for me trying to get the 12 bar blues progression has been a bit confusing as the progression is not "set in stone" the chord progression tends to vary on different songs-in his you tube lessons adam reviewed sonny boy with the yardbirds-he stated that when sonny was on the 5 chord the yardbirds were on the 4 chord-of course sonny was known to not go by the book
The same problem arises when you are playing non blues material where the changes are not as predicable.
There's a couple of aspects to it. One, your sense of rhythm should tell you WHEN the chord is about to change. But, second, it's your ear that tells you if what you are playing fits the particular chord you are playing over.
FWIW, it was a big evolution in my playing when I began to be able to hear whether the notes I was playing fit--blended well--with the chord that was being played. It's not a mechanical thing, it's something you start to hear. And i don't just mean playing notes from the underlying chord because, among other things, extension tones work very well, too.
So, it's not an "ok, I'm on the IV chord so I play this" process. That sort of thing may provide guidance, but you've got to open your ear and be sensitive to what fits or blends. Some players have more of a natural aptitude for this than others. In my case it took quite a while before i started hearing the music this way.
Personally, my playing used to be very scale bound. It's almost like i was afraid to play a note that wasn't in the relevant scale i was working with. What broke me out of that was when I began to understand extension tones which gave me a broader understanding of how scale tones work in relation to the underlying chords, This helped me structure my note selection relative to what works with the chord not just what notes are in a particular scale--it's very much more of a by ear thing. maybe this stuff is real obvious to some players, but it took me a long while to get it.
"he stated that when sonny was on the 5 chord the yardbirds were on the 4 chord-of course sonny was known to not go by the book "
Actually, the band was lost on that track - it was not an intentional variation of the 12 bar blues. My Favorite example like that is a recording of John Lee Hooker playing "The right time" with T-Bone Walker on guitar. I'm at work, so I can't find the track on youtube. The band goes through the first 10 bars and John Lee jumps in as if they are on bar 1!
The band follow him and it becomes seamless after than point.
I dunno. I find the 12 bar progression to be a predictable progression. If a backing track uses some variation like going to the natural minor or the chord you would expect, usually you can still play the regular changes and it will still sound fine.
It may be a wasted opportunity to play something different, but I don't think it has to make things more complicated.
"The band follow him and it becomes seamless after than point."
Because they were listening and using their ears instead of playing mechanically!
You know, every now and then even really good players may get the changes turned around during an extended solo. No worries. If the band knows what they are doing they'll just ride along until you work through the changes and find your way back to 1.
The point is a player has to HEAR what he is doing. The first step is to be able to hear it when what you are playing does NOT fit the chord. Once you recognize that, THEN you can start to work on finding and playing notes that DO fit . You'll know it when you do it because the blend will sound so RIGHT--so musical.
There's a big difference between not playing any BAD notes and playing the RIGHT notes. If you know the blues scale, the minor pentatonic scale and the major pentatonic scale well enough to play them accurately and you know when to use each, you can get by on a wide variety of material since it's generally hard to hit BAD notes working off those scales if you've chosen the right one for the particular tune. But that's not the same as hitting RIGHT notes--you need to use your ears to do that. the first step is to listen and be aware of what you are hearing.
One of the biggest causes of irritation in my band is the horn players who play to a score and count bars of rest.
The rest of us play very organically and 'feel' the changes. If we need to jam a while -i.e someone misses their cue and we need to go round again, it totally throws them.
hvyj (or anyone), what are some note & chord cominations in which the note obviously (& maybe some not so obvious) sounds wrong when played with the chord (so that I can experiment at home)? Is that something that just develops with hours & hours of playing with other musicians / jam tracks & listening to a variety of music? I know I can practice, say, 5th position scales over proper chords that match that 5th pos key but is there another quicker way to become more organic then mechanical or is that just a comes with experience piece?
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~Ryan
"I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window." - Stephen Wright
Pennsylvania - H.A.R.P. (Harmonica Association 'Round Philly)
Adam's decsription of the 12 bar blues in pretty accurate and worth studying. The most common variations are: 1) "the quick 4", The 4 chord is played in measure 2 2) measure 11 and 12 endings.
If you listen, you can hear the changes in those 2 spots. This will get you through MOST tunes.
