to me stuck at a roadblock in their development. They come complaining about their intonation, their repertoire, their inability to improvise. They swear they got that one harmonica from Hohner that “didn’t work” and now need to buy one from every other company. They say their embouchure is broken, their lungs don’t work, and that they want to give up. However, part of becoming a better harmonica player is realizing the difference between “I’m having trouble” and “I can’t”. One is an act of growth, and the other is an act of self-limitation.

Too often we mistake a cut for a gunshot wound, a momentary pain vs a lifelong affliction. Developing as a harmonica player is a long series of cuts; we just get better at treating them when they come up. Self-doubt, insecurity, imposter syndrome, creative blocks, and fear are repeated injuries that are a cost of being in this game. The question isn’t whether they will happen; it’s when. I heard a statistic that the injury rate in American football is 100%; creativity is no different. The ones who make it have two things in common: they don’t quit, and they pack a lot of Band-Aids.

So, here I am.

Sitting at my desk yet again, Band-Aid ready for yet another cut.

I’m just happy I fucking did something.

We’ve heard it so many times that something is better than nothing, and while it’s true, this week really puts it into context. Creative blocks aren’t death sentences; they’re just reminders that we’re human, that we’re vulnerable, that we care. If this dry spell has taught me anything, it’s given me new humility and respect for creative people. I thought I would always have a steady stream of article ideas flowing into this Substack every week. Not always the case. We, as musicians and creative people, will always deal with that invisible force that keeps us from creating. There is a quiet comfort in knowing that we all deal with this. Doubt kills many a man before their time. Discomfort is the price of admission to do what we do. It is the essential element of creativity; omnipresent and impish in its disruption.

The true pain of the creative process isn’t in the work; it’s in all the reasons not to, and giving in to them.

Tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll face the same demons I faced today, smiling and mischievous in their forms of procrastination and avoidance. I’m sure the backspace key will be rapped more times than I can count, that I’ll play the same tired riffs on my harmonica and beg for something new to come out.

But more than anything, beyond the doubts and insecurities, I know I’ll try.

And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

-Shane

The other day, I read an article in the New York Review of Books discussing the release of a new book by Roxane Khani. The book discusses how humans have misunderstood mutation in our bodies. Recent research has changed how we understand disease and biological individuality. It explains that mutations in the human body are not just accidents but a constant feature of natural life, occurring trillions of times every day in our roughly 30 trillion cells. Khasi argues that understanding this daily cellular change more deeply is reshaping how doctors approach treatment strategies and helping them diagnose potential cancer patients earlier.

Thinking about the constant swirling of those microscopic cells in my body while I had my morning coffee and watched the sun rise over Boston made me reflect on daily change. Mutations aren’t just for cells: they are for music too. So many parts of our daily lives, so many chances at growth, float by without us noticing, lost in the shuffle. Not only that, but we pass up so many daily opportunities to become better musicians. I’m not just talking about what or how we practice: I’m talking about esoteric, minuscule, cellular growth that happens without us knowing; when our subconscious finally unlocks a problem our minds have been trying to solve. In other words, mutation happens when we’re either not looking or looking at the wrong things.

Every day is a chance to become a better harmonica player. Better doesn’t mean the “best”. It just means better. Progress- that word we hear thrown around so much in this day and age- isn’t linear, but it can be consistent. The chunks of time we carve out of our daily lives to practice harmonica are what build our foundations, create momentum, and energize us. It’s consistent change and a willingness to take part in an organic process where work + effort + time = growth.

Don’t fool yourself with lofty goals and shortcuts. Evolution takes time. Yet the more consistently good we are, the easier the process of metamorphosis can become. Sometimes they happen when we aren’t looking. We aren’t ready for them. But the more days we string together, the more daily dicipline we charge ourselves with, the less we rely on illusions like bolts of lightning to justify why we aren’t where we’d like to be.

-Shane

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.” -Rabindranath Tagore

I’ve spent the last few days thinking about rhythm.

As musicians, we navigate our lives as a never-ending balancing act: making sure we practice enough but not too much so we become antisocial, balancing our financial situations, personal lives, and goals, and most of all balancing the elements of music like dynamics, tone, melody, harmony, and, of course, rhythm. While each of these components is essential, rhythm is the lifeblood of everything; the glue; a web connecting all other aspects of the sonic landscape.

I think of rhythm as a ship, and all the other components are crewmates. The captain might change every now and then, but without a ship you aren’t going anywhere.

The word “rhythm” is derived from the Latin (rhythmus), meaning “movement in time.” Long before this movement was captured or heard in a musical setting, it was already governing the subtle soundtracks of our daily existence. It’s something we’re born into and live with every day, whether we are conscious of it or not.

We spend our lives acting out different rhythms. Conversations have rhythms. Our days have a rhythm. The steady march of time that we all coexist in has a rhythm. We fall into routines because of rhythm. We fall in love because of the slow, steady rhythms we share with other people: the reciprocal act of both keeping time and making time for the ones we care about. This shared internal timing forms an invisible tether, locking human beings into a collective frequency and consistent growth.

Whenever we fall off the wagon, lose track of our progress, or just feel out of it, we refer to it as “losing our groove” or “I feel like I’m falling behind.” These are natural responses to misplaced rhythms. There’s a reason progress is synonymous with the phrase “in a groove”: we feel our best when we are moving through time in a proper, aware, and productive way.

Our bodies beat to a rhythm; our hearts are drums pounding with blood, sending oxygen to our muscles and brains. Before we ever speak our first words or hear a single musical instrument, our very existence is anchored to this primordial, rhythmic thump. Rhythm doesn’t mean loud. It just means consistent. Pace, groove, tempo, subdivisions, space; these are how we set the stage for the harmonic landscape.

This is the sandbox we play in.

I once heard James Brown say that “Everything in music is, at its core, a drum.” When an ensemble truly understands this, melody ceases to be a separate entity and instead becomes an extension of the pulse. Be it a saxophone, a guitar, or even a harmonica, we all bear a responsibility to the groove, and a need to be both egoless and attentive to how we push, pull, and play with it.

To rush the beat is to assert dominance over the room; to drag it carelessly is to abandon your peers. Music requires empathy, rhythmically and melodically. It demands that we actively listen to the microscopic gaps between the notes, trusting our bandmates to fill the silent voids.

One of the things that always drew me into blues music, even as a child, was the reliance on the rhythm; how blues, such a simple format for soloing over or writing lyrics for, could be so unique in its rhythmic styling. Because the three-chord structure of a standard twelve-bar blues is so foundational, it strips away any academic pretension or intellectual dogma and forces the musician to focus entirely on the emotional gravity of the pocket.

As blues evolved, so did its rhythm. Each geographical shift reshaped the way musicians related to time, proving that the evolution of the blues is fundamentally a history of human movement, vulnerability, resilience, and potential.

The harmonica embodies this evolution uniquely because it makes its own rhythm, not with hands but with the repeated inhales and exhales of our breath and the swiftness of our tongues. The instrument was originally designed in Germany to play traditional German folk music, and it was designed so well that you could do it with no hands. When the instrument arrived here in the late 1800s, there was a shift; instead of going off the blow notes, people started going off the draw notes, and as if by magic, the notes a blues or gospel singer would sing appeared. By drawing air backward through the reeds, players unlocked the expressive, vocal “bends”. These sounds, which came to define the diatonic harmonica, are actually a total manufacturing defect of the instrument.

