My mother's brother Jean, who everybody called Ti-Jean even when he was sixty and two hundred and forty pounds, lived in a little house on the north side of Lafayette with a porch that faced the wrong way for the breeze and the right way for the neighbors. He fixed outboard motors for a living and he played the harmonica for everything else. I was nine the first summer my mother sent me to stay with him, which was 1961, and I thought he was the most boring man in Louisiana until about the third night, when he sat down on the porch after supper and took a harmonica out of his shirt pocket and made it cry.

I don't know how else to say it. I'd heard harmonicas before, on the radio, on the records, and they were happy little train-whistle things. What came out of Ti-Jean's was a person. It moaned and it laughed and it bent down low and came back up, and the neighbors on their porches stopped talking. I asked him how he did that. He said, "Cher, you don't blow into it. You breathe it in." That was the first lesson and I've never heard it put better. Blues harmonica is mostly a draw instrument. You play it breathing in.

He gave me a harp in the key of C that August, a beat-up one with a tooth mark in the cover plate, and he gave me exactly two instructions: play it in G, not C, and don't come back till you can bend the four hole. It took me till Christmas. He died in 1988 and I've still got that harmonica in a drawer. It doesn't play anymore. I take it out sometimes anyway.

Everything on this page is what he showed me on that porch, plus thirty-eight years of me figuring out what he meant.

You want a ten-hole diatonic harmonica in the key of C. That's the whole answer. Let me explain why.

• Diatonic means it's built to play in one key (well, one key and a couple of others, which is the trick of this whole page). It's the small one, the one that fits in your fist. The big one with the button on the side is a chromatic, and it's a fine instrument, but it's not what you hear on the blues records, and it costs three times as much.
• Ten holes is the standard. Each hole gives you one note blowing out and a different note breathing in. Twenty notes, plus the bends.
• Key of C because it's in the middle of the range, not too high to hurt your ears and not too low to be hard to bend, and because most instruction you'll find anywhere is written for a C harp. Get the C first. Later you'll want an A and a D, which are the other two everybody uses, and then a G, and then you'll have a drawer full like everybody else.

Brand: I play a Marine Band, the one with the wooden comb, because that's what Ti-Jean played and I'm sentimental. But a Special 20, which has a plastic comb, is easier on a beginner's lips, doesn't swell up when it gets wet, and costs about the same. Either way you're spending about twenty-five dollars. Don't buy the five-dollar harmonica in the blister pack at the drugstore. It won't bend, and you'll think it's you.

Here's the trick Ti-Jean told me on the porch, and it's the one thing that turns a harmonica from a toy into a blues instrument.

A C harmonica is built to play in the key of C. If you play it in C, blowing mostly, you get happy campfire music. That's called first position or "straight harp." Fine for "Oh! Susanna." Not fine for the blues.

But if you take that same C harp and play it in the key of G, mostly breathing in, something happens. The draw notes on the low end of a C harp, holes 1 through 4, make a G chord. The draw notes are the ones you can bend. And the notes that come out naturally when you draw are the notes that sound bluesy against a G chord: the flat seventh is right there on the 5 draw, and the flat third is a bend away on the 3 draw. Playing a C harp in G is called cross harp, or second position, and it's how nearly all blues harmonica is played.

The rule: the cross-harp key is a fifth up from the harp's key. Count up five letters. C harp plays cross in G. A harp plays cross in E. D harp plays cross in A. G harp plays cross in D. So when the guitar player says "blues in E," you reach for the A harp. Memorize that table and you'll never be stuck on a bandstand:

Your home note in cross harp is the 2 draw (that's G on a C harp). Same note as the 3 blow. Everything comes back to the 2 draw. When you're lost, go there.

For the curious, here's what's in a C harp. Blow notes on top, draw notes underneath, hole numbers across:

Look at the draw row, holes 1 to 4: D, G, B, D. Breathe in across all four at once and that's your G chord. Blow across the same four and you get C, E, G, C: a C chord, which is the "four chord" in the key of G. Those two chords, in and out, are most of a blues.

This is the part that makes it cry. A bend is when you draw a note and, by changing the shape of your mouth, pull the pitch down below what the reed is tuned to. On the low six holes, the draw notes bend. Here's how far the first four go:

The 3 draw bent a half step to B flat is the blue third in G, and it's the note that makes people stop talking on their porches. The 2 draw bent all the way down to F is your flat seventh, low. The 4 draw bend is the one you'll learn first, because it's the easiest.

How to do it. Nobody can teach you a bend. They can only tell you what to try until it happens. Here's what to try:

1. Get a clean single note on the 4 draw. Just one hole. Hold it.
2. Now, while still drawing, change the inside of your mouth the way you would to go from saying "eee" to saying "ooo," or "oy." Your tongue drops and pulls back. Your jaw drops a little. Think of sucking a thick milkshake through a straw that's too skinny.
3. The note will sag. The first time it does, you'll be so surprised you'll stop. Do it again.
4. Don't draw harder. Everybody's instinct is to pull harder and that just makes it louder and flatter and hurts the reed. A bend is a shape, not a force. Ti-Jean used to put his hand on my chest to make sure I wasn't sucking like a vacuum cleaner.
5. Once the 4 draw goes, try the 1, then the 2, then the 3. The 3 draw is the hardest to control because it goes so far; work on hitting just the first half step and holding it steady. That one takes months. It took me till Christmas, and Ti-Jean said I was fast.