Then sometimes you run into a song that has 12 bars, but is not a "standard 12 bar blues". Perhaps the song writer wanted to be different. That's OK, it's different. It's not a "standard 12 bar blues"
And sometimes you run into guys that don't know what they are doing or just "have a problem". I have run into a few people that ALLWAYS leave out a beat or ADD a beat in the middle of their favorite tune. You can fuss, or just live with it and love them anyway. ---------- intermediate level (+) player per the Adam Gussow Scale, Started playing 2001
When I first started playing cross harp in the 12 bar blues context, I thought when the song changed to the IV chord that I immediatly had to go into 1st position or it would not work. I find more often that not it seems best to stay in cross harp. I mean, how many of us wail on the 4 draw during the IV chord? I have found a couple of examples where Cotton does a 4/5 draw warble during the entire IV chord section. Since the root note of the I chord is the same note as the 5th of the IV chord playeres use this a lot as well.
Yep Groyster..liten to Adams recent post of Howlin Wolf...Pretty much the same lick on the IV as on the I.....and the note he starts on is the root of the V!
@RyanMortos: You know, one of the benefits of playing major key blues in second position is that it's pretty hard to hit a really bad note. That's also one of the problems learning to play major key blues in second position--nothing sounds that bad so it's that much harder to identify RIGHT notes.
Same thing playing natural minor blues in fifth position. So long as you stay away from draw 2 and draw 9 and don't go bending all over the place (you can bend draw 3 a half step or a whole step) it's also pretty hard to hit a really bad note playing natural minor blues in fifth position and therefore it's that much more difficult to identify RIGHT notes.
So, it is a matter of LISTENING for what sounds musical which is easier said than done. I had been playing "Cold Duck Time" (the Eddie Harris tune) for a while and sounded kinda sorta okay. Then one day the bandleader(who has a Masters in Music) wrote the notes out for me. I converted them to tab, practiced them and then, just for the hell of it, I tried playing along with some YouTube performances of that tune. WOW! What a difference it made when i was playing RIGHT notes. i mean, i didn't sound BAD before, but this sounded so RIGHT--so much more musical. It was a eureka moment for me and i started to learn to listen for that right blend--hard to describe but not at all hard to recognize when you hear it. it changed my whole approach to note selection (which is still a work in progress i might add).
Last Edited by on Jan 17, 2011 1:37 PM
When I play I change chords when they tell me to. Many of the older blues guys I backed up changed when it hit them. If you relax you can feel them coming and if you miss it and don't freak out it all comes together nicely. Lightning Hopkins and Louisiana Red were the coolest at doing this and making it all seem like it was scripted. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
@harpdude61 Personally I think the first position approach to the IV chord is better.
The 4 draw wail over the IV chord can be a crutch for beginners and intermediates. It's not a particularly bluesy note (major 2nd) - though it's better that hitting the 3 draw unbent.
I'm sure you know this, but better still is working on getting the first 3 draw bend nailed. That's the flat 7 on the IV chord, which is used a lot in 1st position blues playing, as it's one of the few expressive draw bends in the scale.
Yeah. And you've got to watch yourself playing notes that kinda sorta fit, but imply a chord change. Musicians who know what they are doing have gotten me out of the bad habit of playing licks over the V chord that include the one--at least until the tune actually is moving off the V to the I.
Extension tones can be useful because they serve double duty depending on how you use them. They can work over more than one chord since they are the notes from the rest of the scale that you don't initially use to build the chord, but will work over the chord if played as extensions. Like a 9th. It is the second degree of the scale of the key you are in--but it is the 6th of the IV chord which works on the IV chord and it is the 5th of the V chord which is a chord tone of the V chord. BUT it can also be played as a 9th which lays nicely over the dominant 7th of the I chord. AND it's easy to overlook as a note to play because it's NOT in the blues scale.
Last Edited by on Jan 17, 2011 5:11 PM
You're right--that was a typo and i just corrected it.
You can also get the 9th at D6 and D10--so it's real useful working the high end in second position. A lot of blues guitar players use 9th chords.
When you talk about the major second having a jazzy feel i assume you are talking about the major second of the key you are in.
Last Edited by on Jan 17, 2011 5:29 PM
A further rumination on extensions: For those of you who like to play draw 5 in second position on the IV chord, that note (flat 7th of the key you are in and 4th of the IV chord) is also the 11th of the IV chord an octave up (draw 9).
So, if you look at it as an 11th (even though it's not in the upper register when you play it as a draw 5 instead of a draw 9) it works with the IV chord. But since it also works as an 11th in the upper register, you can go up there on the IV chord and work your way back down for variety if you want to--and you've got all those first position notes up there to play along the way that work over the IV. There are no hard and fast rules if you can find RIGHT NOTES.
