Tomlin Harmonica Lessons

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3 Easy V-IV-I licks on blues harmonica

Hello and welcome to this week’s lesson, where I will be showing you how to play 3 easy V-IV-I licks which you can use for your own blues solos.

You will need a harmonica in the key of C, and we will be playing in 2nd position in the key of G.

What is a V-IV-I?

This refers to the last four bars of a 12 bar blues which consist of the V chord for one bar, IV chord for one bar and I chord for two bars.

There is also often a turnaround in the final bar…

Licks

You can learn these licks and use them to play over the last four bars of your own blues solos. You can also learn them and then change them to be your own!

Lick 1

This lick focusses on playing the root notes of each of the chords.

tab for lick 1

Slow

Lick 2

Lick 2 follows the chord changes but also adds a nice octave jump.

tab for lick 2

Slow

Lick 3

Lick 3 doesn’t just play the root notes, instead it adds some extra tasty notes over each chord.

tab for lick 3

tab for lick 3

Slow

V-IV-I backing track

I recommend practicing these licks with the backing track on a loop.

Thank you

Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson. I hope it was useful for you. If you enjoyed it please feel free to share it with your friends on Facebook and/or Twitter.

If you have any questions just send me a wee email.

See you next Wednesday for the next harmonica lesson!

Edinburgh Harmonica Workshop

If you want to find out more about the Edinburgh Harmonica Workshop just click here.

Comments

  1. Larry Hobdey says

    FYI – When I try to “like” your posts (which I do!) the page seems to want me to log in or register on wordpress.com which at this point am reluctant to do.

  4. tomlinleckie says

    Hi Larry, no worries – you are clicking the ‘like’ button for people who have WordPress blogs so if you don’t have a WordPress blog then it won’t work. The ‘like’ button I am referring to in the video is the one on the youtube page for the video. I hope that makes sense? I’m glad you like the videos 🙂

  7. Mark Lyons says

    Tomlin, I’ve been learning so much from you, and your lessons are so well-organized, I’d like to make a contribution to thank you for your work. How do I do that? (Tomlin did not put me up to this…)

  8. Scratch says

    Really getting some success with this one, Tomlin. Can I ask when the 2nd part will be posted, please?

  10. tomlinleckie says

    Hi Peter,

    It should be in the next couple of weeks.

    Glad you like it!

    Tomlin

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