Playing Songs on Melodica

If you have a melodica, you have the potential to play any of your favourites songs. I enjoy playing all genres, from classical to pop, folk to jazz.

A standard melodica has between 30 and 37 keys, which is a big enough range to handle just about any song.

As a beginner, there’s two ways you can go about playing songs on melodica – playing by ear, or learning to read music.

Playing by ear

Learning to play by ear is a skill which takes a long time to perfect. It involves listening to music, and working out, by trial and error, how to recreate the song on your melodica.

The best way to do this is in small sections. If possible, play the song back at half speed, and start at the beginning.

Can you find that very first note on the melodica?

Once you have that, see if you can find the second.

The first time you try this, it can be really difficult, but its something that gets easier and easier the more you do it. After a while, you’ll recognise small musical patterns, and be able to recreate them quite quickly.

The dangers of playing by ear

While there’s no real drawbacks of playing by ear, if its your only method of working out songs, things can get messy.

You might get into bad habits, for instance using the wrong fingers on the right notes, which can cause problems further down the line.

It’s best to combine playing be ear with learning to read music.

Reading music to play songs on melodica

Whatever instrument you learn to play, even with singing, the written music system is the same. That means you only ever have to learn it once, even if you go on to play other instruments.

Once you’ve learnt the basics of reading music, you can get a book with a collection of songs on melodica. Chose your favourites from the book, or read the music to hear what they sound like. It’s a good way of building up a large repertoire of songs.

Pop songs on melodica

You won’t always be able to find the written music for current pop songs. That’s because they’re under copyright, so no ones allowed to post the notation online.

This is where the only option is to work out how to play it by ear. If you can also read music, you can write the song down, so it’s easy to remember in the future.

I really wanted to play a Bollywood song on my melodica, but I couldn’t find the music anywhere online.

So I played it back on YouTube at half speed, working out how to play it on the melodica. It was a fascinating experience, because I also noticed several ‘ghost notes’ – very quiet notes which added spice and subtle detail to the sound.

Have a listen to it here if you like.

Classical songs on melodica

Most classical music is so old that it’s free from copyright, and freely available online. There’s some beautiful classical music out there, so have a look around and see what you like.

None of the old composers wrote for melodica, but you can use music for any instrument with a similar range. Look for instrumental music for:

Violin
Flute
Clarinet
Piccolo
Oboe
English horn
Saxophone
Trumpet

A lot of these instruments are capable of going higher than a standard melodica. If you encounter a couple of notes which are out of range, you have two options:

Drop the highest notes down by an octave (8 notes)

This is a common technique, and in most cases sounds fine.

Transpose the whole piece, so that it fits within the range of your melodica

I love playing Bach on melodica. I recorded the beginning of Bach’s popular Cello Suite on my melodica. But to do this I had to transpose the piece up many octaves to fit the range. I also transposed it from G major to D major.

Transposing melodica songs

This can take a bit of working out, and it’s easiest (though not necessary) if you read music.

Let’s say you have a Yamaha Pianica P37D, which is 3 octaves long, from F to F.

But the piece of music you want to play goes 3 tones too high for your melodica.

Check to see what the lowest not you have to play is. If its 3 or more tones above the lowest note of your melodica, you can shift the whole piece of music down three tones.

So if the first note in the original music is a B, start on the F below. The whole piece will sound 3 tones lower, and the highest note will now be in the range of your melodica.

Playing jazz songs on melodica

Jazz standards sound great on melodica, and it’s not uncommon these days to see great jazz musicians with a melodica.

Many of the jazz standards are available in book collections, called ‘fake books‘, or sometimes ‘real books‘. They were called fake books because historically, they publishers didn’t own the copyright to the songs they were publishing.

One great way to train your ears, technique and improvisation skills, is to recreate a jazz solo on your melodica. Choose one of the classic solos, on saxophone or trumpet.

Slow it down and work out every note, until you can play along with the track. If you can read music, you can also try notating the whole solo. They used to teach us to do this at the Jazz classes in my old music college, Trinity Laban.

Playing folk songs on melodica

The melodica is well suited to folk music from around the world. It has a sound similar to the concertina.

Fun fact: the concertina was invented by Wheatstone, who had previously invented the Symphonium. The Symphonium was a precursor to the melodica – but it used tiny buttons instead of piano keys.

It’s great instrument to have in a folk band, and sounds fantastic in Irish and Scottish music. I love playing Irish music on my melodica. It’s been used in more than one TV soundtrack recording pretending to be a concertina!