It’s always been funny to me that something so well designed and self-assured in its destiny could have such a dramatic turn of events, altering not only its own identity but the scope of American music, in particular the blues. Little Walter, James Cotton, Paul Butterfield, Junior Wells, and so many more great players not only shaped the growth of blues music, but also gave the harmonica a new identity with the rise of amplified playing and the harmonica acting as a solo instrument in a blues ensemble.

Ultimately, by subverting the original German design, early blues musicians and harmonica pioneers transformed a rigid European folk toy into a living, breathing expression of struggle, joy, and the human experience.

My favorite quote about the blues comes from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man:

“The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.”

The blues isn’t just about what happened to you or the pain you feel: it’s the choice to do something about it. Like rhythm itself, it’s not that you fall out of time, behind the beat, or rush past it: all that matters is how you respond.

Momentum creates mood, and mood determines how we view the world.

-Shane

In the summer months, the air was sticky and wet. The trees stopped dancing, and the leaves stayed still. Overgrown grass with early moisture clinging to the last surviving strands. Footprints frozen in time had squashed the fresh greenery, remnants of yesterday’s march. The sky turned grey and stretched across the stillness of the valley. The soldiers tracked sand across the wet gravel road after another summer storm.

They lurched forward in a slow, steady march, eyes downcast as they descended toward the valley. Breathing and boots crushing grass filled the quietness of the morning air, heavy with dead wind and the smell of greens. The soldiers grunted and wheezed, choking on the swirl of dust kicked up by the man to their right or left. They were reminded of home with every step they took away from it. Breakfast had been cold today, as it was yesterday, and would hopefully be tomorrow.

Their voices echoed off the sleeping mountains. Their shoulders were rubbed raw beneath their packs. They sighed and marched toward the valley, boots crusted with grains of sand and eyes cast down toward the wetness of the road. Birds sang and danced in the stillness of the trees.

The wind carried waves of summer heat, winding through the tight spaces between the soldiers baking in the sun. They had been on the road for three days. Not a word was spoken as they walked. Silence. A man adjusted a strap. Another wiped sweat from his brow. No one complained anymore. Somewhere in the distance, there was the sound of gunfire, sending the singing birds screaming and the trees shaking. The soldiers marched on, their boots making the gravel dark with the wetness of the grass. No words were spoken.

Gunfire carried on. The men, silent and steady, marched toward it.

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” -Viktor Frankl

Mindset is everything in improvement. Whether you are starting a new business venture, a new workout regimen, or looking to improve as a musician, your mindset has complete control over your actions and how you respond to obstacles.

No journey is worth taking unless it has difficulties. Becoming a better harmonica player is fraught with overthinking, underperforming, and imposter syndrome. In the quest for greatness, it can become increasingly easy to allow your mindset to break; to come up with reasons not to practice, to put the harmonica away, to shy away when someone asks you to play, to say “I’m not ready” when they ask you to play at a blues jam. This is natural. Just because harmonica is easy to pick up doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn.

Over the years, I’ve developed certain mantras and mindsets that have helped me get out of rough spots in my music journey. Sometimes, returning to one of these ten ideas has been exactly what I needed to pull myself out of a funk and get back to work. While harmonica is fun, it’s also a challenge, and like any challenge you may face in life, it requires consistency, dedication, and a bulletproof mentality. To help foster and harden that mindset, I present ten things I keep in mind as a harmonica player, not necessarily on a technical front, but as philosophical reminders of why I do what I do and how it informs everything I do in life.

1. “I’m a Musician”

Harmonica players are prone to getting the quizzical eye from the music world. We are undervalued. This can lead us to doubt ourselves and our abilities. However, just because we might be lower on the totem pole of musical respectability doesn’t mean we can work any less hard. Being a musician is the name of the game; harmonica player second. Musicians pay close attention to the key, foundational elements of music: rhythm, melody, dynamics, space, tone, harmony, counterpoint, and many more. As harmonica players, it’s crucial to remind ourselves of the role we occupy in the band. It’s not always as soloists. The job of a musician, first and foremost, is to serve the song.

Harmonica tends to occupy sonic space when played, so it becomes much more crucial to be aware of our dynamics and the space we take up the more people we’re on stage with. Musicians listen intently. They don’t overpower people’s solos or drown out the singer’s vocals. As harmonica players, of course we want to show off; show the people what we can do and blow the roof off the place with all the licks we’ve been woodshedding. But, the most crucial act of being a good musician is restraint, and as harmonica players, holding back is often the hardest part.

2. “My Questions Matter”

When I went to my first harmonica workshop back in 2016, I came with a journal full of questions to ask Ronnie Shellist and Annie Raines. I had made whole lists of questions in excruciating detail like:

“How far out does your hand go when you are trying to get the biggest possible hand wah? I watched a video of James Cotton doing it, and it seemed further out than Big Walter Horton. Can you explain how the tone chamber changes as your hand moves further away?”

Seriously: that was a question I wrote. Certified harmonica nerd and proud of it.

I know that one is a little extreme, but the point is that questions are the currency of growth. Asking a good question is a sign that you care about what you’re investing your time in. They inform practice time, surprise teachers, and motivate them to want to show you more about the instrument. They are the gateway to understanding.

I’ve seen many people put their hands up at workshops and then quickly put them down or say something like “no no never mind: it was a stupid question.” There are no stupid questions: only answers that lead you to better conclusions. I urge my students to ask as many questions as possible; to take the information to heart and to treat it as a practice in it of itself.

3. “Mistakes Make Me Better

I’ve made too many mistakes to count.

Crowds of thousands all over the world have heard the mistakes squeak out of my chromatic, seen me trip on stage. I even had a time when my harmonica slipped out of my hand at a huge show, and the slider got bent; I couldn’t play it for the rest of my main featured song! Talk about a shit show. I’ve messed up songs, features, vocal parts, horn parts, and entrances. I’ve picked up the wrong harmonica and played in the wrong key. I’ve played dehydrated, sick, drunk, high, mid-panic attack, with an IV in my arm, running off stage to get oxygen due to altitude sickness, and fallen over on stage thinking I broke something irreversibly in my lower back and my shoulder. Do I regret any of it?

No. I see all of it as a learning experience.

All of these moments, the highest highs and the darkest moments, when I questioned my abilities as a harmonica player, have led me to now: sitting here writing this and thankful for every mistake I made that built me into the player I am today.

4. “Practice Lets Me Play: Playing Tells Me What To Practice”

There is a certain amount of time needed at the beginning of your harmonica journey to really practice: to understand the layout, learn solos and licks, and get comfortable with intonation and timing. It’s an exciting time. The instrument comes alive.

However, I know many harmonica players who choose not to play in front of a live audience because they say things like “I’m not ready,” “I still need to practice,” or “Everyone else is so much better than me.” I’m going to let you in on a secret: this is precisely the moment when you must play out. Why? Playing to people shows you, better than any practice routine will, where your weak spots are. As painful as it might be to fuck up in front of a crowd, those moments inform weeks and months of practice, during which you learn from those mistakes.

Practice is not the end goal; informed practice is.

As you continue on your journey, use your gigs and especially your mistakes as a roadmap of where you are lacking. Write them down. If your draw bending is off one night, note it as something that you need to woodshed. The best players I know use weaknesses as fuel to become better. The key is awareness and a willingness to work.

5. This Is ALL a Learning Experience

For harmonica players, getting “good” comes at great cost. All of the trials and tribulations, the failed gigs, the missed notes, the guitarists who’ve yelled at you, the moments of total and utter catastrophe are exactly the moments that mold you into a great player. “Great” is crafted in a garden of mediocre, embarrassing experiences.