USE YOUR EARS! Formulas from Dave Barrett's books (as good as they may be) are only a STARTING POINT.
Last Edited by on Jan 18, 2011 5:56 AM
@hvyj Yes you're right, I was meaning the major 2nd against the I (tonic) I'm a fiarly rudimentary player - I've only recently become confident in my intonation (well most of the time) with the blue third, minor third and 2nd in cross harp - but it's really opened up doors for me, with a bit of work I can now replicate most basic riffs from blues recordings.
So the 3d'' is a new sound for my playing, and works great as you say an extension for swing and jazz-blues especially. I wouldn't play it so much in a Howlin Wolf or delta blues tune.
For some reason I don't like the 2nd so much as a 4d against the IV but that's probably because it's such a cliche of most beginner/intermediates, myself included, that aren't confident playing blues riffs in 1st position. Or perhaps because it's often also bent down to the minor 2nd which really isn't so musical, except as a passing note.
gamblershand...I agree. I can show you examples of Jason going to the IV chord and starting on the 3 draw bent 1/2 step and playing the blues scale in first position all the way up the harp using 4,5,6 overblow. To me this is the only way you can go to the IV chord to play first position and it sound right the way you describe. I've tried jumping to the high end to play blow bend blues style but most of the time it just does not seem to fit. I love going to the IV chord in slow blues and wailing on the 6 OB..same as the 3 draw bent 1/2 step. I agree with what you say, but it will be hard to convince people that Wolf does not sound bluesy when he goes to the IV in the vid Adam posted.
@hvyj again At the risk of further moving this thread off topic, I'd be intersted to understanding more about what scale notes work well in blues songs, so if you or others have got the time/inclination, here goes
You mentioned sometime ago that the blues scale of the I should be applied across the I IV V, ie on a C harp play G Bb C Db D F notes rather than say an Eb or Gb on the IV or Ab on the V
Do I understand this right? Do you know why this is the case?
Also, although I should really trust my ears, what do you classify as the real no go notes in blues? Adding the 2nd and 6th is fine of course. I also find that hitting a 6 draw on the IV can work, and even some bending for expression, even though it shouldn't really work musically as a flat 6th.
And while I commented above on the 4draw bend on the IV, it makes it's way into plenty of famous blues tunes/heads - say Magic Dick on "Pack Fair & Square", so I guess the minor 2nd isn't so bad if used as a passing note.
So, probably only the major seventh is truly a note to avoid? Everything else seems fair game.
I'm undoubtabley over-conceptualising this, but would welcome views
Last Edited by on Jan 18, 2011 9:36 AM
@GamblersHand:"You mentioned sometime ago that the blues scale of the I should be applied across the I IV V, ie on a C harp play G Bb C Db D F notes rather than say an Eb or Gb on the IV or Ab on the V"
Do I understand this right? Do you know why this is the case?"
yeah. Playing blues one does not use the scale of each chord. One uses the blues scale of the I chord (the key you are in) against all 3 chords. (jazz blues may be different--I'm talking about blues blues) It's something that's fundamental to the idiom Probably because blues developed as a confluence of African musical tradition that survived amongst the American slaves and the Western European music the ex slaves were exposed to after the emancipation. I don't really know, and probably nobody really knows for sure. Anyway, African music has no harmony, but Western European music does, and this is what happened when the two musical traditions mixed and blues emerged.
Now, this does NOT mean you play no other notes except the notes that are in the blues scale. You just don't shift scales as the chords change although your note selection from the scale is influenced by the chord changes.
A 5b is a restless note and not a note of resolution and it wants to move, so it's a good note to use to start a fast tempo solo that's going to move. And if you are playing D4 bent on the IV chord it's probably better to move off it than to lay on it.
Generally speaking, major 7ths don't work well in blues and 6b does not work well in major key blues. A flat 9th CAN work sometimes on the V chord because it's the flat 5th of that chord, but you've got to be careful when and where you use that note if you do use it.
@harpdude61:"I've tried jumping to the high end to play blow bend blues style but most of the time it just does not seem to fit." Try it without the blow bends and you might be surprised.
In general, bend only if there is a musical or stylistic reason to bend. Don't bend just because you know how and have nothing better to do.
