A visual reference and practice app for the 10-hole diatonic harmonica. It shows what every hole is doing — scale degree, note name, chord tone — in any of the twelve positions and any of the twelve keys.
Tap any note in the diagram to load its scale.
Second position on a C harmonica, every hole labelled with what it does musically — bends, overblows and overdraws included.
A short tour through the app: switching positions, reading what each hole does, loading a scale with one tap and watching the chords of a progression light up on the harp.
Like a lot of players, I learned licks first. Tabs, patterns, phrases that worked.
But what about when it comes to improvising? Or if someone hands you a lead sheet? Where are the roots in the top octave? Which of these notes belongs to the IV chord, and which one is only passing through?
I could look all of that up. I could not see it. So I started drawing maps of the harmonica with the musical function written into every hole. Two years later they were an app.
A line of second-position tab. Precise, useful, and silent about harmony.
−2 −3′ 4 −4 −5 6
Those six holes are 1 b3 4 5 b7 1 — a minor pentatonic climbing from the root to the octave above it. The same six jobs turn up again higher on the harp — in other holes, and not always on the same breath.
All 12 positions, with a major and a minor view, on any of the 12 harmonica keys. Switch between scale degrees and real note names. The awkward part of the Richter layout — that the three octaves are not built the same — stops being abstract when you can see it.
Pick a scale degree and the map shows the root, third, fifth and seventh of that chord across the whole instrument. Step through a I–IV–V or a ii–V–I and watch which notes stay and which ones move.
Hide everything except the notes you are working on — say, only the thirds and sevenths. Turn on the backing track and play the chord tones against real changes at 100 bpm, or let the app listen and tell you whether the note you just bent is actually in tune.
You do not need to read these to understand the app. But if you are curious…
The map above is one of the app’s three views, running on a Richter harmonica. This is the rest.
Examples use a C harmonica.
In second position on a C harmonica the V chord is D7: D, F#, A, C. D sits on draw 1, draw 4 and draw 8. A sits on draw 6, draw 10 and the whole-step bend of draw 3. C is every blow note of holes 1, 4, 7 and 10. The major third F# is the one chord tone the harmonica will not simply hand you: it lives on the half-step bend of draw 2, the blow bend of hole 9, and the overblow on hole 5.
That one note is why bar 9 is the hard one, and it is the best reason there is to get your draw 2 bend clean.
Three places: the half-step bend of draw 6, the one-and-a-half-step bend of draw 3, and the overdraw on hole 9. The app writes it Gb rather than F#, because a Bb harmonica is spelled with flats throughout — the same note, written the way the rest of that key is written.
Hide the rest. In the app you pick which degrees stay visible and the others go dark, so the thirds — or only the sevenths — stand alone on the layout. Then play them against the backing track and hear how differently the same job sounds low down and up top.
Yes. All seven church modes are there, plus thirteen further scales. Choosing a scale does two things at once: notes outside it go dark, and the characteristic note — the major sixth in Dorian, the flat seventh in Mixolydian — lights up, because that one note is what the mode is for.
Depends on the position you want. First position: an E harp. Second position, the blues default: an A harp. Third position, useful for minor: a D harp. Fourth: G. Fifth: C. Each further position moves the harmonica another fifth down. The full table covers all twelve keys in all twelve positions.
No, and it would be a poor one. Harmonica Cheatsheet does not teach embouchure, tongue blocking, how to bend, breath control, timing or your first song. It will not train your ear and it cannot hear whether your phrasing is any good.
It is a reference, and the point of a map is to stop needing it. If you are three weeks in and working on a clean single note, a teacher and a lot of listening will do more for you than this will.
One purchase covers all twelve keys, all twelve positions and all three tunings. There is no per-key upgrade and no second tier.
$6.49 one-time — £5.49 in the UK, €6.49 in Germany, and Google Play’s local equivalent everywhere else. Android 8.0 or newer.
The app asks for exactly one permission, microphone, and only if you turn on practice mode. It has no internet permission at all, which means nothing is uploaded, no account exists and nothing works differently offline.
Harmonica Cheatsheet