[ “positions 4, 5 and 12 (and even 11) are all ready within your reach if you can handle 1, 2 and 3. They rather go out and buy themselves another amp.”]
I fear the bigger issue Martin…Is the players who proceed to try and figure out how to make music in 4th, 5th or 12th pos…. but STILL can’t play anything of substance in the Big 3 ( 1st,2nd, or 3rd)…Resulting in more of the same lame uninspiring music…when they go for 4th, 5th or 12th…
Most players don’t need “more position” expertise… they need to do learn to do something SPECIAL with the little they do know first…become an expert with something and your next Endeavour’s may actually not be a waste of your time?
Last Edited by on Dec 30, 2012 11:56 AM
Am I too late to chime in??? Here's my 2 cents on "Why to learn different positions?"
Different positions have different strengths (and weaknesses)
1) FIRST , easy melodies 2) SECOND easy blues 3) THIRD easy minor wailing tunes 4) FOURTH easy minor melodies (more easy notes) 5) FITH easy minor riffs with the largest range of notes 6) TWELVTH for tunes that need that major 7th for a melody and the "soul" of drawing notes, My goto position for "big band era" tunes.
If you only play 1 style, don’t worry about learning other positions. Stay with what you are comfortable. If you want variety, these other positions can give you an easy answer to what you may be trying to do.
@Frank. "If you can´t speak it you can´t whistle it either." Meaning here, if you can´t play anything interesting in pos 1,2,3, you´re perhaps not very likely to play anything interesting in any other. But it can make you sound better. I don´t know if this stands up to fact (and I´m to ill to bother to check) but if we take Rhythm Willie, and the link earlier in this thread where he plays something very much resembling "St James´Infirmary" in 4 pos, and he does it elegantly; and then compare this to another of his tunes, "Bedroom stomp", where he plays minor in 1 st pos. Kinda awkward. Maybe, just maybe, Willie got smart and thought for a few minutes about the relation between Ionian major and Aeolian minor, and, voila, ergo, hey presto, eureka -- 4 pos! I mean, just like Jinx says above, that this is NOT advanced. Anybody can figure it out for themselves, just like I did many years ago. (And I think Bob Dylan, who´s not graced the musical world with his harmonica playing in any particular way for the ... 60? years he´s been playing, but in the mid 60´s he at least found 4 pos for "All along the watchtower".) This is not Gödel´s theorem.
Now try playing "Besame mucho" on a diatonic (it´s not blues, I know) and if you don´t end up in 4 pos you´re gonna have a hard time with some rather challenging OB´s. Whereas in 4th you "only" have to fight with hole 3 bends.
Out of sheer attraction for the song, I found myself playing all three on various occasions. It was only when someone complimented me, that I realized what I was playing. For me, it's like I'm musically dyslexic. Those concepts are too elusive to me. Songs like Charlie Musselwhites "Make My Getaway" or Kim Wilsons "Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White"... Or even Mark fords Work Song. These are near and dear to my heart, and just copying them note for note over the years has enabled me to play most anything in the "Big 3" category. Forget the other 9. I'll leave that up to the Howard Levi types. Who have an attraction for this kind of knowledge. I am humbled and respect this type of player. But for me, I am driven to what makes me happy. Funny, too. One of my hero's of all time. Jimi Hendrix never learned how to read music. ...notice what he says at the end...too.
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Why is it that we all just can't get along?<
Last Edited by on Dec 30, 2012 7:26 PM
