Hello, welcome to this week’s harmonica lesson where I am going to show you the root notes of a 12 bar blues in 3rd position.
This will help you get started improvising in 3rd position.
For this lesson you will need a harmonica in the key of C. This means we will playing over a backing track in the key of D.
Click here to download lesson resources
12 bar blues theory
In a 12 bar blues there are 3 chords. The I chord, the IV chord and the V chord
In 2nd position, the root notes of these are the 2 draw, 4 blow and 4 draw
In 3rd position you just move these up 2 holes.
The I chord is the 4 draw
The IV Chord is the 6 blow
The V chord is the 6 draw
This means that we can improvise over the 12 bar blues using just these notes.
Exercise 1
Try improvising over this backing track using just the root notes above.
Lower Octave
Part of the fun of 3rd position is how easy it is to play over 2 octaves. This means we can also play the root notes down an octave
The I chord is the 1 draw
The IV chord is the 3 blow
The V chord is the 3 draw (whole step bend).
Really make sure that your 3 draw whole step bend is accurate and doesn’t sound out of tune over the V chord
Exercise 2
Now you can try improvising over the backing track using the lower octave root notes
Homework
I suggest you keep practicing improvising just using the root notes for now until it becomes second nature.
Then, next week I will be showing you how you can play and use the blues scale in 3rd position.
Click here to download lesson resources
