Well, you are starting to get a little better at changing with the chord changes. But you are not changing with the changes consistently through the song. This is actually a difficult tune to jam along with because it does not have a standard I-IV-V chord progression and at a couple of points you hit bad notes--which actually would not have been bad notes if the tune had a I-IV-V progression. But, keep in mind that avoiding hitting bad notes is not the same as playing the right notes.
TIP: Don't play in-out in-out breath patterns all the time. That limits you and keeps you from copping the chord progression. An exercise to help break out of playing in-out in-out breath patterns is simply to practice the do-re-mi scale in first position: B4 D4 B5 D5 B6 D6 D7 B7. Note the breath shift between holes 6 and 7. Run that scale up and down getting the breath shift right and it will break you out of the in-out thing. Now that won't get you playing tones compatible with the chord changes but it will help break you out of a breath pattern that is inhibiting your musical expression.
Last Edited by on Jan 03, 2011 5:21 PM
In general, a lot of harmonica players learn riffs or licks that sound good and then repeat them or force feed them over whatever tune they are jamming to. Why? Because they are able to play them.
A better approach is to play NOTES that fit the tune or licks that contain the notes that fit. How do you learn to do that? For me, it was learning to play scales, then learning the relationship of chord tones to scale tones and then the use of chord extension tones (which, btw, are very useful for someone like me who doesn't OB because you often have extension tones available even if you don't have the chord tones you want/need). There's other and maybe better ways to do it, but that was what put things together for me.
hvyj knows his stuff. You are excited because you are making music and you should be. You show the kind of enthusiasm that it takes to get better and better. To me, wanting to be heard is a positive sign.
I remember the first time I got up with a band. I had worked up something pretty good to play with Red Rooster. They asked me to play another but I would not because my bucket of licks was done used up!
You are on a good track but I think you can find something better to jam to.
