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
Thank you
Thank you so much for taking this lesson. Now you can do something for me – please share this on Facebook and/or twitter.
See you next week!
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