How to play Crossroads on Harmonica

Hello, welcome to this week’s harmonica lesson. I will be showing you how to play Crossroads on a D harmonica.

I have been inspired by Adam Gussow’s version of this, but I have simplified it slightly so that it is suitable for advanced beginners to intermediate players.

I will break it down to the 3 main licks and turnaround.

Click here to download lesson resources

Lick 1

Click below to hear me playing this lick slowly.

The key with all these licks is accuracy as there are big jumps between holes.

To help with the accuracy, make sure that you are using both hands to hold the harmonica.

This lick gets played 4 times over the I chord (the 1st 4 bars of the 12 bar blues)

Lick 2

Click below to hear me play this lick slowly

As you will hear, this is a very similar motif to the 1st lick. The notes are just changed so that they fit over the IV chord.

Make sure you are playing all these licks in a nice staccato manner.

Lick 3

Click below to hear me play this lick slowly

This is the V chord lick and just gets played once during the 12 bar blues.

Practice playing lick 3, lick 2 then lick 1 in order to hear how they flow together and get comfortable with the movement.

Turnaround

Super simple turnaround but make sure that you get it in exactly the right place.

Click below to hear me play this lick slowly

Backing Track

Click here to download lesson resources

Thank you so much

Thanks for participating in this lesson. I would really like to hear what you think of the new format with small audio clips of me playing each lick. Are they helpful?

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