(Ist) Sunday Post : SP-1

Dear friends,

I welcome you to the very first lesson of our “Learn Mouth Organ Online!!!!” community.

This small, inexpensive and very melodious musical instrument Mouth Organ (Harmonica) can be used to play anything from nursery rhymes to classical music. You can use it to play simple songs or complex songs, old songs or modern songs.

I’ll not make the learning of this instrument very complex or will not tell u “Arey yaar isko sikhna to bahut mushkil hai (Its very difficult to learn this instrument)” like what most of our friends who know a bit playing scare the basic learners.

Believe me; you don’t need years of music lessons to begin to enjoy your Mouth Organ (MO). With a couple of lessons and a few minutes of practice each day, you should be playing simple tunes in no time. And if you continue to learn and practice new songs, you can become an expert player, very soon.

I have divided this Blog in some chapters. U may encounter some new words during my write up so I have made a section Introduction to new Terms at the end where u can find their meaning.

Click here for the brief History and Types of Mouth Organ
http://onlinemouthorgan.blogspot.com/2006/11/brief-history-and-types-of-mouth-organ.html

Details of the MO system or its (in Biological language) Physiology:

(I’m using TOWER brand for explaination so please refer it accordingly)

The MO is having 24 windows as shown in the figure. I have tried to make the picture self explanatory. This MO is having 3 octaves (1-8; 9-16 and 17-24). U can see that there is a repetation of the same notes starting from ‘C’ to 'B' (like SA RE GA MA PA DHA NI SA and again SA RE GA MA PA DHA NI SA.) To understand this just draw a circle and place the C D E F G A B C on a fixed interval on the circle and u can see that after C again it will repeat the next 8 notes, its called Octave). In simple words, u can play a song at three different places with the same pitch/scale.

I think I should not explain so many things in one post bcoz it may eat ur BHEJA and can make u to just close this file or through the mouth organ on bed and do some other work so I control myself and rest we’ll talk in next week.

How to hold the Mouth Organ?

Actually there are some specific styles to hold the MO properly for different effects like the one ‘Tremollo’. But we’ll discuss it later.In simple words, at this level u don’t need to follow any specific style of holding. Just hold it(of course the windows of the MO should be towards ur mouth…..hahaha).One more thing, actually in musical instruments the lower sound is always at ur left side (ex. Harmonium) so u can follow the direction as shown in the picture. It means the scale changer knob shud come at ur right side but guys like my dimag I hold the MO in reverse side, means the knob is always at my left hand side (u can see this in my video posted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dgIwdNXOv4 ).

Song of this Week (Home Work….hahaha):

The first song we are going to learn is, "Hai Apna Dil To Awara, Na Jaane Kis Pe Aayega".

Today I’ll give the notes of only first line of that song. B4 starting to practice, first hum the song and try to analyse where the sound is long and where is short.

This line (of the song) is played between the windows 5 to 11 (Refer the picture).

Hai....Ap-----na.... Dil..... To...... Aa----wa~~~ra,

G......CC----- D........E....... C......... D----C~~B~A

Na......Ja--ne ~~~ ~Kis..... Pe...... Aa-ye-ga !

A-....... G--A -~~B~ CC........ D...... E--D--C


Blow (Blow the notes shown in red color)

Draw (Draw the notes shown in blue color)

Underlined notes : Notes for the single (underlined) word above it.
~~~ : Sound where Notes are used to connect two words.
......... : Separation of two different words
-----: Long Sound in a single word


U should practice this line until next week. Feel free to write in the community if u feel any difficulty.All da best !!!


Introduction to New Terms:

I'll post all da new words in a special blogs.

Plssss leave ur comments........

Good Luck...

- Chaitu.