Hello and welcome to this week’s lesson, where I will be showing you how to play a 12 bar country harmonica blues.
You will need a harmonica in the key of A, and we will be playing in 2nd position in the key of E.
Click here to download lesson resources
Slow down and don’t rush
Although our goal is to play this style of music nice and quickly, you need to spend some quality time practicing the breathing pattern nice and slowly. Really make sure that you are playing everything perfectly even if the metronome is super slow.
Most people try to speed up too soon and lose the punchiness of the articulations “te-te-TA-te”. This leads to a rhythm that sounds slurred. There is no shortcut – you need to practice it slowly for a long time until the muscle memory has built up. Then you can speed up and maintain your accuracy.
Lick 1 – Main groove
Slow
Lick 2
Slow
Lick 3
Licks 3 and 4 are based around the major pentatonic scale which is a great choice for this style of blues – it makes everything sound a lot more melodic.
Slow
Lick 4
Slow
Turnaround
Slow
Click here to download lesson resources
Take your time
I really recommend that you take your time learning this tune, especially the main riff over the I chord. I took about a month before I started getting comfortable with it…
Thank you
If you have any questions just send me a wee email.