Pushing through tough periods is the mark of growth in any creative pursuit. It’s strange to look at a bumpy, unpredictable road with a smile on your face, let alone enthusiasm. It is a lust for challenge that sets the great players apart from the hobbyists. Despite difficulty, a great player does it anyway.

Learning the harmonica is a practice in self-cultivation, self-hatred, and self-reliance, all at once. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. For such a shiny instrument, the road to improvement is anything but smooth. Empty wallets, microwaved soup, and aching lower backs. Chapped lips, aching hands, and sore tongues. It’s learning, unlearning, re-learning, repeating ad infinitum. “Better” is a term harmonica players use to describe someone who realized how much they would have to sacrifice for even a fraction more of improvement.

Small wins are the only victories in harmonica playing. There are no bolts of lightning; there are only cloudy days and razor-thin rays of sunlight. Many of my students ask me how to get better, and the truth is, many of them already know. We all know. We just don’t want to say it. The simplest things to say are often the hardest to hear: this shit takes a long time, and every tough moment makes you stronger.

6. Precision Over Power

On a technical note, I’ve found that many beginners and intermediates play with too much air, too much power. With too much going into the harmonica, it chokes, and fluidity takes a nosedive. I’ve found that a useful mindset for this problem is to focus during your practice time on playing as quietly as possible while still generating a good tone and control over all the holes.

Practicing dynamically is one of the most difficult things to do, but it is much, much more advantageous than playing at the same volume all the time. When you get up on stage, the tendency to overplay, especially with too much air, is increased dramatically, like budding boxers getting in the ring for the first time and throwing all technique out the window. It’s important to remember: the more precise our practice, the more deliberate we can be when we really want to let loose and play.

Control, patience, and discipline allow you to be creative, unpredictable, and musical when the time is right.

-Shane

The greenery is alive with the rustle of wind, spilling and seeping through fluttering leaves. A scent climbs into my nostrils, filling my head with the forgotten memories of childhood pleasures. My feet echo on the deserted sidewalk, and my dog sniffs the shaded grass filled with soft, wet dew, discarded trash, and the odd dead rat.

It is a magical morning. Any time before 6 am is. The world hasn’t gotten a chance to be an asshole yet. Quiet sunlight illuminates the vast grass and sloping hills of the Common, dipping low under the monuments and shading the walkways.

It’s the 5^th of July. Like New Year’s Day, the place is a ghost town; the rotting corpses of yesterday’s alcohol consumption are still at home, nursing Tylenol and Netflix binges. It is a special kind of quiet; when the loudest sound is both intrusive and welcome, sending the dog running from tree to tree in pursuit of anxious squirrels.

My eyes are tired, glazed over, and watching as Rosie greets another day with the same enthusiasm and joy she always does. Dogs have a way of reminding you to smile, even when the world’s great hostilities tend to crush the macro picture of togetherness and hopefulness. Something as simple as taking the dog out reminds me, at some level, that the hardest things to accomplish in the world, the biggest changes, begin in the smallest of ways. A common act of kindness for another sentient being is a good place to start, regardless of species. A soul helping another soul.

As she darts through the trees, tongue hanging out of her mouth in pursuit of her next chaseable victim in a haze of blinding joy, I have my first smile of the day. The reciprocal power of having a dog: a smile for a smile. As the city stretches her arms and begins her day, Rosie and I stand at the base of our hill, looking out at the awakening city: people in flip-flops and leggings, with equally eager animals, looking at their phones.

Another day has begun. I’m just happy we got here early.

-Shane

“You know that I don’t believe that anyone has ever taught anything to anyone. I question the efficacy of teaching. The only thing that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.” -Carl Rogers

Teaching an instrument is tough. Teaching an invisible instrument is tougher. Teaching an invisible instrument well? A miracle.

If my previous article was an examination of what plagues us as a harmonica community, I figured I’d switch things up a bit.

Yes, there is a tremendous amount of online hate that circulates across social media apps. However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Online and in person, the harmonica community has some of the greatest, most articulate, and most down-to-earth patrons and teachers I have ever met in all my years playing music professionally. These great sages of the instrument balance the community beautifully, giving the next generation the encouragement, information, and nurturing necessary to foster the growth and expansion of the harmonica.

Throughout the course of my harmonica journey, I’ve had the great good fortune to have many wonderful teachers: Ronnie Shellist, Annie Raines, Mike Turk, Rob Papparozzi, just to name a few.

To this day, they still act as sounding boards, mentors, and ego-checkers when my imagination tends to run away with me. They have taught me the value of maintaining a “student” mentality and strategic ways to measure growth as a player. As I’ve discovered more about the instrument and music in general, I continue to return to them with rigor, excitement, and a lasting sense of awe.

In my experience, I’ve found the best teachers are the ones who work with you and show you the ways to improve. They show your flaws, how you could approach different concepts, and how you might shift your perspective.

They don’t exist to do the work for you but simply to help you on your journey.

They are our guides and not our governors.

Over the years, as I’ve transitioned into more of an educational role, I now fully realize just how beneficial and important my time with the teachers I’ve had has been. There’s no substitute for the time I’ve spent with them. You need a guide on this harmonica journey. Thankfully, our community has lots of them.

One aspect of great harmonica teachers I’ve found is that they not only show students important techniques but also actively push them into real-life scenarios to prove themselves and maintain progress not only on the instrument but also as performers.

As the saying goes:

“You need mountains; long staircases don’t make good hikers.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

When I got my first harmonica, I didn’t have anyone to push me up there; to make mistakes, to learn from them, and to grow. It’s something I regret very much, but also a lesson I try to impart to as many beginners as possible: get a teacher as soon as you can. Trust me, it makes the experience of learning this instrument three-dimensional: you gain a friend to talk harmonica with, you gain someone to show you new discoveries, and harmonica becomes something you’re excited about because you get to share it with another person.

The great harmonica teachers are excited. They excite their students; they talk endlessly about the instrument and strive every day to make sure that the student maintains the most important aspect of progression: a sense of wonder. They are responsible not only for the curriculum but also for the desire to improve that grows each passing day in the student.

As Yeats put it:

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but rather the lighting of a fire."

Most of all, something I love about harmonica teachers is how actively they are learning alongside you as they teach. Ronnie always told me that he became a vastly better player after he started teaching, and that was because he would discover right alongside his pupils. It’s a two-way street in the best possible, most fruitful way.

In this process of learning alongside their students, another aspect I’ve always respected about my harmonica teachers is their ability to release you when they think you’re ready to take on new challenges.

I like to compare learning the harmonica to a long-term research paper. You have to be the one to go to the library, check out the books, read the books, take notes, find the useful pieces of information, and write the paper. The teacher is only there to facilitate your learning; to check in on you when things are tough, maybe edit a draft… but then you go back to work. The teacher isn’t there to write the paper for you.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

“One repays a teacher badly if one remains always a pupil.”

Harmonica teachers, at some level, understand the importance of self-reliance. Not only that, but they push their students to approach the instrument not just as a toy or something to have fun with, but as something to be taken seriously; something that grows beyond the confines of a sixty-minute lesson a few times a year. Aristotle argued that the way we do anything is how we do everything. In the case of a great harmonica teacher, he or she understands that it’s not just learning intonation or a Little Walter lick: it’s teaching us to practice awareness.

Learning the harmonica is no easy task. Many of us first approach it with curiosity and a touch of arrogance. At first, it seems straightforward, but as time goes on, its complexity unfolds. This illusion of simplicity can mislead beginners into underestimating the dedication required. Discovering concepts like positions, bending, and tongue blocking can shatter their confidence. This realization often leads many would-be harmonica players to abandon their journey prematurely.

