As I mentioned, one of my goals is to be able to see a note on the staff and play it on your harp. Initially, you can just do that using one of the first octave holes, but eventually, you need to recognize from the sheet music which displayed note belongs to which octave on the harp.
I found yet another learning "crutch" to help me work on developing this mental muscle memory. I installed an IOS app on my iPad named: OnPitch as demonstrated in the video below. The app is intended for showing the vocal pitch of a singer, and is very sensitive and quick responding to any note you are playing on a harmonica.
So in practice, I put some sheet music up on screen or find a line of music notation in one of the books I am using. I determine the pitch of a note on the score (slowly for now) and I attempt to play that note on the Chromatic harmonica. I get instant feed back from the IOS app on whether I am playing the right note. This is helpful now while I am trying to develop the muscle memory to play a given note on the harp. If I get it wrong, I know immediately and search until I find the right note. Hopefully, over time my responses will get accurate and I'll drop this learning crutch.
I spend some time each day, without a harp just reading notes from music notation. (at this point all in the C major scale) As I read the note, I say to myself the hole on the harp I need to play. So I see an A on the notation, I think A, I remember my crutch DFAB and I think draw 3. Then later as a separate practice, I repeat this, harp in hand, and using the OnPitch app for feedback, I play the note.
In the following video, you can see how I practice playing from music notation using the app for feedback. Obviously this is just a beginning support tool, that I will stop using once I have gained confidence that I am playing the right notes. But what you are are seeing in the video is the first time I have ever played music from sheet music, so I am excited at the doors I know this will open up for me as a would be musician.
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