To receive the occassional email,
notifying you of things such as
interviews or specials, please
click below and sign up!
THE INTERVIEWS
The Harmonica Interviews presents…
H O W A R D L E V Y
Prologue: Anyone who has played the harmonica for more than 20 seconds has heard of Howard Levy. Amongst many other superlative achievements and skill sets, Howard is a remarkable Jazz Pianist and harmonica player without peer, He is universally recognized by players as the inventor of the overblow/overdraw technique for playing the diatonic harmonica, or “blues harp”. Howard has played on literally hundreds of recordings, many of his own and many for other artists. I had occasionally bumped into, or seen, Howard on facebook and every now and then I garnered enough moxie to say hello. Howard always answered politely. “Such a famous harp player saying hello to me?” I thought “it must be someone else using Mr. Levy’s name.” Well, one day I was looking at Howard’s website and I came upon Howard’s new harmonica school – it facinated me. I saw Howard online a few days later and asked if I could interview him regarding the
H411: The motivation for asking you to speak with me for a while is my fascination with your school., I’m sure you gotten tremendous response so far. I would like to assume many other harp players have same fascination that I have. On the internet today there are a lot of great harp players and not-so-great players offering harp lessons online or quasi lessons. What was you motivation to put together this rather sophisticated tool to teach?
HL : I was contacted by the folks at ARTIST WORKS
http://www.artistworks.com/ . I had been previously been contacted by other people with various offers that I wasn’t interested in. When they (artists works) got in touch and showed me what they can actually do, I was knocked out…they are so smart and knowledgeable and they’ve designed something that is incredibly useful for musicians. They flew me out there, to
So…the great thing about the platform they designed is that there is an interaction that goes on between the student and teacher, but it’s in digestible size chunks. I mean, it’s very difficult to give online lessons… like you and me here…because that only works if you have the exact right schedule, exact right time, with all of the international time zone issues. Doing it this way, someone who REALLY wants to ask me a question can get a few shots in, film themselves playing, I will answer them and they can look at it whenever THEY have the time. That’s one significant difference between this (the
Most people know me for the stuff that I do that’s really advanced …things that I play on recordings and live. This school, it’s divided; the little pieces are divided into segments from the most beginning to the most advanced. When I recorded the beginner stuff, I had to NOT bend notes for a day and a half (laughing) that was really hard (laughing some more) - that’s the delineation I call beginning harmonica: “Everything you can do without bending notes”
H411: That’s very funny….and that actually makes a lot of sense
HL: Yeah, because that’s the superficial level of the
instrument; you have the 10 holes, you can blow in & you can draw out. There is a heck-of-a-lot of things you can do just doing that. I also expose people to all the different positions you can play and give examples of tunes you can play in 1st, 2nd , 3rd, 4th, 5th, even 12th…playing F on a C harp. For the beginners I strictly stuck to the C harp and I sneak in concepts of music theory. So many harmonica players don’t know what notes they are playing, so I will say this is F…the 5th hole draw is an F…and the 2nd hold draw is a D, introducing them to the actual musical notes so when you get to the intermediate level you have an actual understanding of the instrument, not just from the harmonica your-eyes-closed-feeling-the-instrument view point but how it relates to the musical universe-at-large. The intermediate stuff includes bending and all the things you can do with note bending.
H411: Do you find that’s a big piece of piece of the puzzle that’s lacking for people who are just beginning to learn to play the harmonica; the lack of musical theory training or even briefing…even in writing? From my perspective, when I first started to play harmonica, it was very difficult to find anything on musical theory, everything in stores was “…made easy” or “….made simple” it’s great until I wanted to start play with other people. There’s a big difference between jamming by myself in the front seat of my car and playing with other people. Do you find that’s lacking?
HL: Well you know when was learning to play harp there was nothing out there, so I think that anything is better than nothing but, yeah, I try to get away from the arrows and numbers as quickly as I can, those are there initially because those are the obvious things. I try to get people to hear what they’re doing. I try to include a little ear training in there just like anyone on any other musical instrument would do.