Having a mentor is one of the easiest and most effective ways to progress on the instrument. It encourages you to play more, provides a roadmap, and offers feedback. Any goal you have in life benefits from having structure. Given how easy it is for users to simply throw the harmonica in a drawer and let it rot, the greatest benefit of engaging with a teacher is that it keeps the harmonica in your mouth, keeps you motivated, and keeps you on the straight and narrow. As harmonica players, there can be a tendency to not take the process of improvement seriously. It’s supposed to be fun, not feel like a job… right?

Well, yes and no.

I’ve found, across multiple disciplines, that the more I invested upfront in the seemingly frivolous (getting a good personal trainer when I first started lifting, getting a marathon coach, getting a reading mentor to recommend me books based on what I was interested in as a writer), the more return on investment I got.

Sure, you never know what might happen, but I guarantee you the lessons and time spent with a great harmonica teacher will not only be beneficial, but will completely change the trajectory of your current course.

To be honest, I’m not sure where the harmonica world would be today if it wasn’t for the efforts of our great teachers. The videos of Jason Ricci, Adam Gussow, and Ronnie Shellist were just as important to me as any textbook I read in school or any life experience I had playing this instrument.

They have had an unquantifiable impact on this new stable of harmonica players barging into the new paradigm with a sense of both appreciation and innovation. In the styles and phrasing of up-and-coming players, you can hear the influence these teachers had on the future of the instrument.

The landscape of harmonica has been fundamentally altered for the better by both the YouTube school and the access to information provided by these heroic men and women. I continue to rewatch these videos and take lessons to be reminded, again and again, just how much I have to learn and how eternally grateful I am to have such a remarkable group of mentors.

On behalf of the whole harmonica community, this day before the 4th of July, I want to take a moment to recognize the great contributions of these men and women for pushing our instrument forward into the next generation, for spending thousands of hours improving the lives of so many players, and for continuously reminding us how special this little instrument is.

-Shane

“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.” -Albert Camus, The Fall

A few days ago, an incident with a friend of mine occurred in the online harmonica sphere. Instead of launching a full-scale Facebook comment war, I figured it deserved its own article.

It’s something that I have a personal investment in, and could not remain quiet about.

Public hate, shame, and social media bullying are killing the harmonica world. It is rampant, repetitive, and cruel. As the digital age advances, keyboard warriors come out in full force, relying on the safety of a screen to cast dispersions on players whose skill level isn’t to their liking, whose style is different, or, at extreme times, on the basis of gender, religion, race, background, or sexual orientation.

Online spheres have become breeding grounds of opinions, and opinions have become the soundtrack and insanity that run in the background of our digital lives.

We are drowning in judgment, and in the world of harmonica, it only seems to be getting more and more tense as new players attempt to join the ranks of the established canon.

In recent years, social media has become a platform for young harmonica players, beginners, and enthusiastic hobbyists to share their experiences learning the instrument from the ground up. It’s a joy to watch players of all backgrounds and styles come online to share and ask for honest feedback on their playing from players around the world.

While being interconnected is amazing, it’s not without its challenges. Some unfortunate members of the community use the internet to spread hate, making new players feel unwelcome and unwanted in a harmonica world that desperately needs an update. For new players, this creates hesitation to share, leaving them afraid of being included, and resulting in a never-ending cycle of harmonicas going into drawers, never to be seen again.

In other words, it results in the harmonica losing its last hope for survival:

Individuality.

As Jon Ronson said in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed:

“We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.”

We all want to have a voice online, whether that’s sharing or commenting.

That doesn’t mean you have to be a dick.

These hateful comments have so much more resonance than we can imagine, and by pushing away beginner harmonica players, we become an increasingly dying breed.

We extinct ourselves.

From an ethical perspective, and as someone who has been around the harmonica community for about seven years, I find nothing more despicable and low than tearing other players down. It is an exercise in self-hatred and a destruction of potential. Words matter. I don’t care how accomplished you are as a harmonica player: it never gives you the right to cast aspersions on people you don’t know. No matter what stage of your harmonica journey, no matter how beginner or advanced you are, harsh comments on another player say more about you, your ego, and your own blatant insecurities both musically and otherwise than whatever veiled insult or personal comment you cast on the progress of another. We are all trying to get better. Harmonica rewards hard work and endurance. It takes a long time to get good. In my mind, it immediately degrades your capacity to influence, to empower, and to thrive as a harmonica player if you spout hate online, regardless of level. Small players can cause monumental losses to the harmonica world, creating an unsafe environment both online and in person that will turn away newcomers and cost us a chance at longevity, diversity, innovation, and interest.

To the ones who receive hate, I feel for you.

When I first came online back in 2019, I got so much hate from the online crowd. People told me I only got the job with Sting because of my looks, harshly criticized my chromatic playing, and said I had no originality on the instrument and no business having the job that I had. These comments were tough to stomach. Especially from players I had heard about for years and wanted them to like me.

These are screenshots from online forums back in 2019:

It took a long time and a refusal to be silenced by critics. I knew if I didn’t continue to improve, it would mean letting them win, shooting myself in the foot instead of running toward a goal and a new way of playing.

Limitations create style. Every roadblock creates either a chance for growth or an end of the road. These types of comments became my fuel, eager not only to become the best player I could be but also to prove the naysayers wrong. Still, being denied acceptance to a guild you desperately want to belong to can bring about some serious, lasting sadness.

It’s hard enough being a musician. Being a harmonica player comes with its own set of societal challenges. As a community of people, of musical misfits, doesn’t it make the most sense to foster an environment of inclusivity and support rather than one fraught with rude comments and sarcastic cruelty? We will never be perfect, but we can do a hell of a lot better than we are.

But all of this begs the question: why does this level of animosity exist in such a small section of the musical landscape?

Hate and tribalism are not new concepts in the harmonica community; they’ve just moved online. Prior to the invention of social media groups, there were technical divisions between our views (tongue blocking vs lip-pursing, overblowing vs not overblowing, traditional blues harmonica vs chromatic jazz vs classical, etc). It’s been a community divided for a long time, and it seems that in the digital world, with everyone granted the freedom to comment on players at any level and only being a few degrees of separation apart, there is more incentive and opportunity to belittle the progress of up-and-coming players, casting judgments on people and giving the perpetrators an unearned and pointless sense of small-minded seniority.

This is a community of highly opinionated people who have strong preferences on how the instrument should be played and hold their playing style so closely to their personal musical identity that it becomes law, not logic. Base extremism exists, as well as a long tradition of conservatism and name-dropping.

This still doesn’t answer the question: why do so many feel the need to spout hate?

The reason is ego.

It doesn’t even really have to do with harmonica: it’s about territory and sense of power over a small group of people. New names and new ways of playing upset the established order in society, and set off alarm bells that perhaps the old world is dying.

In other words, sometimes hateful comments are the best indication we have that you’re doing something right or that you’ve hit a nerve in a community that LOVES tradition and is increasingly suspicious of change.

Because the harmonica is such a niche instrument and the job market is so scarce, some players tend to blast their own self-importance and resumes at beginners as a display of pig-headed power.

