The Harmonica Trivia
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48 free The Harmonica trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The harmonica is the only instrument that fits in a shirt pocket, was carried by Abraham Lincoln, and became the first musical instrument ever played in space. This harmonica trivia quiz covers how the little free-reed box actually works (combs, reed plates, wind-savers, bending and overblowing), where it came from (Vienna, Trossingen and a clockmaker named Hohner), and the players who made it sing: Little Walter and the Chicago blues, Larry Adler in the concert hall, Toots Thielemans in jazz, and Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan in pop. You will find easy warm-ups, a solid middle of chromatic-versus-diatonic detail, and a few expert questions for anyone who knows their positions from their pitch pipes. Every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. If you like this quiz, try our other musical-instrument and blues quizzes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By what other name is the harmonica commonly known?
Mouth organ
Mouth organ says what it is, a tiny reed organ blown by mouth; the American South called it a French harp or just a harp, the name blues players still use.
Q 02Which Beatle played the harmonica riff that opens 'Love Me Do'?
John Lennon
John Lennon played it, which is why Paul McCartney sings the title line alone: producer George Martin handed it to him in the studio because the harmonica part ran over the vocal.
Q 03How many holes does the standard blues harp have?
Ten
Ten holes span three octaves, but the lowest one skips two notes of the scale so that the bottom holes sound full chords under a tune.
Q 04What do harmonica players call a note sounded by breathing in rather than blowing?
A draw note
A draw note sounds a second reed tucked into the same hole as the blow reed, which is how a pocket-sized instrument fits in nearly twice as many notes as it has holes.
Q 05What is a harmonica reed typically made of?
Brass
Brass reeds are riveted at one end over a slot; the free end swings through it, blocking and unblocking the airway, and that chopped stream of air is the note.
Q 06Which kind of harmonica reed produces the lower pitch?
Longer, heavier or more flexible
Longer, heavier or more flexible reeds swing more slowly, which is why a harmonica's reeds get steadily shorter from its low end to its high end.
Q 07What do harmonica players call lowering a note's pitch by reshaping the mouth?
Bending
Bending works because the hole's other, normally silent reed joins in and drags the note down, which is what gives blues harmonica its wail.
Q 08What is the main body of a harmonica called?
The comb
The comb was traditionally carved from wood, which soaks up the moisture of a player's breath, swells and can crack, so makers now seal it or turn to other materials.
Q 09What are the one-way valves found in chromatic harmonicas called?
Wind-savers
Wind-savers stop breath escaping through the reed that isn't sounding: as you breathe in, suction pulls the flap shut over the idle reed in the same chamber.
Q 10How does a chromatic harmonica access the sharps and flats?
A button-activated sliding bar
A button-activated sliding bar switches the air to a second set of reeds tuned a semitone higher, so the instrument is in effect two harmonicas in one case.
Q 11What gives the wavering type of harmonica its warbling sound?
Two reeds per note, slightly out of tune
Two reeds per note, slightly out of tune with each other: one is set a shade higher than its twin, and the clash between them makes every note pulse.
Q 12Which actor plays the gunslinger known only as Harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West?
Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson's drifter never gives a name; he answers questions with a few wailing notes instead, so another outlaw simply starts calling him Harmonica.
Q 13What is the simple specialty harmonica that gives singers a reference note called?
Pitch pipe
Q 21In which German town did Matthias Hohner found his harmonica company in 1857?
Trossingen
Trossingen had already been making harmonicas for a generation when Hohner opened his workshop there; today the town is home to the German Harmonica Museum.
Q 22On which 1973 Billy Joel song does he also play the harmonica?
Piano Man
Piano Man is drawn from life: Joel spent six months playing a Los Angeles piano bar under the name Bill Martin, and its regulars became the song's characters.
Q 23What is the model name of the classic German-made 20-reed harmonica introduced in 1896?
Marine Band
The Marine Band still has its reed plates nailed to a wooden body, the traditional way, yet it has been Hohner's best-selling harmonica for generations.
A pitch pipe is where the harmonica began: the first European models were little more than rows of these single-note reed pipes joined side by side.
Q 14Which jazz player is most associated with overblowing on the blues harp?
Howard Levy
Howard Levy's overblows make a hole's normally silent reed sing a note higher than either reed usually gives, filling the gaps in the scale; he took the idea into Béla Fleck's Flecktones.
Q 15What is blues harmonica players' slang for playing in second position?
Cross harp
Cross harp means playing in a different key from the one stamped on the instrument, a C harp for a tune in G, so that the bluesiest notes fall on the in-breath.
Q 16Which ancient Chinese free-reed instrument was a forerunner of the harmonica?
Sheng
The sheng is a cluster of bamboo pipes fitted with reeds, and like the harmonica it sounds on both the out-breath and the in-breath, so a player can keep a note going without stopping for air.
Q 17Which German teenager is often credited with inventing the harmonica in 1821?
Christian Buschmann
Christian Buschmann was 16, but the claim rests on a family biography written in 1938, with no patent or surviving instrument to back it, and other makers were building much the same thing in the 1820s.
Q 18Which Neil Young song, a US number one in 1972, opens with him playing harmonica?
Heart of Gold
Heart of Gold came out of an injury: a bad back stopped Neil Young standing with an electric guitar, so he sat down with an acoustic one and a harmonica instead.
Q 19Which note layout became almost universal on diatonic harmonicas?
Richter
Richter tuning is named for a Bohemian maker so obscure that historians can't agree on his first name; his layout sounds a chord wherever you blow, so one player can carry tune and accompaniment.
Q 20What was Matthias Hohner's trade before he started making harmonicas in 1857?
Clockmaker
Clockmaker Hohner made just 650 harmonicas in his first year, helped by his wife and one employee; within his lifetime the workshop had become the largest harmonica factory in the world.
Q 24Which US president is said to have carried a harmonica in his pocket?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, in a story Hohner has long told, heard that his debate rival Stephen Douglas was bringing a band, reached into his pocket and said the harmonica would do for him.
Q 25Stevie Wonder plays the harmonica solo on which singer's 1983 hit 'I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues'?
Elton John
Elton John called in Stevie Wonder to lift the ballad with a solo, and a year later Wonder did the same job for Chaka Khan on 'I Feel for You'.
Q 26In the 1940s, Finn Magnus's New Jersey factory began making harmonica reeds from which material instead of metal?
Plastic
Plastic made the whole instrument cheap and sturdy: the Danish immigrant supplied his harmonicas to American troops, then to a generation of children as toys.
Q 27Lee Oskar, whose name is on a popular line of harmonicas, played harmonica in which funk band?
War
War's Danish-born harmonica player, heard on 'Low Rider', started Lee Oskar Harmonicas in 1983; the instruments are built by Tombo in Japan, with reed plates a player can swap when they wear.
Q 28What nickname is given to the stubby microphone that blues harmonica players cup in their hands?
The Bullet
The Bullet is small enough to hold against the harmonica inside cupped hands, the trick Little Walter is said to have adopted so that he could be heard over electric guitars.
Q 29Which hall of fame inducted bluesman Little Walter in 2008, forty years after his death?
Rock and Roll
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honoured him for turning the harmonica from a backing instrument into a lead voice in blues bands; he had died at just 37.
Q 30Whose band did Little Walter join in 1948?
Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters kept him for four years; then Walter's own single 'Juke' became a hit in 1952 and he left to lead a band of his own.