The other day I listened to a harmonica player on YouTube. The note playing was perfect, but something was wrong. The notes felt lifeless. What could be done? It then hit me. The player had no vibrato at all.

What is vibrato? It is the minor fluctuations in sound that you hear when someone sings or plays notes.

Vibrato is one of those things that just takes your playing to the next level. But how do you do it? There are a number of different ways to play a vibrato and each one sounds a bit different. In this article, I’m gonna give you an example of four approaches to doing a vibrato. Learn as may as you can to increase the sounds that are at your disposal as a musician.

As noted above, I am writing four methods.  There are probably some more. And you can combine these methods to give a different sound.

In addition, I think that the Face and the Diaphragm vibrato may be the same thing, but I haven’t convinced myself of it yet.

At any rate, I am going to name these approaches the Throat or Cough vibrato, the Face or Jaw vibrato, the Diaphragm or gut vibrato, and the Hand or Wah-Way vibrato.

So lets talk about them one by one. Read more ›