If you look closely at harmonica hate online, many of the negative comments directed towards people are not just hate for hate’s sake: they are comments attached to a self-aggrandizing, ego-swelling side note about their career or why they feel justified in making the comment they made. It’s a false sense of superiority that is both unearned and unnecessary. The comment served only to fulfill some ego-driven self-promotion; it didn’t provide anything to help the student. I’ve always looked at these types of comments as not only sad but useless for all parties involved. When an identity is tied to scarcity and ego to a less-accepted instrument, the hater’s logic is to thin the herd, making them feel bigger while needing to tear others down to make themselves stand taller, when in reality, all it does is topple the structure brick by brick.

These are not friends to the harmonica world: they are harmonica players who want the instrument to dwindle into a memory, into nostalgia, and into a gate-kept society where there is no room for new voices. New voices mean competition, and competition in a small group creates friction and infighting.

It doesn’t take any effort to write a mean comment. Meanwhile, the ones affected feel it more than the perpetrator will ever know. Hate is not productive when trying to progress on the instrument.

Many people online do not understand the weight of their words on beginner players, like stamping out flowers before they’ve had a chance to bloom. There is a false idea out there that the more you break someone down, the stronger they get, like Hemingway’s line about being stronger in the broken places?

Maybe there’s a time and place for tough love, but the comments I’ve seen on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube in recent days don’t strike me like that: they look like blatant attempts to shield egos, to deny progress, and to ensure that newcomers feel an overwhelming sense of conformity and confusion about individual identity into a community that needs, more than anything, fresh voices and new perspectives.

The easiest way to lose curious players is to kill the curiosity, and that tends to happen quickly if your first response is to tell someone they suck after a few weeks of playing in the form of a slanderous comment.

Many of the newcomers to the harmonica discovered its power through the internet. Many of my colleagues in and around my age bracket had the same set of teachers and the same YouTube curriculum, consisting of videos by Jason Ricci, Adam Gussow, and Ronnie Shellist. Our introduction to this world was online, a place once safe and familiar but now perverted by the mean comments and judgments of gatekeepers.

How can we shame or hate on players who are just trying to get better? The process of improvement is fluid and dynamic. A social media post is just part of the story; a diary entry in the journey of discovery. We can’t judge people based on progression. Would you judge a baby for learning how to walk? Would you judge someone who is just hungry to learn? If we want to change, maybe we can start with more inclusivity and kindness toward our fellow players than attempts at corruption?

Personally, I don’t believe in this notion that social media is “only a place where you post finished products.” There was this idea circulating online that we only share polished work for people to review. However, that’s only part of it.

People like stories. Some like watching a process unfold behind the scenes. They like watching progression. Life isn’t about summits: it’s about the journey to get somewhere.

The most beautiful aspect of life is that the goalposts are always shifting, and we as humans have the capacity to grow, evolve, and share our stories with others. Online hate, especially in the harmonica world, denies us the stories of our future heroes.

In the end, what does all this cost us?

Diversity. Young Players. Curiosity. Innovation. Torch Bearing. Revolution.

In other words, it costs us our future.

Every new player we tear down is another opportunity we squander as a harmonica community. Every new style dismissed simply because we don’t understand or agree with it is stunting our growth as an instrument.

Imagine if, when they first discovered bending on the harmonica, there was a horde of haters shouting about how bad it sounded? Imagine if it had never had room to flourish? How much would have been lost? How much different would our world look?

The innovations of the harmonica are not just in the past; they lie dormant in the curiosity and progress of modern players. As a community and as individuals, it is our job not to bash online but to be equally curious and welcoming to the new styles coming down the pipeline. Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean that’s the way it always has to be.

Change is how we progress. That doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the glories of the past; it just means we don’t allow hate and dogma to guide the path into the future.

The harmonica community has evolved over generations through the peaceful transfer of skill and tradition, while also allowing space for new styles. We don’t become a more established instrument by tearing each other down. We have a social obligation to each other not to criticize or batter, but to build up and stoke the fire of future players. We have an obligation to diversity: to develop minority, young, and female players; to foster the growth of players new to the scene; and not just spend all our time building up the established players or stroking our egos.

Music is a team sport. Harmonica players of all backgrounds and skill levels need each other as we go through the world. Hate only divides us. Online attacks create an unsafe environment for newcomers.

Don’t be like that.

We must be better, more empathetic, and more self-aware if this instrument is to grow and have a chance at the wide-scale popularity, bountiful community, and societal acceptance we all believe it could have.

-Shane

What does it mean to be a young harmonica player? Responsibility.

In the modern world, being a harmonica player is a niche thing.

Even more niche? A young harmonica player.

We don’t exactly think of upstart teenagers in skinny jeans blowing some James Cotton-style blues into a bullet microphone.

This instrument doesn’t seem like something that would fall into the hands of the young. It’s not taught in schools. It doesn’t exactly excite the opposite sex when you tell them you play a child’s toy for a living. But many of the young players I’ve talked to over the years, many of the kids I’ve seen, gravitate toward this handheld wonder, have fire in their eyes and a hunger to improve and succeed in what might be the least hopeful profession: professional harmonica player.

Historically, with the advent of the Internet and the rise of YouTube, many talented young players found themselves swimming in a sea of information. Gone are the days of taking the needle on the record player and playing, rewinding, and playing along to vinyl. We now have full access to complete albums, tutorials, and tabs anytime, anywhere. When I first started grinding through YouTube, I was shocked by the scope of the harmonica and the vast amount of information I had to navigate to achieve the Little Walter sound I so desired. With YouTube, we were immersed in a culture of blues harmonica that we otherwise wouldn’t have been part of.

The golden characteristic of youth is vitality. It’s what gives today's great players their sound. We live in an age where we thrive on more. More content, more techniques, more hours spent practicing. Today’s musical landscape looks very different from 30 years ago. Even the harmonica itself has changed from manufacturing customized harps to the innovation of overblowing. It’s a brave new world of discovery, and today’s young players carry forward a tradition of innovation and a steadfast dedication to what has come before.

In the brief time I’ve been a part of the growing harmonica community, one thing above all else has shocked me: the level of enthusiasm these young guns have for this instrument.

My friend Jarred Goldwebber mentioned at the 2024 SPAH that talking about harmonica is similar to talking about dinosaurs or electric train sets: it’s a rare thing, and not everyone, let alone younger people, would be interested in it. But, on those glorious days of SPAH, the young cats can come out to play and revel in the joys and struggles of being a budding harmonica player.

Being a young harmonica player is an interesting mix of responsibilities. On the one hand, hungry young players want to make their mark on the instrument’s history, as Howard Levy, Dennis Gruenling, and Jason Ricci did and continue to do. More so than ever, the young players want to be the best; they don’t want to be good; they want to be one of the greats.

Sure, this mentality was prevalent in the Chicago players of the 1950s, but it’s different now, living in the social media comparison trap. We see so much content every day that makes us want not just to be better but to be the best. The enjoyment can sometimes be sacrificed just to be better than the next guy. I’ve seen this in many young players who want to overblow because it’s an advanced technique, not necessarily because they can make it musical. Yet, while these young guys want to push us into a new paradigm, there is hesitation in carrying on the glorious blues harmonica tradition. It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place: innovation for even younger generations while maintaining respect and study of all that came before.

“Tradition” is a strange word to apply to harmonica. What do we even mean when we say tradition? Do we mean “tradition” in the sense of “traditional blues harmonica”? What does that even mean? Does it mean copying and repeating a series of recordings from a choice of a few blues harmonica players for the rest of our lives? If you tell a young kid that this is all this instrument is, you are likely to send them running for the door.

