Howard Levy's Tips for Improvising on Harmonica
How Musicians Can Learn to Play Harmonica in Their Own Voice
Aug 9, 2009
Howard Levy has played harmonica for nearly 1,000 commercials, several motion picture soundtracks, and countless concerts. He’s written parts for theater and backed up live dancers. For much of this, he relied heavily on his skill of improvisation.
Take for example, his performance as the featured instrument on the film, A Family Thing, with James Earl Jones and Robert Duvall. “I was interacting with the picture for many of the scenes.” Levy remembers. “There were things written for me, but I was watching the monitor screen for everything I recorded, paraphrasing melody, and playing in-between dialogue. The music really went along with the picture.” That’s what improvising is all about. Musicians make music that’s original and just right for the moment.
Learn to Improvise on Diatonic Harmonica
Howard Levy believes improvisation is partly done by feel and partly learned. In the beginning, he tries to avoid using too much terminology. “It really is a matter of developing your ear,” Levy says, “and then developing your technique on the instrument so that your ear and your technical ability come together.”
One skill Levy emphasizes with all his students is being able to sing what they want to play. As he started teaching, he recalls being surprised at how many harmonica players couldn’t sing back a basic blues riff to him. “Some people aren’t connected with their own ears,” Levy remarks. “Your voice is the expression of what your ears hear. You have to be able to hear something and have it come out through your voice. Until you can do that, you might be able to learn licks, but you can’t really improvise.”
Breaking Down the Theory Behind Improvisation
Music happens to be the only one of the arts that’s invisible. In Levy’s view, people aren’t used to listening precisely. “If you’re a carpenter, you see distance,” Levy explains. “You look at a room and say, ‘That’s about 12 and a half feet across.’ An average person will say, ‘Oh, it’s a medium-sized room.’” But a carpenter will size it up with his eye.”
To improvise, a musician has to become skilled at sizing things up with his ear in much the same way. “A musician can hear music,” Levy continues, “and say ‘That’s a perfect fifth that’s, a minor sixth, that’s a major seventh.’ The average person would ask, ‘Man, how do you know that?’ Well, you just have to train your ears the same way carpenters have to train their eyes.”
In Levy’s view, once people understand that music is made up of definable chunks of information, the territory doesn’t seem quite so vast. When they realize that there are discernible distances between notes, that there are chords that have names, and that everything is quantifiable, they start applying singing to playing licks on an instrument.
Harmonica players interested in improving their improvisation can check out a treasure trove of exercises and tips from Howard Levy at artistworks.com. His interactive instruction offers lessons addressing technique, theory, improvisation, and tone for musicians of every skill level.
In related articles, musicians can read more on Howard Levy’s start as a musician, how he discovered the technique of overblowing, his current projects, and his thoughts on transposing on a diatonic harmonica.
Quotes taken in conversation with Howard Levy on August 6, 2009.
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