Last Edited by on Jan 18, 2011 10:07 AM
I am going to be pendantic again, though - when you say "A flat 9th CAN work sometimes on the V chord because it's the 5th of that chord"
I'm guessing you're talking about the flat 9th of the tonic - ie the 3 draw tone & a half bend (or 6 draw bend) in cross - but you mean the 5 *flat* against the V chord?
I've heard some great players play an intense bent vibrato on the 3 draw in 3rd position, which to my ears sounds like it goes between the tone and tone & a half bend (ie the 5th and flat 5th of the scale). One to woodshed.
Last Edited by on Jan 18, 2011 9:50 AM
Thanks hvyj and gambler...hvyj has never led me wrong! Gambler...I think everone that is a hardcore second position blues player and doesn't OB should try that flat tuned 7 on a few harps. The note you take away will still be available by blow bending. Todd P overblows and he does this on some harps anyway because of its usefulness.
Yes--I edited my previous post to make the correction.
Your observation about how blues players handle the bend from the 5th to the flat 5th opens up an entirely different subject: Blue note tonality which gets into notes (like the blue third, but not limited to the blue third) that are not available on a piano keyboard.
Well...to each his own...blues styles like boogie woogie do use the major 3rd more.....I hear a lot of players including Sugar and Cotton that do not sound near as dark bluesy on high end second postion.
Don't get me wrong... I can't wait to hear Sugar and Cotton is 2nd on my all time favorites list ...he can make major notes sound bluer than anyone.
What he does sounds great at 4:23 starting on 8 draw and the transition from major sounding to minor sounding works well as he goes back down the harp, but the flat 5th and blue 3rd were not available to him.
With all due respect..Cotton, Sugar, Wilson, and every great harp player plays high end 1st position blues and nearly always blow bend some on holes 8,9,10. Maybe not all everytime, but it is what first position high end blues is all about.,,,whether or not this sounds correct when playing it on the IV chord in 2nd position totally depends on the style and feel of the song.
"Don't bend just because you know how and have nothing better to do."
It is part of my learning process. Trial and error have been the best teacher for me as a learning tool for improvisation. I'm always searching for that somehting better to do.
hvyj...you have much knowledge of position play, what works best where and when, and have been a great help to many. You understand a lot of things most of us do not. I, myself would love to see an instruction video or two on topics that you know well. I'm sure we would all appreciate it.
Even if i were inclined to make a video, i don't know how and am not particularly motivated to learn.
Since i have no formal music training, i don't think I'm particularly well qualified to be giving lessons anyway.
i am delighted to hear that others find my posts helpful. Actually, I'm delighted that they actually make sense to anyone besides myself.
FWIW, undisciplined bending is a big reason why some players have a hard time with learning multiple positions. For better or for worse, a lot of harp players wank around bending notes just because they can and it sounds cool. Well, you can get away with this to a certain extent in first and second positions, but if you start doing it in third, fourth and fifth you can get taken out of key pretty easily. You've got to understand the scale pattern for whatever key/position you are playing in and decide what to bend and what not to bend with reference to the scale you are working with and the key you are in.
Now, the reality is that playing blues in second position a player can slop around quite a bit without ever hitting a really bad note, so a lot of harp players never bother learning or practicing breath patterns for particular scales. you can't get away with slopping around like that in most other positions, even though those other positions are not particularly hard to play. Believe me, if a player knows how to PLAY (play--not just slop around) in second position, playing fifth position should be no problem. Same skill set, same breath pattern.
Last Edited by on Jan 18, 2011 12:49 PM
@harpdude61 "I have found a couple of examples where Cotton does a 4/5 draw warble during the entire IV chord section.
Please explain. The 4/5 draw is a DF. D and F are the 2nd and 4th of C Major Scale. D and F are the 5th and 7th of G major scale. Is that what your saying? Is that why it works?
"Since the root note of the I chord is the same note as the 5th of the IV chord playeres use this a lot as well." Are you saying play the G note or the 2 draw during the IV chord?
@blueswannabe Jumping in here, I would agree with what you say. The 4/5 warble doesn't clash against the IV. Based on the scale of the IV chord, one is from the major pentatonic, one is from the blues scale.
Personally I think it often gets overused though. Playing a trill where you bend the 3 draw half a tone and release on the 4 draw (in effect the flat 7th and 2nd against the IV) sounds much more hip.
Don't follow your G note/2 draw question though - they are the same note on a C harp?
@hvyj I hope one day you get around to learning how to make video clips! Your posts are clear and very informative - often the best teachers are those who learnt by experience rather than formally taught.
