Harmonica mouth-organ

Breath Control technique for Harmonica or mouthorgan

Breath Control

One of the most important fundamentals of playing harmonica is learning to control your breath. Two parts of your body that aid you is to use your diaphragm to control your breath, and learning to control your uvula which is the gate to your nasal passage.

Use Your Diaphragm

Good harmonica playing relies on good breath control. Your lungs are your air bellows, but the chest muscles & lungs by themselves are slow and cumbersome. However your diaphragm, the muscular membranous partition roughly between your chest and stomach, can be used to fill and empty your lungs rapidly.

To gain precision and control over your breath you need to develop your diaphragm. You need to become aware of it, to practise controlling it and to develop its strength, while also increasing your breath capacity to give yourself the best chance to become proficient at harmonica.

For exercises that increase your breath capacity and develop your diaphragm strength go to the Exercises page.

When playing the ideal is to maintain a gentle pressure from your diaphragm so that it is supporting your breath at all times. This way it is ready to respond in drawing or expelling air from your lungs as soon as you ask it to. If it is not kept ready it takes more time to first pick up the slack. Another benefit is that when you support & breath from the diaphragm, as your playing develops so does your tone. You learn to resonate with your instrument, your diaphragm can act like a sort of drum skin drawing you into the music in a very real way as you vibrate with your music.

This article is taken from http://www.angelfire.com/music/HarpOn/