Blues has always been the king of styles when we talk about harmonica, and what further reassures it is that it only occurs after listening to the blues music, that the yearning to learn to play this musical instrument gets instilled into most of us and even grows stronger.

As this lesson aims for beginners, therefore, in order to yield the blues we'll use the notes which we can play without bending; using the pentatonic scale. The backing track lies in the key of G, moreover, we're going to use a C harmonica and play in second position. 

As you will experience it yourself; i.e. learning with 'listen and repeat' approach is really valuable and joyous ; the use of the audio and visual metronome not only helps you keep up the tempo, but also enables you to equip yourself with just the right skills to perform later on the backing tracks or with a band.

Before practising, let’s have a look at the standard blues chord progression.

The standard 12 bars blues structure.

The 12-bar blues is a set of twelve musical measures forming the chord progression. Usually in the songs these measures set (chorus) is repeated several times, and just the characteristic of repetition of the chorus, makes the blues the genre on which everyone can improvise its own solos with any instrument.

The chords that form the harmonic progression of the 12 bars blues are the 1st, the 4th and the 5ft, also named I, IV and V. Most of the blues use seventh chords, I7, IV7 and V7, where the seventh degree of the chord is minor. For example, a G blues would have G7, C7 and V7 chords.

The chords are named as grade 1, 4 and 5, because the harmonization of the G scale sees the note G as 1st degree, the note C as 4th degree and the note D as fifth degree.