The crazy thing about this wonderful instrument that we love so much is that it’s (where the notes are) invisible and that’s the hard part about teaching it because you can’t show someone “here’s a C” like you can on piano so…in a lot of my lessons I am a piano player, I’m sitting at the keyboard and then I’m saying, you know (blowing a note) “this is an A” and then I’ll play a note and say “this is what it looks like on the piano” so you can relate (that harmonica note) to the musical universe. It not all self contained in just the harmonica. So I just try to gently put that out there and I don’t lay too much on, at any time, depending on the given level of the lesson I am giving.
I was a person who never learned a lot of terminology, even though I am a jazz musician, I didn’t study jazz and memorize terms out of books, I learned how to play jazz by playing tunes and learning just as much as needed to learn to play a particular tune; that’s the way I try to do it with the harmonica. I don’t lay a lot of terminology on anybody, but I do emphasize how important it is to hear. I try to get people to sing things before they play them, because the better your ear is the better you will be able to play this instrument and to better be able to break down the things that are obvious on the instrument, getting more into playing music just like the guitar player or the saxophone player can do, people who have all the notes easily available – unlike ours where some of them are right there and some of them take all sorts of gyrations to be able to get.
H411: I believe Jon Gindick said something to the effect of “the difficulty of playing harmonica is working around its limitations” which I thought was rather poignant to this part of the conversation. Back to your school, you answered earlier that you do interact with students – answering questions, etc - however on the opening page from the school website, it also writes of “recording themselves and hearing themselves playing side-by-side with you”. Is it pre-recorded with pre-selected tunes, or do you come and record yourself saying “this is how it should sound” or is it a combination of both?
HL: The way it really works here is, since I have so many different lessons on line, if the student sees something they enjoy, they can try and play the tune as I’ve laid out there OR if they just are working on something, they can record themselves playing it. I will listen, watch and take some notes and then I will record a video response. I have a really nice high def camera, really nice microphone at my place that the Artists Works folks have given me, as well as the same backdrop that we used when we filmed all the lessons, so there is a kind of visual unity to this. It’s really nice. Then what happens is I send the response back…I upload it to the website…and it is paired along side of what the student has sent me, so not only can that student see themselves, but everyone else can say “oh let’s look at the video exchanges”. Just the other week a guy from Slovenia posted a blues in f# on a C harp – he played REALLY great – and then I responded “that was really wonderful and here are a few little other ideas that you can toss in if you’re interested” So anyone who wants to look at that, can. I’ve also provided backing tracks for many different tunes – since I play piano. Anytime anyone wants to hear any kind of tune or I get the idea that I want to play one, I will record a backing track for myself on piano and play along with it on camera. This is another HUGE advantage of the school; it’s not just me playing harmonica to you. There are complete performances of music on there; I can answer question in the greatest detail and there is no limit as to how often someone can send in video submissions. Some people might never send one, some people might send in two-a-week…whatever it is…it’s fine AND it’s all included in the price, which is less than it cost than if you took one lesson from me if you came over my house or if I were teaching while I was on the road. It’s really a good deal money-wise
H411: What about personal bandwidth? A certain point, or when you have enough students. Do you have a specific classroom size where at a certain point it's beyond your own personal bandwidth to be able to respond to everyone, so you may want to keep your class limited? Will you have other pro’s out there, who you’ve lined up, so when the school reaches that size….whatever it is….where it become too overwhelming to directly interact with everyone, you say to yourself “I know that I have guys and gals, these pro’s, out there that I can leverage to give feedback as well”? G-d willing, of course, that your school should grow so big.