What “tradition” means to me (as it relates to the harmonica) is awareness, sensitivity, and humility. Awareness around the fact that the harmonica has limitations and strengths, and the greatest players of tomorrow will play to both attributes. Sensitivity to the history of blues harmonica, Pre-war and beyond, and how much influence that holds over the modern styles. Finally, there is humility in everything we play today on the harmonica. We come from a long line of tremendous musicians, artists, and innovators. Sure, we will develop innovations, but not without acknowledging and revering the masters who came before us.

In his book The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom discusses how great writers become great by following only two paths: continuing the work of the great masters who came before or reacting against the literary tradition. In the case of the harmonica, our young guns are on a new precipice of decision: either adapt to the latest musical paradigm or continue the harmonica tradition as it has historically been taught.

As a younger-generation harmonica player, I’m not a big fan of dogma. I’m a fan of variety. I’m a fan of hybrids. I’m a fan of being loyal to sound, not ideology. Too often in the harmonica world, we can be subject to base tribalism: tongue blockers hang out with tongue blockers, chromatic players with chromatic players, and so on. We create these divisions in the community, founded on one thing: absolutism.

One of the most incredible things I’ve seen from the younger generation is an attention to sound, not to the tools. I’ve seen a commitment to hours practiced, not years played. I’ve seen inclusivity, not superiority. This is an inspiring time to be a harmonica player. The incoming generation of new blues harmonica players intrigues me and keeps me sharp. They don’t care so much about how you get a sound as much as they appreciate the sound for what it is.

I was fourteen years old when I picked up the harmonica. I didn’t love it at first. It came into my life as a backup; I had busted my hand in a soccer game and was desperate for a music credit in school. It sounded terrible; I didn’t like the feel of it in my mouth. It wasn’t the right fit for me. I kept trying to talk myself out of playing it. Yet day after day, I returned to it, and soon enough. It’s like running; you hate doing it the first few times, but once it clicks, you are hooked.

I had been playing for a few years. I wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination. My bends sounded like bags of cats, and I was drowning in Little Walter song studies. But a question kept popping up in my mind: Where are all the young players?

I would go to blues jams at a very early age. I would be the youngest one by twenty years. The jammers would look at me with a quizzical eye, thinking to themselves, “Who’s this little squirt?” I couldn’t understand it; where were the people my age? Why weren’t other kids playing this instrument? Was I destined to be the token teenager at these aged blues jams?

All these years later, I looked around at my younger peers and felt they were all asking themselves the same question.

An instrument like ours needs new blood. When I went to SPAH in 2024, I was so happy to meet so many great younger players: Sam Coons, Michael Avi, Jarred Goldweber, and Hayden Evering. Each has a unique style and sense of responsibility in carrying this instrument into the future. What I found most astonishing about each one was not just their voice, but the fact that they had such a profound respect for older playing styles (Little Walter, Sonny Boy, etc.).

This is the formula on which this instrument can not only survive but thrive: a healthy respect for what was and an invigorated interest in what could be.

It’s a big, scary digital world out there. The average person spends four hours a day on their phone. We have ditched the analog world at lightning speed for the shiny new, fast-moving one on our screens. Harmonica is analog. It is a beautiful analog wrapped in metal, wood, and reeds. It demands attention, care, and soul. Meeting so many great young players has given me hope that this instrument will not be lost in time. It won’t become like the T. rex skeletons or the frozen caveman. I see a future of bright, young, shining stars in the harmonica world who play not to get somewhere with the instrument but because of something deep down inside them, and every one of them feels an increasing love for it every day. It’s not out of obligation but out of infatuation. It’s not out of a sense of duty but of discovery.

If there’s one thing we can take from studying the blues, it’s that human beings will always need to express themselves.

There will always be a need for the blues.

There will always be a need for harmonica.

There will always be a need for young, hungry players to carry the torch forward into the darkness of tomorrow.

-Shane

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” -Henry Miller

For many harmonica players, blues is the genesis of musical expression.

Over months and years of learning the older styles, we learn the ins and outs of our instrument, its strengths and weaknesses, and how to articulate emotional musical ideas through trial and error. With each twelve-bar cycle, we get more efficient at soloing, comping, and taking space. Becoming a great blues harmonica player involves drilling the basics over and over again, either to reach a higher level of personal playing or to imitate your Chicago harmonica heroes perfectly. Or both. It’s a noble pursuit, and the older I get, the more admiration and respect I have for players who are entirely devoted to preserving the legacy of blues harmonica.

Most harmonica players take up the instrument because they hear it’s easy and lends itself to a few notable genres: folk, blues, country, and sometimes rock ’n’ roll. But what about after that? Where do you go from there? How do we continue to grow as both harmonica players and people? There is an inevitable wall that many players run into, and there’s only so much blues one can play before they start to tire of it.

Due to the limitations of both the harmonica and the musical composition of the genre it excels in, there is a clear and present ceiling that must be addressed, overcome, and revisited throughout the course of one’s life.

Limitations create style. This is how the harmonica became so good at what it does. However, as musicians, we must not limit ourselves strictly to what we know we’re good at: we must stretch beyond it if we are to evolve and create our own sound.

At some point in every harmonica player’s journey, they start thinking about branching out. Maybe that comes in the form of learning a jazz standard, picking up a chromatic, learning overblowing, learning to arpeggiate more chords, or playing with new types of musicians. Some players never take the leap, fearful of the judgments or musical indecision that await them on the other side of an unknown genre.

It is exactly this fear that should tell the player how necessary this move is and how much growth it may bring.

Of course, when you first start on any instrument, it’s important to listen to the masters. When you first pick up the harmonica, you’ll hear names like Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Junior Wells, and Paul Butterfield. Please listen to them. They are the building blocks for everything that came later and are infinitely useful. They are inexhaustible sources of inspiration that should always be running in the background of your journey.

However, one of the traps that harmonica players, particularly blues harmonica players, run into is taking their phrasing and tone as gospel; I urge you not to. Music is a continuous journey of discovery; by only learning this Little Walter Lick or chasing James Cotton’s tone the rest of your life, it almost stalls you in a distinct moment of time that, perhaps, isn’t the best way to further your development as a musician. Only learning licks is the same as if you went to the gym every day and only did bench press; sure, you’d have the strongest chest in the world… but what happens when asked to go for a run? Being well-rounded is the most advantageous skill you can have as a musician.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with spending the rest of your life trying to sound like Little Walter. Many have tried; some have gotten close, but maybe the true genius of Walter lies not in his wanting to sound solely like other players who came before him… but in his ability to branch out sonically, creatively, and unapologetically.

When I first started playing harmonica, I was a staunch traditionalist; Little Walter or bust. The only music I played in my house came from Chess Records, and I ran Juke and Help Me on repeat. I spent weeks playing blues shuffles and played the same riffs over and over and over again. Obviously, a lot of great things came out of that. But over time, I began to stagnate; I became increasingly frustrated with myself for not improving; I felt like a goldfish swimming in a tank, not understanding why I couldn’t get past the glass. Thankfully, that was not to be my fate.

In 2015, at the suggestion of a friend, I began taking lessons from Mike Turk, a Chromatic Jazz virtuoso in Boston. When I first started with Mike, I was under the misguided impression that I was quite good at the harmonica… I was wrong. I would sit with Mike at his piano in his home for hours, drilling scales and arpeggios on both chromatic and diatonic harmonicas; as I got better, he introduced me to new ways of thinking about soloing, accompaniment, and musicianship. The biggest thing I took from Mike was recognizing the distinction between learning set riffs and learning the instrument. I began to implement what he taught me and noticed even after several weeks that my playing had improved; that I was developing my own phrases, my own tone, and a new way of thinking; not just mindlessly wailing on 4 draw bent, but actively conscious of my improved musical vocabulary.

