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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > Just Curious
Just Curious
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HandicappedHarpist
22 posts
Apr 18, 2019
4:16 PM
Here's a question, just because I'm curious.

With respect to playing the Blues, is there a key (or maybe 2) that you find yourself playing in more often than others?

I'm curious because even though I've been playing harmonica for several years, most of my experience has been with genres other than the Blues. Yes, this is where you're supposed to shake your head and ask, "What the hell is wrong with this guy?"

But as someone who is still fairly new to playing Blues, but hoping to play more Bluesy stuff at my church in the future, I'm just curious to know if I should anticipate any one key more often than others.
SuperBee
5883 posts
Apr 18, 2019
7:02 PM
Might depend on instruments.
Guitars tend to favour E A G

That’s very general

I play mainly in A and G, but that’s mainly about my vocals.

E is very common though
HandicappedHarpist
23 posts
Apr 19, 2019
3:22 AM
Thanks, SuperBee. I know that my church has so far done two Blues songs. A year ago, we started doing a bluesy version of David Crowder's "All My Hope," and we do it in A. In October, we did Keb' Mo's "Hand it Over," and that was in A.
SuperBee
5884 posts
Apr 19, 2019
4:13 AM
A is most common for me. About 50% of my stuff I think. Actually, just checking the set list,
out of 28 songs on the last gig:

12 were in A
5 in G
3 each in C and E
2 in D
1 each in F, B, and Bm

So my D harp gets a lot of use. I play 1st position on 3 songs, all in A, and I play 3rd on the Bm song so that leaves 8 songs where I used my D harp, and 7 songs where I used my A harp

I used to do 3 set gigs, which ran to about 36 songs, and I think there were more in E because there was another singer in the band who favoured that key. Also at one point he was doing an extra 3 songs in D.
jbone
2897 posts
Apr 19, 2019
5:54 PM
Here's my breakdown after going through our books. I didn't worry about what position, only what harp in what song:
A-12
Bb- 6
C- 23
Low C- 2
D- 21
Low D- 10
Eb- 1
Low Eb- 1
F- 3
Low F- 4
G- 14

So my most used key harps are C and D. All of them do have a place. The EB and low Eb are for a title song to a CD we published a few years ago.

I will say this: Learning 1st and 3rd position as well as 2nd, your options for playing a different key in a given song expand hugely. Using low tuned definitely good too, especially amped. Playing chromatic harps, in 1st and 3rd, great. So my list could be much more varied. I thought you may appreciate simplicity.

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Last Edited by jbone on Apr 19, 2019 5:56 PM


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