Harmonica
The Johnny Mars Harmonica
Johnny Mars has created his own Jazz Pro harmonica model. Johnny also gives demonstrations on YouTube and Facebook on how to play this instrument, and teaches lessons individually on how to play the harmonica from the beginning, as well as how to do some of his riffs.
I’ve always been interested in the harmonica, and how it plays. I learnt early on, when I moved to the UK in the 1970s, how to take off the cover plates and re-tune the reeds when any of them started to go out of tune.
But my breakthrough in tuning came when I was working with children. As we were rehearsing, a little girl came up to me and whispered: “Johnny!’ I said “Yes?’ And she said, “Can I breathe out?!’
Breathing out would have meant that she would have been out of tune with the other players, but my compassion for this little girl came first, as I didn’t want her to suffer from being out of breath, so I said, “Yes, ok”.
That night I went home and thought about how I could make it possible for someone playing the harmonica to never be out of tune whether they were breathing in or out. This led me to retune some of the reeds a semi tone up or down.
This led me to my JAZZ PRO harmonica model.
ELECTRONIC EFFECTS
I’m always interested in pushing boundaries, technically, and I was inspired early on by Jimmi Hendrix's playing of the guitar and how he would bounce sound from the speakers. I experimented using pedal boards and mixing effects, and became known, much to my pleasure, as the ‘Jimmi Hendrix of the harmonica’!
It became one of my trademarks of the 1980s and 90s to create sound effects , taking me beyond the blues sound, and stretching possibilities sound-wise.
ZERO 2013
When I was taken on by a company working under the umbrella of Sadler’s Wells to create and perform in a show entitled ‘Zero’, I explored the electronic sound again, re-learning riffs and pieces that I had improvised for effect, and weaving this in and out of the show with the other musicians.
I’m indebted to the production team here, from whom I learnt so much! It was both an inspiring and scary time, pushing me to the edge of what I thought I was capable of.
THE JOHNNY MARS HAMRONICA
The Jazz Pro
The tuning here is one of my special tunings, inspired by the desire to create a scale where you can reach all the notes easily, without the need to bend. While this is a characteristic of the blues harp, it is not an easy thing to learn or to do well.
LEARN THE HARMONICA
Online Tutorials
The Jazz Pro Harmonica
Tone + Musical Phrasing
Tone + Feeling
THE JOHNNY MARS HARMONICA
The Mars Harp
Way back in the 1980s Hering Harmonicas made me a deal, and gave me 2000 little Blues harmonicas, stamped with my name and the title I gave it. This was really great, and I used these for promotion. Whenever I gave classes to children, this often included a gift of the Mars Harp.