The more I learned, the more I wanted to stretch. That is my advice to you. Explore more music theory, scales, and chord structures; hang out with musicians outside your set genre; practice in a different place, with a different backing track, in a different position; all of these will boost your creativity and maintain your desire to keep improving.

My advice would be to listen, play, and experiment with music outside of your comfort zone: Jazz, Classical, Rock, Bluegrass, etc. They all have something to offer your unique perspective as a harmonica player. You understand better as a musician how you can incorporate that little instrument in your hands into new, uncharted territory; you develop better judgment about where the harmonica might fit, but, most crucially, realize and accept where it doesn’t fit.

The tone of the harmonica is very, very specific; auxiliary, commanding, and piercing; and it is your personal responsibility to educate yourself on where it might fit in the grand spectrum of music. Not only that, but you gain a better sense of where it has not existed yet, and how you might pioneer a new type of style.

The more varied your tastes, the wider your range for incorporating new musical styles into your personal harmonica style. Different inputs generate new outputs. More stretching creates more flexible musicianship. More courage creates more opportunity to test yourself as both a harmonica player and a person.

One day, after time spent away, you will return to blues with a new set of eyes and appreciation. You will listen to the masters with a newfound respect. You will see the world you once thought you had mastered with renewed vigor, opportunity, and questions. Sometimes it is not a matter of possessing more and more skill, but a discipline in reviewing what you once thought you had mastered with fresh eyes.

-Shane

Pain is the great certainty in life.

Run from it, hide from it, avoid it at all costs; eventually, it will find you.

It consumes you. The colorless world is a pale reflection of what could have been, what should have happened. It is a cruel reminder that unrealized potential is sometimes the greatest heartbreak.

Pain does not let up. Your eyes hurt from crying. Your hands cradle your head as the tears stream down your face and onto the floor you haven’t vacuumed in days. You gaze around at a world you thought you knew, but can no longer see the same way you did before pain found you. It’s the worst pair of glasses you’ll ever own.

All love leads to pain. They are two sides of the same coin: love as the great incentive to take part in the joy of life, and pain as the undeniable reality of our mortality and limited ability to be here long-term with the people we care about.

Over the last few thousand years, humans have tried to explain, understand, and externalize the pain we feel. Whether it is in the form of myths, music, Greek Tragedy, philosophy, novels, songs, or poetry, we are all grasping at straws to diagnose and understand the crushing pain that comes to all of us one day or another. It comes when you least expect it, and like an evil flood, drowns even the smallest of happy thoughts or bright sides.

Human existence is never spared from pain. It’s part of being here. It is as necessary to life as love is. You just never know how much it hurts until you’re in it.

In moments of great despair and aimlessness, we turn to those aspects of our lives that give us solace. Sometimes it’s family, sometimes friends. Sometimes, it’s more self-destructive methods like drugs and alcohol to numb out and avoid having to feel it. I know that’s been the case for me in the past.

Yet perhaps the strongest, most effective way to understand and deal with pain is something I keep on my person at all times: a harmonica.

Playing blues has, for me, always been the best solution.

I was eleven years old when I first heard the blues. Alien, otherworldly, and rough, what captivated me most about hearing this music was not the technical aspect or even the voice singing; it was the honesty. The pain had nowhere else to go but out of the mouth of the singer or expressed in the fingers of the guitarist. If it lay dormant, it would destroy the person.

Pain has a way of acting like termite damage: you can ignore it all you want, but as soon as the floorboards have melted away and the house starts to shake, the whole structure comes down. In other words, the pain needs somewhere to go.

As I listened to more and more blues music, I realized that it is not just that we harbor pain as humans, but that we have the unique, almost magical power to transform it into something productive, real, and everlasting.

Blues teaches us that part of being on this big blue marble is dealing with loss; with heartbreak, breakups, poverty, addiction, and all manner of unpleasantries we encounter. The simple nature of the chords, I’ve found, makes it the most accessible and perhaps more egalitarian way of managing the inevitability of despair. The melodies are both universal and devastating. Blues encompasses the human experience better than any other music I’ve ever found because of its raw, unfiltered look at the fucked up nature of reality:

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

No one is coming to save you.

No one can take away the pain you feel.

But it can be channeled into something profound.

Blues is an individual act of creation. While the pain we feel as humans is ubiquitous, the way we express it is unique. Even blues, with its limited chordal structure, doesn’t seem to allow much room for interpretation. However, it is exactly this musical ease that lends itself to true expression.

The harder an art form becomes, the more thinking we must do. The worst thing you do when you think is lie. Blues has an inherent, tragic honesty that allows the player to tell the story of their pain with simple, concise musical language. The simplest things are often the hardest to say, and perhaps even more, the simple realities of life are the hardest to deal with.

Heartbreak, loss, fear, death: these are all tools we have in our arsenal to tell the stories we need to tell, to escape the monkey mind and perhaps find some measure of peace in the moments where we feel we’re at war with both ourselves and the world.

Blues expressed either on an instrument or vocally is a reminder to yourself that the pain you’re feeling is real. It’s not just in your head. For years, I’ve been a massive advocate of journaling. Seeing your thoughts externalized from your mind, scribbled out on the page, allows you to work through trauma, pain, and heartbreak in a more visceral and intelligent way. We are always in our heads. One of the ways pain maintains a hold on us is if we never allow it to get out.

It’s all energy, and it has to go somewhere, toward something.

It has to transform.

Vulnerability is the ultimate ornament for a blues player. The more honest you are about what you feel, the more it translates into the music. Blues is a genre of longing; of suffering, displacement, lost love, and broken hearts.

We must be embarrassingly human, unequivocally ourselves, and accept our pain not just for what it is, but what it teaches us so that we may move forward.

While blues is a music of wounds, it is also one of profound healing. There’s a reason that people say “sing the blues” when you’re sad: it’s because it allows us trudge on.

The more honest we are, the more we come to terms with suffering.

The cyclical nature of blues music has a hypnotic quality; going round and round on the same set of chords seemingly endlessly. Repetition is how we cope with tragedy. We tell ourselves stories over and over of how things should have happened; run through endless scenarios of lives that didn’t play out or hopes for futures we can’t have now. We cry repeatedly, expecting less pain. We ache and ache until, at a moment we least expect it, the pain we have sat with for so long changes shape. It becomes lighter, the weight ceasing to drag us down and instead being something we can look to with great fondness as a learning experience.

Pain needs somewhere to go. If it stays locked away, it will become your identity rather than an emotion. If it stays locked away, it will rip at the color and wonder of your daily life as you always try to justify your pain instead of externalizing it and understanding it.

I’m not going to say that it doesn’t suck. Life is fucking hard. Love is fucking hard. Being a human being is fucking hard. It’s not that we pursue happiness but that we can’t fully realize we have it if we’re blinded by our pain. Instead of being aware of the possibilities of life, our pain keeps us in a box that gets refilled year after year. Eventually, we might put the box away in a closet somewhere. But as the years go by, that box becomes heavier and heavier, the closet gets cluttered, and the psychological load overflows, spilling out and flooding what could have been a happy existence, drowning it in past memories, what-ifs, limitations, and pain.

Blues gives voice to the box. It’s not denying it exists: it’s giving it a simple musical form to be understood and worked out in. As humans, we don’t want to believe our pain is real until it’s too late.

Trauma is everywhere. Over 70% of people in the United States aged 1 to 44 have had at least one traumatic event in their lives. They account for 37 million emergency room visits each year.

