How to play Help Me (Bass Line) Sonny Boy Williamson Harmonica Lesson

Hello and welcome to this week’s lesson, where I will be showing you how to play the bass line from Sonny Boy Williamson’s classic tune – Help Me.

The original version is in the key of F minor which would require an Eb harmonica for us to play this bass line. However I figured that most people wouldn’t actually own an Eb harmonica so I’ve done it in the key of D minor on a C harmonica instead.

Click here to download lesson resources

Lick 1

Slow

Lick 2

Slow

Lick 3

Slow

Play-through

Slow

Full Speed

Click here to download lesson resources

Build up stamina

Playing a bass line like this is an excellent way to build up stamina because it forces you to keep going throughout a whole song.

I recommend that you download the backing track and practice playing along for the whole duration. You will probably find this quite hard at first both from a strength and concentration point of view. Persevere and you will become a strong harp player!

Using the bass line to improvise

Any bass line is an excellent jumping-off point for improvising. It provides you with great target notes that you know will work over each chord.

Learn the rest of ‘Help Me’

If you want to learn the rest of ‘Help Me’ you can click here to go to my lesson on it!

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.

See you next Wednesday for the next harmonica lesson!