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David's Tip of the Day: Grooves, Forms & Keys

Posted Wed, 08/29/2012 - 07:52 by David Barrett Admin
David Barrett Admin's picture

Did you know your study songs at BluesHarmonica.com help to prepare you for the most common blues forms, grooves and keys out there?

Form
Even though Tongue Blocking Study 1 is thought of as a beginning study song, it's set to the most common 8 Bar Blues chord progression... "Key To The Highway." The next time you jam and they say "8 Bar Blues," ask them what the chord progression is and most likely they'll say, "the same as Key to the Highway" and when it comes time for you to solo just whip out your favorite couple of choruses from "Walk with Me" and you're golden! The opening chorus of "Walk with Me" is also very melodic/mellow, so using that as accompaniment under the vocals will work great.

Groove
When a groove comes up while jamming and no ideas are flowing, it means that you haven't played to a groove like that before = sucky performance. I know this, and have made a point to shore up that common hole in a harp player's skill set by writing each study song to different grooves... Jimmy Reed Shuffle ("The Split" and "Half Steppin'"), Hook-Driven Shuffle ("Temperature"), T-Bone Shuffle ("Gary's Blues"), Tramp ("The Strut"), Gut Bucket Slow Blues ("My Blues"), Triplet Slow Blues ("Take It Easy Now" and "Blues for Paul deLay") and the list goes on...

Keys
We also get in the rut of playing our favorite keys of harmonica. When jamming with other musicians it's commonplace to play in many different keys to match various songs. If a song is called in the Key of A and you've been playing the G Harmonica all of the time, switching to the D Harmonica for this song will awake you to the rude reality that a D Harmonica bends MUCH differently than a G Harmonica. Again, I take care of that for you... we use many keys through your standard studies... Low-F, G, A, B-flat, C and D.

There are many elements at work behind the scenes that make me commonly say to new students, even if they're not beginning players, to "start from the beginning of the studies so you don't miss anything." Anyways, just letting you know I've got your back! :-)