HL: Oh, I would never do that. Right now it’s at about 100 student – within 6 weeks or so. I hope it keeps steadily growing and we’ll see how many people sign up. If I have to worry about having too many – that would be really great – but I have no idea how many is too many because, like I said, there is so much material here and I am adding to it every week I’ll say (as an example) “It would be really cool if I do a whole thing on 8-bar blues”, lets say, or last week I had myself playing a blues in 5/4 in Dm on a G harp through an amp. So, I’m covering about three different bases there, you know, like different kinds of hand held mic, which involve a certain amount of technique anyway. Then, learning how to play in odd time meters I use the basic rhythm from “Take 5”, but I am playing in minor cross harp key on a G harp, so there is a lot to learn from. I am constantly adding new things because its easy for me to do; I have the setup, I can accompany myself on piano, prerecord that track and play along or play simultaneously – I have a Christmas message I put on of me playing a Mel Torme song simultaneously on the harmonica and piano. I just whipped that one off simply because I felt like it. I really enjoy doing this because it’s so multi-dimensional. Also, the harmonica players can chat amongst themselves: there is a chat function; there is a forum where you can discuss anything. All sort of people have written in with really interesting information about things I knew nothing about, so we opened it up for discussion. There is a community of harmonica plays gathering around this website and they can talk to each other and get to know each other and it sort of spreads as there is no geographical limit, of course. That’s really the beauty of that people from all over the world are signed onto this thing. I am really thankful for the people at Artists Works for contacting me because I never would have dreamed of doing anything like this simply because I don’t have the knowledge to even remotely begin to figure out how to set this up.
H411: They reached out to you, Artists Works?
HL: Yes
H411: I am assuming you’ve gotten good feedback from your students
HL: Oh yea, I want to try to put together a little testimonial (laughing)….
H411: …of course
HL: …because when guys come on with their videos – first off they’re supposed to come and say “Hi, I’m going to play this tune and that tune and please help me with this” – but some of them come on and say “awww, this is so great…thanks for doing it!” That makes me feel great! I’m so happy that player’s are enjoying the school. If you look through the list of lessons, you can see just how much is there…you could wander around for weeks. It’s kind of like going to a museum where you can go through all the exhibits and you can be as active, or passive, as you feel like being.
Just the other day a guy joined up and he said he had half-a-year of experience playing the harmonica. That made me feel great too, because it’s not just the real advanced players who are signing up for the school, trying to get better, it’s even people who are absolute beginners that are signing up too. But I have to point out, the some of the people who are absolute beginners have experience playing other instruments. Sometimes these are people who want to learn a little bit of harmonica so they can play along with guitar or saxophone or other instruments.
H411: What do you see with beginners or the beginner/novices…aside from the obvious things….what are of the things these players are missing or perhaps the wrong direction they might be taking. Obviously there are preferred ways….best practices if you will…of doing things and less preferred ways of doing things. When you interact with your students in your school, what are the common mistakes, or perhaps mis-training , that you are seeing?
HL: I can remember when I first started playing harmonica and I thought bending notes was something you did by pulling hard…..
H411: That one technique I suppose….
HL (laughing) Yeah, right (laughing) that’s a basic mistake that many people make, but it’s also actually interesting. Someone recently sent something in playing blues; he was showing good time and understood the 12 bar form but he really wasn’t bending notes. I had to GENTLY point it out and recommend he look at my lesson on note bending, then I showed him how to do it and shared that you can do it real soft or you can do it real loud, but the volume you do it in has nothing to do with the process of bending notes. That’s probably the great mystery to the beginning harmonica player. I see it quite often, someone playing harmonica for years but not really bending notes. I see this quite often, where someone might be really musical and they get a really good reaction at a parties…you know….because everyone responds to someone picking up the harmonica and going (playing a little chug riff on his harp -“Waaa-Waaaa-Waaaa”) and they go “WOW that’s great!”
H411: That’s funny…
HL: Because it’s great that someone can do that. But it’s a pretty common thing. I was really, honestly, touched that this person responded and sent me another video back with him really trying.
H411: It amazing what good rhythm can make up for isn’t it?
HL: OH YEAH, because the Harmonica is the ONLY wind instrument that is both a rhythm instrument, a chordal instrument AND a melody instrument. You can get away a certain amount of sloppiness because a certain amount of sloppiness is ok if you intending to do it that way because people will enjoy it. If you here a few notes together (next to each other) on the piano it will sound like “arrrgggghh” but if you do it on the harmonica (playing as a demonstration) it’s a chord. There is no OTHER instrument where you can play a few notes next to each other and have it sound right.
