The Harmonica Parkinson's Project

This book is designed to be used as a "program in a box" to start your very own harmonica group or for self-study for people with Parkinsons Disease and care partners. No harmonica or music background is required to start or participate in this program. There is a total of twenty-three lessons that are designed in a progressive order, meaning each lesson builds on the previous lesson to help the learner grow and advance over time while having fun. We will start out playing songs using chords and gradually progress to playing single notes. With chords, we will start with static chords, to traveling adjacent chords, then to jumping chords. The lessons are designed to be approximately forty-five minutes in duration. The framework of every class is to include a warm-up, review of prior lesson(s), and then teaching something new. The concept of our project is that it is well known that people with PD can have speech difficulties as the disease progresses, including vocal intensity/loudness, pitch, and articulation. Breath control, volume, pitch, and articulation are also the key factors taught in playing harmonica. As an adjunct to speech therapy, we believe that by learning and playing harmonica, people with PD can improve their speech and saliva management as well as garner other benefits, including social interaction from being in a group and learning to play a musical instrument. The beauty of this program is that you can progress at your own pace. You will want to spend multiple days on each lesson or repeat the lessons multiple times before progressing to the next lesson, especially when you progress to the single-note section. It takes practice and repetition to learn each song. The first ten lessons will teach you how to play songs using simple chords, thus making it possible for everyone to start playing from day one. There are not many harmonica chord versions of songs available on the Internet or in song books, so we converted the songs from single-note tabs to chords for you. After lesson 10, you will learn two-note chords and then lastly, single-note ones. There are two bonus lessons on the advanced techniques of bending notes, but learning this skill is not necessary to learn to play any song you desire using single-note tabs. Having said this, you must master single notes before you can progress to advanced techniques such as bending. There is no hurry or even a destination. The goal is to put together a fun harmonica group that perpetuates. With twenty-three lessons repeated multiple times (two to three), this program offers over a year of curriculum, plus other fun content to make it easy to implement a harmonica program. We tried to do the heavy lifting so you don't have to develop your own lessons initially. Having said this, we encourage you to make this your own program. We will give you the initial tools, but you can always add your own secret sauce or songs that you or your group want to learn.