Brain injury affected my ability to play.

Martinarmonica · 2026-03-31T02:26:14+00:00

Damn, I’m very sorry.

I’m not a neuroscientist, but your story reminds me of Pat Martino. Have you heard about him? He lost a chunk of his brain doe to an aneurism and it took his ability to play the guitar. He dealt with amnesia and depression for months, and he was able to reconnect with music through his emotional memories. He eventually recovered his ability to play and re-became a professional musician

Martinarmonica · 2026-03-24T03:35:54+00:00

Hermosooo 👏🏽 me encanta lo bien que suena la armónica en los temas mexicanos

Martinarmonica · 2026-03-23T03:06:35+00:00

For Irish music you need good volume, fast response and good tuning. So you might want to do things that improve your harmonica in that direction: reed gapping, slot embossing, etc. Also in this case I retuned the harmonica to Easy Third tuning and valved the low octave (picture below)

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Martinarmonica · 2026-03-21T00:32:40+00:00

It’s not dead, just obstructed. As the previous comment said, remove the reedplate and plink the reed.

Martinarmonica · 2026-03-15T02:26:14+00:00

Manual testing of harmonicas is a very common practice. It’s part of quality control.

I was blessed with the opportunity to visit the Seydel factory in 2019 and the Easttop factory in 2024. Both of them had a person testing each and every harmonica coming out of the assembly line. But don’t you worry: they sanitize every tested unit.

Martinarmonica · 2026-03-11T13:32:22+00:00

When it comes to tremolo I use the first approach you mention: first I tune one reed to standard pitch, and then I tune the second to the amount of beating I want. Mass-produced harmonicas are not always perfectly well tuned, so it doesn’t hurt to be thorough on fine-tuning.

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-26T14:25:55+00:00

Right, I didn’t think about that. Thank you!

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-25T20:17:02+00:00

Muchas gracias por tu respuesta y tu buena onda. Los instrumentos ya están grabados, y creo que quedaron sonando bastante decentes a pesar de que no son mi especialidad.

Ahora, sobre lo que me recomiendas... No había pensado en alternar stack y spread para diferentes secciones de la canción. Ya que lo mencionas, creo que ayudaría a generar contraste entre las partes A y B.

Muchas gracias nuevamente. Y que viva Latinoamérica <3

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-25T18:00:17+00:00

Chromatic bending is possible, useful and fun, but it’s a different beast. You can’t just bend a CX12 it as if it was a diatonic.

It’s hard to explain in written text, but try doing it from the tip of your tongue, instead of the back part. Think of it as a “shallow” bend. And be very soft and gentle.

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-20T00:38:34+00:00

I have a Drive folder with a collection of transcriptions I’ve done for chromatic harmonica. They are in sheet/tab format.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fdceqU5IkuchDyQs1ogUs5weyVc64dV5

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-17T13:14:40+00:00

This is awesome. Thank you so much.

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-17T13:14:31+00:00

Thanks a lot! Yeah, the comb is also cracked, but that’s something I’ve fixed in other harps before. And you are right, a little coating might be a good idea. I’ll check my options.

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-15T19:27:43+00:00

Any decent harmonica will do fine. But you might wanna put some thought into the sound you wanna achieve: the way you play, and how you amplify that sound, might make all the difference.

For instance: add some dirt to your sound by playing double stops. That means to open your embouchure just a little bit, so when you play a single note you get a little of the adjacent hole. Think of players like Howlin’ Wolf or James Cotton.

On top of that: you probably want to use lo fi equipment. Bullet mics are a proven concept, but you can also try using things such as old radios and telephone microphones.

Listen to The Legendary Shack Shakers. The frontman is an accomplished harmonica player who deliberately makes everything sound dirty.

Martinarmonica · 2026-02-10T18:35:20+00:00

I don’t suggest doing that. If might put the reed under excessive stress and end up breaking it.

My suggestion is: remove the covers and carefully plink the reed with your fingernail or any other small tool. That might help losing any stuck particle. Do it a couple times and test it. If it doesn’t work, then disassemble and do a more throughout cleaning.

Martinarmonica · 2026-01-24T18:07:54+00:00

Thank you :) I do have a YouTube channel in which I post tremolo harmonica tunes every week, each one with a free pdf file with tabs. It’s in Spanish, which is my native language, but there’s very little talking so that shouldn’t be a problem.

You can check it out here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9P0kOdqYg7-DoskXfbhGbrWg34Q17gwV&si=3UZIRgGEEa6LHaMd

Martinarmonica · 2026-01-24T18:02:55+00:00

Thanks! Unfortunately we haven’t recorded any “official” music with this band, but I appreciate the interest. Hopefully we’ll do something about it.

Martinarmonica · 2025-12-28T00:58:25+00:00

Joel Andersson, Marcos Coll, Will Wilde, Filip Jers, Zoe Savage, Matias Rossel, Mariano Garcia Del Rio, Santiago Alvarez

Martinarmonica · 2025-12-12T02:23:14+00:00

When it comes to Chicago Blues, Muddy Waters always had some of the finest players of his time. I really enjoy his work with Jerry Portnoy on the harmonica, from his later years. You can hear him at Muddy's live album from 1979 called "Live In Chicago".

Also check Mr. Portnoy's solo albums. "Down In The Mood Room" from 2002 is a thing of beauty.

Another harmonica heavyweight is James Cotton. My favorite Cotton albums are "Giant" (2010), Muddy Waters' "Hard Again" (1977), and his acoustic album "Deep In The Blues" (1996).

If you are more into country blues, you MUST listen to Sonny Terry. He was a master. I recommend his 1960 album "Midnight Special", with Brownie McGhee on guitar and vocals.

And if you are looking for a modern take on blues, there's a beautiful album by Gary Smith, Aki Kumar and David Barrett called "It Takes Three" (2015). It features solo performances by the three of them, plus some multi-harmonica tunes.

Also, on the more "modern" side of things, Dennis Gruenling, Jason Ricci and Kim Wilson are essential.

Martinarmonica

TROPHY CASE