There a BIG fun-aspect to the harmonica too. I actually have some lessons where I do a lot of blues-vamp stuff. To work on developing a strong rhythmic sense where I have people tapping their right foot along with a blues pattern, then alternating right and left feet, because this is stuff I find myself doing when I am just sitting around and playing. I try to through in a lot of things that are not directly or totally related to the physical act of playing the harmonica. I talk about posture….sometimes people will come over for a lesson and they will sit there like this (Howard leans over, his chest almost touching his knees…playing a bit of blues). I’ll say “hey, sit up straight, spread your chest out”. Just all sorts of things that are obvious to the person that is not doing the playing. That’s what you would say if you saw me playing like that.
I tried to…from a lifetime of teaching experience, and I have taught a lot of people one-on-one and in groups…when I did this, to think of absolutely everything I’ve ever seen anyone do and address it in a positive sense, like this is the way you should sit….or the foot tapping stuff. I’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of things with their bodies that work against their playing.
H411: It’s interesting we’re discussing rhythm as I was having a discussion with Randy Weinstein out of
HL: OH YEAH, I know Randy…he used to live in
H411: A great guy…
HL: Oh yeah and a very good player…
H411: We were talking about rhythm and he was joking with me saying “No one ever sang ‘It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got good throat vibrato’ “.
HL (Laughing)
H411: When you’ve offered personal feedback have you found anyone expressing discomfort or perhaps trying to rationalize what they are doing?
HL: Not so far. I am sure there are people who’s pride will be….well…I am pretty direct. It’s an act of bravery to submit a video no matter how good you, so it’s been totally cool so far.
H411: It’s interesting the lineage…the progression of technique in harmonica. You are obviously, in addition to being a virtuoso on the instrument, also a deep student of the history of harmonica playing. From your development of over blows to the current trend of high speed play. What do you see next?
HL: What’s happening is the harmonica world is diversifying and spreading out. When I first started playing the harp, the only harmonica’s I knew about were Hohner, ok? Now, there are all these different companies. So no matter what I think about these different company’s; they’re there. Players now have a lot of different choices about what kind of harmonica they can buy, because all the different companies also make a lot of different models. Then there are all the customizers out there. There also a lot of people who re-tune their harmonicas routinely and are offering alternate tunings. Lee Oskar, of course, who was the first one who started that and now there are all sorts of different people messing around with that. Then there is all different kinds of chromatics and hybrid instruments, like Brendan Power’s instruments.
The is SO much to choose from, the harmonica world is spreading out in many directions at once and is becoming larger and larger. There is instruction available, like I said when I started playing there was one book – Tony Glover’s book – I told people about that book. If you already knew how to play you could say “yeah, that’s how I do it” It’s (the harmonica world) is going off in a million directions at once. Sometimes some of the things happening in some of these directions might not be to someone’s taste, it used to be a lot simpler; diatonic players played blues and folk music, Chromatic players played Classic and Jazz. Now, diatonic players are playing all sorts of different kinds of stuff AND they’re playing it on all sorts of different kinds of instruments…valved stuff as an example. Sometimes it’s hard to know what instrument you’re listening to. Like I said, it’s expanding in all sorts of different directions and if I like something, I like it. If I don’t, I don’t. No matter instrument it’s on, no matter who’s playing it…whether is slow or fast.
The only pitfall for people who are trying to incorporate over blows and over draws into their playing, who don’t have a good enough ear, is that the notes are not inherently in-tune unless you “make” them in-tune. I really don’t like hearing people using the notes and not playing them in tune…kind of rancid. It’s like listening to an out of tune violin, it’s painful. That’s the only thing I see as a possible negative: people learning how to do a lot of techniques and not sounding musical with them.
H411: Is it fair to say that there are a whole lot of other good things you can learn besides over blows, before trying to incorporating it into ones playing... especially for the beginner, novice or even proficient player?
