Family: Wind instruments
Photo: George Leung, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
The harmonica is a small wind instrument with metal reeds. Sound is produced both when you blow and when you draw. The most popular diatonic harmonica has ten holes and is tuned to a single key.
A short history
Matthias Hohner started mass-producing harmonicas in 1857 in Trossingen, Germany. Cheap and easy to carry, they quickly reached America, where they became the voice of the blues.
Fun facts
- Blues players discovered „bending” – by changing the position of the tongue and mouth they lower the pitch and get notes the harmonica theoretically does not have.
- Little Walter was one of the first to play the harmonica through a microphone plugged into a guitar amplifier – it then sounded like an overdriven saxophone.
In rock and jazz
Blues and rock: Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Robert Plant („When the Levee Breaks”), Mick Jagger. Jazz: Toots Thielemans, master of the chromatic harmonica.
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