How to play a slow blues on harmonica (part 2)

Welcome to part 2 of my series on playing a slow blues on harmonica. If you missed the first one click here;

How to play a slow blues on harmonica (part 1)

This lesson looks at what happens during the 2nd 12 bars. In the first lesson we played 12 bars focusing on keeping it very dynamically low and subtle. In this example we are going to ramp up the energy a little bit.

Where to focus

I am still playing off of what I played in the first 12 bars but I’m now starting to focus on notes that are a little bit higher up in the scale so that we shift the range that is being focused on. So instead of just sitting around holes 1 and 2 I’m starting to play the 4 draw, 5 draw region of the harmonica.

Octaves

I’ve also started adding in some tongue blocked octaves. By their very nature they are going to sound fuller and louder. This really helps to accentuate this idea of building up the energy for the listener.

Turnaround

The turnaround is still basically the same as the 1st one but I’ve started replacing some of the notes with their equivalent octaves to make it a little bit more interesting.

Thank you for watching this lesson. If you want to go to the next part just click here;

How to play a slow blues (part 3) – there will be some big money licks!