HL: Oh Yeah…I was the exception as I learned how to do all these things within the first few months of playing, as I had already been playing piano for 10, 11 years. For me, here’s an instrument that doesn’t have all the notes on it (looking down at his harp with a faux quizzical look) “what wrong with this thing, how can it NOT have all the notes on it, it MUST have all the notes on it??” (Laughing). That was my basic orientation; to try to figure out how to play the flat 3rd in the 2nd octave or a major 7th in cross harp! For me, in order to feel like I can play music – and not just blues licks - on this instrument, it drove me to find this stuff out when I was 18. SO I think there are players coming along who hear me play, and know something about music, who are going to want to integrate this into their playing at an early stage If someone is there to show you…and I can teach this very well….then you can hit these notes. Of course, I didn’t sound really great playing those notes for the first year. I used to be afraid to try to hit them in public when I was 18 or 19 but I practiced and got better and better AND I knew nothing about the harmonica back then. I never opened up a harmonica to adjust reed clearances for the first 10 years or maybe even more.
I was as a piano player…piano players don’t usually know anything about the instrument. They never look at the action of a piano, take it apart and go “yeah, the jack needs adjusting” It’s not a hands-on instrument, so my approach to the harmonica was not hands-on as well. If I had been a guitar player or a flute player, someone who was actively changing the bridge or the nut, maybe I would have opened the harps. I show this as well in the school, some rudimentary stuff on the harp…how to open it up, pushing reed closer into the reeds into the reed plates to make it easier to get the over draw and over blows. So it won’t be a painful experience for you.
H411: It’s interesting, as I have a lot conversations with diatonic players, I’ve had conversations with a lot of chromatic players – I purchased my first chromatic a few weeks ago and am discovering it’s more different-than-similar to the diatonic – I’m sure you’ve had this question posed to you dozen and dozens of times; when you picked up the diatonic and realized it was missing notes, why didn’t you simply pick up the chromatic?
HL: Well, there are several phases in the questions. First off, I did. Because I was curious, because other people had said that to me and when I tried it I said “hey, what’s wrong with this instrument you can’t bend the notes on it?” The WHOLE reason I was attracted to this (the harmonica) was that I heard Paul Butterfield, Junior Wells, James Cotton and if I couldn’t do that on the harmonica I wasn’t interested in playing it. I checked out the chromatic and I thought it was pretty interesting and I listened to some classical music…George Fields and Larry Adler playing some concertos. I thought it would be cool if I learn to read music on the chromatic and then I could play Bach, so I did that in the mid 70’s. It made my reading on the diatonic even better when I did start to. The harmonica in general is a hard instrument to read music on, especially on the diatonic, because you have to pin point bends and you have to have a scheme of the instrument in your head. The Chromatic is a bit easier because the difference between a C and a C# is you blow on the 4th or 5th hole and you push the button in for the C#. There’s more feed back to your nervous system from the separate notes, there isn’t any abstract stuff going on in your throat to get separate notes on the same whole.
People don’t know this about me, but I actually performed the Arthur Benjamin Concerto on chromatic harmonica in 1984. I have the poster around somewhere. I practiced everyday for about six months and then I played it. When I was finished, I put the chromatic back and never really played it again. I practiced I took some lesson from a guy in Chicago about repairing, because as soon as you start to play the chromatic, you have to learn how to fix the slide because it’s going to stick the second time you take it out of the case. You have to be able to take it apart and remember the order of the part as you take it apart. I learned all that stuff, then basically I never played it again, but I have an appreciation for chromatic playing. Like you said, it’s more different than it is similar to the diatonic. Unlike the diatonic, the reeds are far away. With the chromatic you have a mouth piece that houses a mechanism there – the slide – so you have to learn to breathe in a more subtle way. And then there is the maintenance required, you really have to know what you’re doing because those wind saver valves are going to stick, some of them are going to fall off, the slide will go out of adjustment, you have to learn how to take it apart and put it back together…depending upon which company’s instrument your playing. There’s a lot to learn there and I really respect great chromatic players obviously. I’m not drawn personally toward playing it for the sound of the instrument, I am drawn to my first love here (holding up a diatonic).
H411: So what next for you…projects, teaching…anything you want to share with me?
