So, what is melody? Melody its a sweet or agreeable succession or arrangement of sounds, a rhythmic succession of single tones organized as an aesthetic whole. In musical terms, it\'s the part of the song you can sing or whistle. Harmony supports melody, strengthening and deepening the message. Harmony is teamwork and cooperation think of a barbershop quartet, or the Three Stooges singing \"Hello, hello, hello!\" and then banging their heads together in unison. Melody is like the musical story or plot of the song, the narrative that captures your attention and keeps you interested, or amused, or moved. It can be a tall tale or a short story it can be dramatic or silly, sweet or harsh. You can make up a melody in a moment, and in fact you do with every sentence you speak language is very musical, moving up and down in pitch, accented here and there. Every sentence is its own song.

You can create a melody anytime you want. Grab your harmonica right now and make up a melody that\'s eight notes long, like a sentence made up of a few short words. If you need a little help, here\'s an idea start with 4 blow, and end on 6 blow, and you\'re allowed to repeat a note. Be brave no one is listening, you\'re not doing this for money, and there\'s no test. Maybe later you can sell a song for thousands of dollars, but right now you\'re just making up a little eight note melody. Once you have the melody, repeat it a few times so you can remember what you played. If necessary, write it down. Now, let\'s look what you can add to it. Make up a second part that\'s six notes long. If you\'d like a suggestion, here\'s one have this one start on 6 blow and end on 4 blow. Sometimes it\'s nice to bring an idea back home. Play this new melody line a few times, and again, write it down if that will help you to remember. Now play the first melody idea and follow it with the second melody idea. Guess what? You\'re on your way to writing a song. Write a song for someone you love or about something important to you. Set a poem to music, or compose a joke in song form.

Try playing other melodies by ear. Take your time figuring them out by trial and error. Again, don\'t worry about mistakes mistakes are part of learning for everyone, and you are always learning. You may even discover you\'re accidentally creating a new song, or playing a different song than you set out to. You may find you can play part of a song, but not all of it. What you\'re doing is teaching your ears to hear while you learn your way around the harmonica. Along the way you\'ll discover the limits of playing melodies on the diatonic harmonica. For one thing, there are notes you simply don\'t have. Sometimes you can overcome the limitations by moving higher on the harmonica sometimes you can fake your way through a missing note by substituting another note and in time you will be able to overcome many of the limitations by bending lowering the pitch of a note to get the missing notes. But for now, try not to be frustrated by the limitations. In fact, embrace them.


Alex Wess plays harmonica for a blues band and has many years of experience.