NONE of the notes of the blues scale are BAD notes on any of the I-IV-V chords--that's part of the magic of the blues. So ALL of them will work as passing tones.
You don't always have to be hanging on a note or leaning on a particular riff or trill. Too many harp players just want to bend the living hell out of a note because they don't have anything better to do and, man, that really gets to be a pain in the ass to listen to. It's ok to MOVE along with the groove instead of just hanging or warbling or bending.
i do different things on The IV chord depending on the tune. Most commonly, I find some sort of line to play that fits the groove that's heavy on the blow notes and I think tend to hit draw notes as passing tones--i tend to do it more by ear and feel instead of by formula, and when I'm playing with other musicians things occur to me to play that i would not have thought of playing or practicing by myself.
Anyway, i don't pretend to be the standard by which any one else should be judged, but I tend to play notes that MOVE through the IV chord rather than hang or lean on something. I mean, there's always exceptions and actually, i hadn't given it all that much thought so i just sat down and played through a few 12 bar progressions listening to myself and I find that I move around through the IV chord using a lot of blow notes (not necessarily all blues scale tones) rather than lean on anything. FWIW.
CAVEAT: I don't spend much time and effort sitting around trying to imitate old blues recordings, so what I'm doing may not be what you hear on your favorite blues recordings--i don't know. Just giving you my take on it, FWIW
Last Edited by on Jan 19, 2011 7:47 AM
@GamblersHand I don't like to speak in terms of specific notes because that takes you to a single harp and confuses some people. Anyway, I have a recording of Muddy playing "19 Years Old" with Cotton on harmonica. Don't know which album, it is part of a collection my son burned for me. Ahhh Check out my thread about Muddy... at 10:04 you hear exactly what I'm refering to.
Cotton is playing 2nd position cross harp. When he goes to the IV chord during one of his breaks, he goes into a 4/5 draw warble. He plays it thru the IV chord and the I chord (4 bars). He does something different when he goes to the V in bar 9. I won't try to explain why it works but it does.
@harpdude61: Yeah, it works, but it's not a prescription for what works on everything. Go to any open stage blues jam and you will hear harp players trying to force feed some blues lick or another that they picked up from Cotton or Walter or whoever over whatever material is being played. Sometimes it works, but a lot of the time it ain't all that musical in relation to what the band is playing.
Instead of just stringing licks together, just play notes that move with the melody or the groove every now and then. Hit a bent note when you need to bend in order to play that particular note but don't always hang on a bend. Hit the bent note and move to the next note of whatever line you've decided to play. Play what SOUNDS good--you've got to LISTEN. Don't work from a can all the time.
The great blues harp players came up with great licks because the were playing great music. So many of us forget that these guys probably never played the same tune exactly the same way twice, so it becomes silly to obsess over getting some passage or other exactly copied note for note when the original artist probably didn't ever play it note for note the same way every time he performed that tune. Copying licks can be good exercise but it may not always be good music.
Now that I think about it, one of the reasons i like MOVING through the IV is the same reason i like playing Mixolydian on the high end in second position. The more melodic note movements frame whatever wailing on the blues notes I may do when i get to that so it's not just a steady diet of blues licks which can get boring and repetitive. Play MUSIC, instead of just regurgitating canned licks.
Last Edited by on Jan 19, 2011 7:43 AM
hvyj....I don't understand about hanging on a bent note...sometimes I hang on a bent note or an unbent note or a split or an overbend...I play what sounds good to me. I just do not pick random notes.
I never play the same thing twice..unless I'm playing Somewher Over The Rainbow or Home On The Range.
The only thing I play from a can is my Canned Heat CDs.
Unless you play a valved harp or overbend, a couple of KEY blues notes are left out in the top half of the harp in 2nd position. As someone who has put a LOT of time and effort in overbending, these notes are now available to me.
I know I'm not near as good as a LOT of the players on this forum, many of these cats blow me away with what they do, but I have posted a couple of vids from my youtube channel and consider myself slightly above decent. I try to play within my means while putting as much blues emotion in my playing as I can.
I play out at least twice a week now at jams, open mics, or sit in with a couple of local cover bands that invite me up for a few blues songs. I sub for harp players in two local blues bands.
I generally get good audience response as well as from the band. I've heard the words "anytime" from several I have jammed with. My wife and I got a big kick out of it one night when a well endowed lady wrote my nickname on her chest and it brought the house down.
