Irish Harmonica

   It's not a harmonica tutor but a compilation of my articles about Irish Music played on harmonica. You will find informations about choosing a harmonica, ornamentations, rhythm...

Introduction
 

   It's a lot of fun to play Irish Music on our instrument. Tunes are easy to learn and you can play in session very quickly. In this text i'll try to give some advices on how to play irish music on a harmonica. In fact it's a translation of my french blog. So you can have a Guinnes and enjoy !


1/ Tuning

   The first question when you want to play irish music on harmonica is which harmonica do i need to play this music ? You need to know that most of the irish tunes are played in D major, G major, A major and the relatives minors so B minor, E minor... Do we need a special tuning in order to play harmonica ? The answer is Yes. The Richter tuning is not a good option if you want to be able to play ornamentations, fast tunes in the lower octave. So which tuning ? 

   The Paddy Tuning :

   The only difference between the Paddy and the Richter is the hole number 3. The blow note is raised by a tone on the Paddy, so the D on the Richter becomes a E on a Paddy tuning. The main advantage is that you don't have to bend the hole 3 by a tone. So the tunes are a lot easier to play on the lower octave. This tuning is easy to play because it's like a Richter andd you just have to tune one of your harmonica to have it.

   The Solo Tuning :

   This is a Chromatic tuning. You can play the major scale easily without any bend on the 3 octaves. The main advantage is that you don't need bends to play tune in G major or E minor but you don't have 3 octaves, only two and a half.

 
   There is a lot of tunings in the harmonica world, you have to choose the one that is good for you but remember that most of tunes are in D and G !