HL: Sure! I put three CD’s this past year…which is kind of amazing! Once called “Alone and Together”, that I recorded right here in Levyland studios. The other one is called “Time Capsules” that’s with a band of mine called Acoustic Express; that’s two guitarists, a bass and myself. Kind of a Django and Stéphane oriented group, but it spreads out into a lot of different directions into world music, Beatles tunes, etc. The third one is on the label Chicago Sessions, with all my original Jazz, which is called “Tonight and Tomorrow”. The title track I actually wrote when I was 18….I had a BIG log jam of music that I wanted to record. I am very very happy with the way that turned out. I am playing both piano and harmonica on that recording with a great Jazz rhythm section with Larry Gray on double bass and Ernie Adams on drums.
Next big thing is the Trio Globo recording with the great Eugene Friesen on cello and world-renowned percussionist Glen Velez and I’m playing piano and harmonica …much of it simultaneously…this album is going to be called “Steering by the Stars”. It’s coming out in the spring on Stonecutter records, which is a
H411: All of your recordings are available at all the typical places…iTunes, CDBaby, etc?
HL: Most of them are, more so on my website, www.levyland.com. As a matter of fact “
H411: let’s talk young talent. What are you seeing out there that makes you go “wow, this is good stuff” or “this is neat”. Who bares the harmonica torch?
HL: This is a kid names Josh King who I met in
It’s great to see so many people interested in the instrument. I think the instrument goes through phases of awareness by the public and lack of awareness or they fixate on one person…whomever it might be….it may be Bob Dylan, it might be John Popper, hopefully it’s me (laughing) or maybe Neil Young. People enjoy this instrument, it’s kind of a magical invention. All of us are really happy that so many people are interested in actually studying the instrument, coming to me online and signing up. There are great players on there and – like I said – people who have been playing for half a year. It’s a great world out there on the internet where people from anywhere can participate on an online interactive teaching experience. I never would have dreamed about this a year ago, I could not have imagined this. The idea of online teaching, I would go “yeah yeah right….it’s much better in person” but now I realize I was wrong! Especially for the price; $60 for three months?! You can’t take a lesson from me for $60, much less have unlimited access to everything on here, everyone else interacting with all the other players, seeing everyone else lessons. Everyone get’s there own student page so you can upload videos of you playing, so everyone else on there knows who you are. You can use this to promote yourself, to put your best foot forward. It’s not like I am the high and mighty teacher and you are the meek and lowly student…not at all! There are lots of people on here who play really well and their not afraid to show it. This is a really great thing.
H411: It’s amazing what technology has brought to bare with regards to musical instruction.
HL: David Butler, the man who started this company, he’s one of the developers of AOL 1.0 and instant messenger. He’s one of the main people who developed this for AOL. He’s also a guitarist. He started the company because he wanted to develop a teaching platform for his Jazz guitar teacher, Jimmy Bruno - who is a fantastic Jazz guitar player from Philly & a great teacher – the platform he developed worked like a charm for Jimmy and he has a ton of online students, it’s just amazing. That’s how he started the company…his relationship with Jimmy Bruno. It’s a perfect blend of technological know-how, altruism, love of music and a great business model. David and Patricia Butler have a great staff of people who are equally helpful to the students as they are to the teacher, as there is all sorts of stuff I had to learn to be to operate this. I also have an assistant namesd Bob Kessler – a harmonica student of mine - who is really good with computers, and also he is a professional photographer so he has a great eye. He’s been an immense help to me. It’s not just me on the other end of this, there is a whole support network through Artists Networks and Bob. That really answer the question you asked early, regarding whether I will hand this off to other people and the answer is no, because it’s not me but a really reputable company behind all of this.
H411: Outstanding.
Well…Howard, I appreciate you spending your morning with me. Very informative!
HL: My pleasure, it was fun! (Howard wails a blues riff as he signs off).
here are 3 different ways of reaching Howard:
www.levyland.com
www.howardharmonica.com
twitter.com/howardlevy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLICK HERE & TELL ME WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THIS INTERVIEW
