Tongue techniques add depth and variety to your play, and effective use of advanced tongue techniques can signal the difference between being a good harp player and being a great one. Basically tongue technique is just what it sounds like — using your tongue to block specific holes while allowing only the holes you want to get air. It may sound simple, but getting it to work well can be a little daunting.

Try using the tongue-blocking method you already know to get a single note. Position your mouth as if to play a four-note chord using holes 1-2-3-4 blow. Then use your tongue to block holes 1 through 3, and allow the air to move past your tongue and play just the 4 hole. This will sound a single note. Try doing this exercise all the way up the harmonica. Then try blocking the other side, covering the three upper holes and allowing the lowest note in the group to sound. This technique will work for both blow and draw notes.

Playing Octaves

This same tongue-blocking concept can be modified to get octaves as well. Octaves are often used to add strength to a given note by doubling it. In music the word doubling means using two voices to play the same note, phrase, or part.

Octaves are achieved on the harmonica by modifying the tongue-blocking technique used to play single notes. In this case the tongue is used to block the middle holes between the octave notes you're trying to play, allowing the air to pass on both sides of your tongue until you have two clean octave notes sounding on the harmonica simultaneously. Try it now by positioning your mouth as if to play the same four-note chord using holes 1-2-3-4 blow that you used above for tongue blocking — but instead of blocking all but one hole, use your tongue to block holes 2 and 3, allowing your air to flow into holes 1 and 4. When done properly you should hear two clean C notes that are an octave apart.

Among the blow notes the octaves that are available to you occur between holes 1 and 4 (C), 2 and 5 (E), 3 and 6 (G), 4 and 7 (C), 5 and 8 (E), 6 and 9 (G), and 7 and 10 (C).

Among the draw notes the available octaves occur between holes 1 and 4 (D), 3 and 7 (B), 4 and 8 (D), 5 and 9 (F), and 6 and 10 (A). Note that the last four of these octaves require you to block three holes with your tongue, which is difficult even for experienced harp players, so they are shown more for your reference than as a suggested exercise.

Practice this octave technique until you can get a clean octave sound between the combinations of holes listed above. This technique is a building block for learning the other advanced tongue-blocking techniques to follow.

Tongue Slapping Tongue slapping

is a technique that employs basic tongue blocking and adds the action of moving the tongue on and off of the comb to block and unblock holes in order to change the number of notes being played at one time.

You can try tongue slapping by playing one of your octaves and then moving your tongue off and on the middle holes that it's blocking. Notice that the sound shifts back and forth from the octave sound to the full chord sound.

Tongue Vamping Tongue vamping

combines the techniques of tongue blocking and tongue slapping to create a repeating rhythmic pattern of alternating single note and chord sounds.

The idea of tongue vamping is to use a phrase or idea repetitively within the rhythm of a song, which has the effect of creating the sound of a single note melody being accompanied by chords, all being played on one harmonica.

Here's an example of tongue vamping. This concept combines two techniques: playing an octave in your harmonica by blocking holes 2 and 3 while playing holes 1 and 4. First you'll hear all four holes, and then you'll hear holes 2 and 3 blocked so that you can hear the octave. By rhythmically lifting and replacing the tongue over holes 2 and 3 you create the vamp, and it sounds like this.

FIGURE 6-1: Tongue vamping

Tongue Shuffle

In the examples of 4/4 time up to this point the measures have been divided either into their individual four beats or into an “eighth-note feel,” where each count of the measure gets two beats (counted “1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and”).

A shuffle rhythm uses a different way of approaching 4/4 time. In this case each of the four beats in the measure is divided into three equal parts known as triplets. Each measure would be counted “1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and-a.” The rhythm is then further refined by accenting just the first and last beat of each group of triplets, which looks like this:

1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and-a 1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and-a

To accent means to play a beat or note more loudly than the beats or notes surrounding it, thereby emphasizing it. The overall effect is to create a kind of skipping rhythm that's quite driving and full of forward motion. In fact, some people like to say that it's easy to remember what a shuffle rhythm sounds like because it sounds just like its name:“shuffle-shuffle-shuffle-shuffle.”

On harmonica, a tongue shuffle combines the techniques of tongue vamping, tongue slapping, octaves, and single notes to create a shuffle rhythm.

Here's a cool shuffle phrase you can try. It uses the shuffle rhythm described above, but the phrase begins on the last triplet note of the previous measure, so the count will shift to look like this:

a-1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and

Then play each of the accented beats as follows:

a-1	draw 2
a	1-2-3-4 draw
2	1-2-3-4 blow
a	1-2-3-4 blow
3	1-2-3-4 draw
a	1-2-3-4 draw
4	2 blow

An example of the shuffle rhythm can be heard on Track 25.