My primary goal for this week was to learn a few songs from the book I was working through, and I was about 75% of the way through a third song when I just couldn’t figure out the rhythm in my head. After reading through the rest of the book I had, I found it was time to move on to a video series, as I tend to learn better from audio visual media. However, the lessons themselves are not the biggest challenge I faced this week, as I struggled to make time for consistent, quality practice.
Learning Challenges
The notes were similar to guitar tabs in the sense that they expressed the note to play, but not at what timing. Mary Had a Little Lamb was simple enough to get since the rhythm is burned into my mind for some reason. When trying to move on to the slightly more complex, When the Saints Come Marching In, an old favorite from my saxophone days, I couldn’t really get the rhythm down.
It was here that I felt I needed to move on to a different learning direction. I’ve since started a short YouTube series covering some of the basics. I was very happy to see that the first lesson covered sections that confused me as to why they were so late in the book I read, one of which being “How to Hold the Harmonica.” When hitting this section towards the back end of the book, I immediately thought, “I didn’t even think about if I was holding it right, that seems pretty important.”
Something else that occurred to me as I progressed in the book was how naïve I was in the simplicity of the instrument. There is a lot more to this little device than meets the eye. There are a variety of practices for changing the sounds beyond breathing in and out. The usual suspects of musical instruments are here, such as chords, octaves, and scales, but also bending and vibrato – a practice of tone shifts sustained throughout a note.
I’ve had to keep reminding myself that I need to start small, accept being a beginner, and celebrate the early wins to keep up momentum. Otherwise this could become another lost interest on the pile of trials behind me.
Habit Challenges
Consistency is one of the bigger challenges I faced this week, even as something I emphasized in the last post. I’ve been struggling to make the necessary time to just get started. My plan was to use the space after work, but by then I’d often been mentally exhausted and used the time to do basically nothing day after day. Making better use of this time will not only benefit me in harmonica practice, but also in a variety of other areas.
This comes back to an early retrospective from a couple years ago in which I’d found trials centered around removing things from my life were significantly easier than those that added. In the end, remembering to not do something is pretty easy as seeing the thing reminds me not to do it. While making the conscious effort to make time and energy to focus on a given task has a variety of steps just to get started.
To combat this, I plan to set a concrete time for practicing every day 4:30 PM. It’s in my calendar with a reminder just like any other meeting or appointment. I’m hoping this reminder will help me to get a consistent habit for practicing. I may also revisit ideas from books like Atomic Habits to help me think of better ways to help the habit stick like developing proper cues and rewards to reinforce practicing.
Trying Out Before Buying In 