Never heard the words boring or repetitive?
I have practiced licks from Cotton, Ricci, Gussow, Musselwhite, Kashmar, McCain, LW, BW,etc.etc.. and most recently Pat Ramsey. All have helped me improve. I might even practice a couple of your licks sometime.
My dream is to be good enough to play in a local blues band with two or three gigs a month besides what I do.
My harp playin ain't for everyone...but its MUSIC to my ears.
@hvji, What suggestions can you make for someone to sound more musical? I'v been playing for 2 years now. I'm just beginning to understand scales and music theory. I can copy most of what I hear but I want my own sound! When I begin to make stuff up.. Sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't. I'll thrown a note in there that wrecks it. Sometimes I'll surprise myself with some good ideas. What advice can you give someone like me? What should I be doing? I am at a transitional period.
@harpdude61: For me, playing music is saying things that cannot be expressed in words but that other people understand. If a member of the audience is writing your stage name on her anatomy, what you are playing is reaching her at an emotional level. if you can consistently evoke an emotional response from your audience with your playing, you are playing good music.
@blueswannabe; Well, I sort of feel like I'm in the same transitional period that you are in--but I've just been there a while longer. Personally, i think scales are the place to start. Learn blues scale, minor pentatonic scale and major pentatonic scale for starters and figure out which to use on what material. Then learn the relationship of scale tones to chord tones, including extension tones.
Scales help you find the notes you need to express yourself--to make what you hear in your head come of the harp. For me, my musicality improved when I began to understand and HEAR how the available notes (scale tones and non scale tones) relate to the underlying chord, which for me remains very much a work in progress.
As far as i am concerned, copying only takes you so far. BUT if you are able to play most of what you are trying to copy, you must have a pretty good ear. The next step, i think, is to play with others and work out what blends. Most of the theory knowledge I've acquired i picked up from good musicians I've had the good fortune to play with and who were willing to explain things to me and answer questions. The theory they taught me over the years helped me get ideas for other things i can play that might work and from there it was a trial and error thing. And you need sufficiently thick skin to suffer through the errors as you try out what works and what doesn't.
It helps if you have music you hear in your head that you want to sound like--YOUR sound, not just a duplication of someone else's sound. Then you figure out how to make it come out of the harp and what parts work best played against what. It's that last part--WHEN to play which notes in relation to which chord changes that is the toughest part for me and is probably most essential to what we are referring to as musicality. And if you don't have good musicians to help you along, music lessons are not a bad idea. If you can play harp, the instructor doesn't have to know how to play harp so long as one of you understand what notes are available on the instrument and what notes are not so that there is a common basis for communication since the instructor just would be helping you learn WHAT to play assuming you already know HOW to play.
CAVEAT: I've never had much problem with time and groove--that stuff has always come pretty naturally for me, so i never had to devote a lot of effort to developing those things. But they are really important, too.
An understanding of which notes are available and which are not and how those relate to available scales logically leads to using multiple positions in order to play YOUR sound on different kinds of material. This leads to having to learn how to move around in a minor key which has a different feel from a major key and stuff like that. And, again, how the notes you are playing relate to the underlying chords which is a big part of what "musicality" is about so far as i am able to understand it.
Last Edited by on Jan 19, 2011 11:42 AM
Great answer hvyj...copy may not be the best word. I think you absorb so much of what you hear and it becomes part of you. Learning anothers lick may not be to copy in performance, rather to learn the spacing or the relationships between the notes or simply to feel the rhythmic pattern or when the bend or unbend is.
To take it to an extereme...it would be impossible to play blues music, if you had never heard blues music. I promise you the Stones were playing and listening to Muddy and though not duplicated, he IS a part of what made the Stones sound.
@harpdude61: Oh, i agree. Learning something from a recording, incorporating it or attributes of it into your playing and making it your own is a big part of what we all do as we learn to play and develop a style of playing. That is certainly not the same thing as just imitating or "copying."
@blueswannabe: Another thing that's helpful/essential is knowing what notes are where on the harp. If you go to the Suzuki World Class Harmonicas site and enter it, there's a banner at the top, Click on "Notation Charts" and they have diagrams of all the notes on each of the 12 keys of diatonic harmonicas. If you don't know what notes you've got and where to find them, it's hard to be musical. Some may disagree, but to me this is essential knowledge for basic competence.
Last Edited by on Jan 19, 2011 6:34 PM