Practice the bend by playing the 4 draw straight, then bent, then straight, slowly, like a siren. Then try to start the note bent and let it come up. That's the sound.

To play one note at a time on a harmonica you have to cover up the holes next to it. There are two ways, and harmonica players will argue about which is right until the bar closes.

Puckering (or lip pursing): you make a small round opening with your lips, like you're going to whistle, and aim it at one hole. Simple. Most people start here. Bends are a little easier to learn this way, and it's fine for fast single-note runs.

Tongue blocking: you open your mouth wide enough to cover three or four holes, then lay your tongue across the holes on the left, leaving just the one on the right open. Sounds harder. Is harder, for about two weeks. But it's what the old players did, and here's why it matters: with your tongue on the harp, you can lift it off for a split second and get a chord slapping under your note, which is that chunky, rhythmic sound in the old Chicago and Delta styles. You can also block the middle holes and play two notes an octave apart, which sounds like two harmonicas. Puckering can't do either.

My advice, which is Ti-Jean's advice: learn both. Start with the pucker to get your single notes and your first bends. Then, once you can bend, spend a month tongue blocking everything until it feels natural. You'll end up switching between them without thinking, and that's where you want to be. Anybody who tells you there's only one way hasn't sat on enough porches.

Most blues songs, and a whole lot of rock and roll, sit on the same twelve-measure pattern, over and over. Once you know it, you can play with anybody, anywhere, in any key, because you always know what's coming next. The pattern uses three chords, which musicians call the I, IV and V (one, four and five), because that's where they fall in the scale. In the key of G, that's G, C and D.

Twelve bars of four beats each, laid out four to a line, the way you'd feel it:

Bars 1 through 4 on the one chord. Bars 5 and 6 on the four. Bars 7 and 8 back home. Bar 9 on the five, bar 10 on the four, bar 11 home, and bar 12 on the five to set you up to go around again (that last bar is called the turnaround; some songs just stay on the one there instead). Count it out loud: one-two-three-four, four times, and you've played the first line.

On a C harp, playing cross in G:

• For the G (I) bars: draw on holes 1-4, or lean on the 2 draw.
• For the C (IV) bars: blow on holes 1-4, or sit on the 4 blow.
• For the D (V) bar: the 4 draw or the 1 draw is your D. There's no full D chord on a C harp, so just play the note; it'll sound right.

Start with that. Just chords, in and out, on the right bars, for twelve bars, and around again. Do it with a record. Do it with your foot tapping. When you can go around and around without losing your place, start putting the bends in on the G bars, and you're playing the blues.

Twenty minutes every day beats two hours on Saturday. Harmonica is a muscle thing as much as a music thing, and the muscles are in your face, and they forget fast.

1. Warm up (2 minutes). Long, slow breaths in and out across holes 1-4. Chords. Get the harp warm and your breathing easy.
2. Single notes (3 minutes). Up and down the harp, one hole at a time, blow and draw, clean. If two holes sound, tighten up. Do it puckered one day, tongue blocked the next.
3. Bends (5 minutes). The siren on the 4 draw. Then the 1, 2 and 3. Try to hit each bend and hold it dead steady for a count of four. This is the part that's boring and the part that matters.
4. Twelve bars (5 minutes). Play the pattern through four or five times with a record or just your foot. Chords first, then start adding single notes and bends on the G bars.
5. Copy something (5 minutes). Put on a record with harmonica on it. Find one little phrase, three or four notes. Play it back until it's right. Tomorrow, the next phrase. This is how everybody who ever played this instrument learned it, and there's no shortcut. Ti-Jean didn't have records; he had a radio and a neighbor. I had his records. You've got both and a tape deck with a pause button. No excuses.

Don't practice till your lips are sore. When they get sore, stop; that's how you learn to play too hard.

• Do not put it in the dishwasher. I have to say this because somebody wrote and asked. Don't soak it in the sink either, and especially not one with a wooden comb, which will swell up and split and scrape your lip. A harmonica is not a fork.
• Tap it out after you play. Holes down, against your palm, a few good taps. That gets the spit out of the reeds. Then let it sit out a while before it goes in the case.
• Warm it up before you play. Hold it in your hand or your pocket a minute. A cold reed is a stiff reed and a stiff reed is a reed you'll blow out trying to bend.
• Don't play right after eating without rinsing your mouth. Crumbs in the reeds are the number one killer of harmonicas, and I'm including being run over by a truck.
• Don't play hard. Loud comes from your hands cupping the harp and from the microphone, not from your lungs. A reed that's been pulled too hard goes flat and then it stops, and a diatonic harp is not really something you repair. It's something you replace, at twenty-five dollars, which is why you should play soft.
• Keep it in the case or a shirt pocket. Not loose in a pants pocket with your keys. Lint, sand, and keys.
• When a reed goes flat or quits, that harp is done for playing out. Keep it for practicing bends on; a dying harp is a good teacher. Buy a new one. They wear out. That's the deal.

Ti-Jean's harps lasted years because he played soft and tapped them out and kept them in his shirt pocket over his heart. That's the best care advice I have, and it covers most other things too.