Complete Chromatic Harmonica Method

I received my course today. The video follows the book with Phil Duncan as your teacher. Mr. Duncan is thorough and easy to understand. I felt as if I had a harmonica teacher right in front of me. The CD has additional examples with concise instructions. The book has a nice feel to it. There are pages and pages of exercises and tunes including genres from classical, holiday, folk, and country! You will learn the different embouchures. You will also learn how to read music with your chromatic harmnica. I intend to purchase music for my harmonica after this course teaches me how to read with it! Then, I'll play Christmas songs during the holidays! I am so excited and I can't wait to get started! Buy this course if you are serious about the Chromatic Harmonica. I am VERY happy with my purchase! Well...it's time to practice! Have fun!

This book is for beginners to learn the chromatic harmonica, and Mister Phil has the big credentials BUT there is a huge Flaw in his method, in that he starts you reading for notes in the lowest octave (Blow and Draw holes #1 thru 4) but he gives you all the fingering as if they are for holes #5 through 8. Then, having learned all the wrong fingerings, in the middle of the book, he then wants you to "nevermind"...and learn the lower (1-4) AND (5-8) middle octaves ALL OVER AGAIN! (For what they actually are!) So you have to unlearn the entire first half of the book and relearn to read, with different fingerings for everything!!!!This is absolutely NUTS! His justification is that he doesn't want you to have leger lines confuse you (there's just one for that low C, buddy!)Fortunately I had already learned enough about reading for the Chromatic before the book arrived, so I could immediately spot the FLAW! And am very grateful that I tossed this book in the crap pile before it had a chance to mess me up.Anyway..Learning to read for the Chromatic is not all that hard, if you just use the actual notation for the actual pitch you are going to use, for starters. Once you actually KNOW how to play all the notes, then if a tune calls for "Octave Changing" as Phil likes to call it, then you are going to be grounded enough to be able to switch. But I would steer clear of this book. Really Far!!!

I found this book quite helpful, as I had just received a chromatic harmonica and needed to figure out the sharps and flats of the thing. This book will keep me busy for a while, right now I'm about half way through the book and it is getting pretty difficult. This is written for someone who is learning to read music as well, goes note by note at first.

Very well done by a very experienced teacher and really has a lot to share. Well worth the money. Would like to think there is more to it than this but he sure makes it simple just take time in the mouth to make the ears happy. NOT HARD and worth the work to enjoy and feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. Of Course I only have to satisfy me. ANS

As a novice, I was looking for a simple but comprehensive insruction guide for the Chromatic harmnica. After reading various reviews of the limited offerings for this instrument I thouught this would do the job. Unfortunately, as one earlier reviewer wrote, there really is no instruction in the book. There are about two pages of text and then it jumps into songs. Left me totally confused. Even though it is not written for the chromatic harmonica I also bought "Harmonica for Dummies" which I find far more comprehensive and helpful. This book MIGHT be helpful tosomeonne who already plays but it sure doesn't seem useful to a novice.

While the books is supremely authoritative and the author is great teacher and performer, I personally fount it lacking of juice a little bit. It is not boring but sort of uninspiring. May be I'm wrong on that. I appreciated the DVD shows the angles and the selection of tunes is quite good and progresses from relatively simple pieces. If you are serous about learning chromatic get the set!

Excellent book to take you all the way from square one to playing complete advanced songs

Good book for beginner.CD very useful

There is something about the slow pace of this book that gives me confidence that if I stick with it I'll eventually succeed.This is a book that teaches music notation and theory. (It's hard to see how you could gain mastery of a chromatic instrument without some rudimentary knowledge of these topics.) Happily, the notation is matched to the instrument with pretty standard harmonica tablature all the way through too.Many of the exercises seem very simplistic - but you've got to crawl and walk before you can run. Unlike a few other texts this book doesn't set out to intimidate the complete novice.Teaches the seven major keys. Contains some nice practice pieces.DVD and CD both accurately follow the book; from the very beginning. The CD has the Harmonica on one channel and the accompaniment on the other so you can use the balance control of your stereo to exclude the harmonica part and play along yourself - eventually...My only complaint is that it lacks somewhat on actual playing technique, otherwise it seems like a great package.

This is an ok book but it is a little cold. Enthusiasm is something that needs to be nurtured in someone coming new to an instrument and the approach adopted here is 'unsympathetic'. One of the first instructions concerns tongue blocking. This is a difficult technique for a newcomer but no help is given as to how it might be achieved; we are simply informed that it is "necessary". It is an imortant skill which does need to be developed as soon as possible, no doubt, but the harmonica can be played without it. The text tends to suggest that it must be learned as a pre-requisite to playing. This is both untrue and possibly discouraging. The rest of the text is ok but a bit dull.In conclusion, I think it is fair to say that this book is useful but may produce a negeative mental state in the aspiring student: it is strict, straight laced and uninspiring - a bit old fashioned. Fortunately the web provides a free and encouraging antidote. If you buy this book for goodness sake read some of this more upbeat stuff as well or you may never get started. "Harmonica for Dummies" is brilliant in this respect, but does concentrate mostly on the diatonic. Nevertheless, do get hold of a copy because it will give you hope and some great info which this book completely fails to do.Addition:I've just noticed that Mel Bay do a basic chrom book and this does seem to say a bit more about basic technique but why didn't they include this in this so called "Complete Chromatic Harmonica"? Maybe beginners should check this book out first

I recently bought a chromatic harmonica for the fun of it, and thought that I may need a book to accompany it so I had a bit more of an idea what I should be doing. As a person who is already very well practiced at reading music, some parts of the book weren't helpful for me, but you could give this to the least musical person on the planet and they would be able to read music by the end of it. The technique section could have been a little longer and could have introduced other techniques such as what I think is called the "pucker" technique. Over all a very good book for beginners.

This is a great book for the amateur harmonica player. Some really helpful and useful tips to get you started. There are not too many books for getting started around and most that are tend to be expensive. I can recommend this one. Buzz

Excellent book, easy to follow. If you have never played a chromatic harmonica then this is the book for you if you want to learn to play.