See, we’re all fucked up. But we have a choice of how we respond, how we move on, and most importantly, how we choose to express our struggle.

Our lives are forged by pain. The best art comes from intense moments of unendurable suffering. Blues reminds us that suffering is a constant in our lives, but that doesn’t mean we have to focus on it constantly. We need to give a voice to our pain. It must leave the mind and exist in the material world. Only by confronting it, by playing it, by singing about it, can we begin to understand it. Understanding, empathy, and awareness are wonderful antidotes to the nihilism that usually accompanies our inherent human existence. As Viktor Frankl said:

“Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something.”

Pain is an opportunity. It might not seem like it in the moment (trust me, I know, and I empathize with you), but as time goes on and the picture becomes increasingly clear, you will start to see your suffering as something that, hopefully, changed your life for the better.

Open your box. Yes, it’s painful, and yes, you might not have the words for it yet. But I promise you, it gets easier. I promise you, there is so much beyond the box you haven’t looked in. There is so much more life to live beyond the crushing pain of unrealized potential.

Tragedy is the soundtrack of human life. Blues is the tool we have to hear it.

Go listen.

-Shane

“What is to give light must endure burning” -Viktor Frankl

Getting to the lighthouse is a multi-step process. Arrive Rowes Wharf. Boats bob up and down in the chilly Atlantic waters of Boston Harbor. Men with dry skin, wool sweaters, and thick beards help my dad and me with our bags as we load into a US Coast Guard boat. It looks like something ready to take out Somali pirates. Machine guns were removed from the front of the vessel so as not to confuse or cause panic to the captains coming in and out of the port. Slowly, we reverse out of our humble docking. The seas are calm and coy in the late morning sun. As soon as we make the turn out of the wharf, the wind picks up. The water becomes much more active, with fits of splashing, as we increase our speed. The Sagers get seasick. It’s in our blood. I turn to my dad, both of us acknowledging the need for tenacity, stoicism, and hefty doses of Dramamine.

Our trusty vessel spurns forward, carving the ocean in two as we jet off into the mist. It takes about 30 minutes before we see it —a small flash of light ahead. In the shimmer of the fog, we begin to see the outline of the structure, tall and unmoved.

All around, rocks play host to hundreds of hungry seagulls. The once-pristine gray of the geological mass covered with white smears of bird shit. Lazy seals lie on rocks, tummies down, and eyes fearful of approaching tourists. We are all just visitors here. The faded gray of the stone structure is dotted with water stains in the mortar cracks. A long, unsteady metal ladder grips the outside, and my dad and I look on in wonder and fear.

Where are we?

Step two of the journey is more complicated. There is a cranking sound of metal as we lower our skiff into the angry waters of the Atlantic. Our Coast Guard boat, as strong as she is, is too big to bring us closer to the lighthouse, so we must resort to her annoying, less impressive little brother. We load our bags in, hop on either side to keep it from tipping, and begin rowing into the shallow waters. Mini waves lap at the sides, spraying us with droplets of salty water; a baptism of acceptance into the ecosystem of Graves. From the skiff, we must now engage in the most dangerous task of all: standing atop a shaky plastic lifeboat and swinging ourselves onto a slippery ladder dangling over nothing but the freezing water, and climbing up to the dock.

No big deal, right?

I remember the way the storm sounded. Waking up, my bunk was covered in cold, salty water, brushing against my face while I coughed with early morning phlegm. My eyes gazed out at the alien world around me: endless streams of white-capped waves, abounding and smashing on invisible rocks, the caw of wild birds against howling winds, and scared seagulls dodging everywhere. The wind roared, whipping the worn wood of the window covers back and forth, slamming them against the damp stone of the structure. There were no voices, no alarms; only the heavy breathing of my dad in the next bunk as he slept on in blissful ignorance. I made my way to the kitchen, ascending the steep stairs. Time for some coffee, made by straining hot water over coarse beans and hoping the electricity doesn't go out.

When you live in a lighthouse, everything is up and down; a vertical existence. There are no shortcuts. Privacy is temporary. Walking through rooms is a necessary part of adapting to the ecosystem of this home in the sea. Each floor serves a specific purpose: the control room and power on the bottom floor, living quarters on the next two floors, a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, and, finally, the light itself—a Promethean beacon of generous aura lighting up the darkness and despair of the unforgiving Atlantic.

Two days later, our food is running low. My dad and I have subsisted on half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast and a smattering of chips, popcorn, and whiskey for dinner. Calorie count is low, morale is higher, and the experience of the storm causes us to care less about our diminishing state of nourishment.

It’s a sublime, psychedelic, and scary experience out here. Watching a storm from the comfort of a warm home in the city is one thing. Rain sounds different indoors. At the lighthouse, you are, in a historical and philosophical sense, the last line of defense against it; a last hope for weary sailors lost and far from home.

I always think about what must have gone through the heads of the men who served here for months at a time. We’ve only been here for a few days, and already it feels like we have existed a lifetime. I imagine the men, scurvy-ridden with sea-induced neglect. I imagine what they must have talked about, what went on inside the damp, dreary inner worlds of their weary souls.

We tend to over romanticize the beauty and reality of lighthouses in our culture today. Similar to many enigmas about the sea, we build up the wonder around the unknowns because they make us feel small by comparison. Humans have always felt a need to be a part of something; what’s bigger than the unknowns of our big blue marble and her hallowed waters? What is foreign and distant is made approachable and accepted the longer I spend in this structure.

I’ve always had a fascination with these stone sentinels of the sea. As a kid in history class, I remember being in awe of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the great light shining forth from the birthplace of Western thought and discovery. The symbolism got me very early on. As I’ve gotten older, what I’ve realized is that a lighthouse, at its core, is not just a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life. It reminds me that the duty of each and every human being is to choose their light; to act in a way that may guide others toward their goals.

It is not just acting in a way that is good, but in a way that is true to who you are.

The ocean is a collective madness. In the dancing of waves, the smash of water upon rock, we hear a soundtrack older than time and truer than feeling; impenetrable to the intellect and cast away into the realm of violent searching. Crushing, crude, untamed, and righteous. Crashing waves envelop even the mightiest vessel in fear, man forever locked in a desperate battle with winds above and fearing giants diving and swimming in the deep. What is unknown is both meditative and maddening, intoxicating and terrifying.

The sea’s only gifts are harsh, direct blows of nature’s cosmic power. Questions build in the minds of the men who fight it, who sail and search in the desolation of watery worlds beyond the creased paper of worn-out maps. We will never know the depth, scope, and mystery of the murky, salty water.

We are merely specks of dust compared to the immensity of the deep; flesh-and-blood ticking time bombs insisting on our greatness in the face of overwhelming, elemental, and eternal awe.

Unfortunately for our fragile egos, it’s the ocean’s planet; we’re just living on it.

How does one come to know the unknowable forces at work? How do human beings create light in the darkness of discovery? What symbol will lead us through difficult times, through the calamity of our age?

A lighthouse is the first step. Not as a beacon against the cloudy continuum of destruction, but as a reminder of what is possible, what light may shine forth, in the toil of a world gone mad.

It is in the darkest of storms that a lighthouse can stand out, its everlasting beam cutting through the crushing desolation of the sea’s vicious nature.

In the midst of the unknown, we come to realize all that should be visible if only we have the courage and awareness to look for it. In the midst of the darkness, a lighthouse does not concern itself with ego, only with the shining.

It has no choice but to pour forth light. Neither do we.

-Shane