Benjamin Franklin invented the glass harmonica, inspired by the parlor trick of playing music on water-filled glasses. The ...

Close your eyes and imagine the sound of water finding its voice, something airy and resonant, hovering just at the edge of real. That’s the glass harmonica for you, an instrument so delicate that it ...

When “Blowing in the Wind” was blasted on the airwaves in the early ‘60s, the sound and image of Bob Dylan standing on stage inches away from the microphone, blowing harmonica was burnt into the ...

SOLVING a crossword puzzle one day some 30 years ago, a young Austrian violinist couple named Christa and Gerald Schönfeldinger came across a reference to an instrument they had never heard of, ...

Trying too hard while playing an instrument can sometimes spoil the music, and harmonica performances work in the same way, according to acclaimed harmonicist Park Jong-seong. "Blowing on a harmonica ...

There are few instruments stranger than a harmonica. While there are chromatic versions of the harmonica, most players use the ones that are set in a certain key. That way, no matter what you blow, it ...

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. In the summer of 1963, a strange record by a 12-year-old boy who’d already racked up a string of ...