Know Your Music - Playing with Others Series

Whether this is a jam session or you're playing a new song with your band, know what the other instruments are doing. Listen to each new song one time through for each instrument. Listen to the bass... what type of line are they playing... can you learn how to play this bass line on the harp so you can easily show this to the bass player? Listen to the drums... what's the groove... what cymbal are they primarily using (hats or ride). Is the guitar playing a rhythm part or playing fills. I think you get the idea. You need to communicate what you want when calling your song. You also don't want to be the player that says "that wasn't exactly what I was looking for," but can't explain what it was that was off.

By the way... we'll study this down the road (grooves and such), but in the mean time this is the core of the School of the Blues Lesson Series. The bass books teaches all of the common blues grooves and how the bass player approaches them. The drum book has 265 recorded examples of drum grooves in the blues. There's also books for the guitar and piano. By reading and listening to the recorded CD you'll become a much more educated blues musician that knows what they want. Visit http://www.harmonicamasterclass.com/sotb.htm to order these books.