When I was young, I made small video games for my friends, and I now work for a video games company. It is for me a complete activity as it involves art, music and of course computer engineering. I was late to harmonica and started playing when I was 18. I used to watch a lot of movies and when I saw Midnight Cowboy I was drawn to the haunting sound of the harmonica in the film. It was a sound that was at once familiar and was like a voice. I found I couldn’t replicate the sound from the film. My first harmonica was a diatonic - a Hohner Golden Melody - and I realised much later that the film used a chromatic harmonica. In the beginning I played mostly melodies and listened to Toots Thielemans, Stevie Wonder and JJ Milteau. I loved the film La La Land and played a lot of music from the film. City of Stars is a simple tune but involves a lot of bends, and I was very unhappy, at first, with my results. But by using a chromatic tuner I was able to achieve more accurate bends, and I added vibrato techniques to shape my sound. I still use a tuner regularly to check my bends. You can make significant progress on your harmonica by polishing a song you really like. The songs I play are often not difficult by themselves, but I practise them and polish them until I get the sound I really like. It can take a lot of time to make even a simple tune sound right. Harmonica can be a tricky instrument. My studies involved a lot of maths and science and I found that harmonica helped me to relax and to sleep better. It is also a wonderful instrument to meet new people and can help to overcome social barriers. When I went to Japan for my studies, I discovered that blues was very popular there. There were a lot of bars where you can listen to live blues music and take part in open mic sessions. It was there, I started to play live and met others I could play harmonica with. We had a band for a while and I met lots of people who became good friends too. When I first started playing harmonica I didn’t know any music theory; it was only afterwards that I discovered it involved much more than just playing simple tunes. Blues opened the doors to improvisation, but after a while I felt limited because of my lack of musical background. I am now taking weekly music classes with Alexandre Thollon in Paris. He is teaching me about musical theory, jazz and how to practise efficiently.
VINCENT RYNIK Steve Pardue Editorial Team
Vincent Rynik is a software engineer from France and shares his experience playing harmonica with Harmonica World.
12
The magazine for HarmonicaUK
