Hello and welcome to this week’s harmonica lesson. I will be showing you how to play the Sonny Boy Williamson II classic – Help Me.
For this lesson, you will need a harmonica in the key of Bb. We will be playing in 2nd position in F minor.
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Minor blues in 2nd position
Because Help Me is a minor song, we need to be careful not to play certain notes. This is especially true when playing the 1-2 draw doublestop. If you accidentally play the 3 draw as well then it will sound really bad.
The reason the 3 draw does not work in this situation is because it is a ‘major 3rd’. You cannot play a ‘major 3rd’ over a minor chord.
Help me licks
Try practicing each lick individually along with the clips below.
Backing track
Once you are comfortable playing each of the licks you can try playing along with the backing track below.
Click here to download lesson resources
Thank you
Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson. Now you can do something for me and share this lesson with your friends on Facebook and/or Twitter.
I love this tune Tomlin…I have a question, maybe we could go over how to do the bends that carry over and are released pretty quickly …i.e., Lick 1…3D, 4B, 4DB with a / sign that goes to a 4D…..I don’t know how to do these, and/or maybe if you have something I can refer to, that would be great also. As always, enjoyed your playing….Jan,
Hi Tomlin, from where can I download the backing track?
Hi Cristian, you can download it here – https://soundcloud.com/tomlin-harmonica-lessons/help-me-backing-track-f-minor
T
Hi Jan, once we have the bends nailed this kind of move will be a lot easier 🙂
Great, thank you. I’m working on them very diligently…lol….
Around this time he was quoted as saying of the backing bands who accompanied him, “those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do”.