In this weekly lesson we focus on playing country licks in 1st position. First position is real effective whenever we want to play taking benefit of a complete major scale note set. The five exercises you are going to learn and practice today, are meant to improve your way of playing on major tunes using the notes your harp make available.
The riffs presented before you contain some fast phrasing, as well as bent notes and tongue blocking features that well fit this style of execution.
As I always do in my free harmonica lessons, I built the interactive videos on which you can perform the exercises listening to me and trying to imitate the execution. This harmonica lesson is intended for intermediate level players, however, beginner and upper-beginner students can get a worthy chance to play the riffs, just replacing single notes in place of the octaves indicated.
For each lick you’ll find also the tabs, where the notes and the harmonica holes are shown for your convenience.
Most of the sequences make use of the C major scale and some fast passages rely on the pentatonic scale as well. The backing track is in C major too.
Let’s now analyze the exercises as usual:
In the first lick we play 6 eight notes octaves, ending on the note C, the most important note of the key in wich we are. In measure two, we play a triplet and we get back to the home note C.
In exercise two, we execute again a triplet in measure 1, wheraes in the second measure we perform a C octave, followed some tongue blocking slaps and pulls articulations. These features are played on the octaves.
In the third riff, we play a bent note, in particular on hole 3 draw, to get the A note. The same is encontered in the last beat of the first measure. In measure two we’ve got a quick triple-not sequence at the end of the lick.
In exercise 4, we play a pattern formed of two ocatves and a triplet. This pattern is repeated three times, until in measure 2 we play a very fast 5-notes sequence, ending on the root note C.
In the last exercise, we perform three triplets in a row in measure 2.
In the following video, you can practise the whole harmonica licks sequence:
Also for today, you’ve learned some cool harp riffs and I’m pretty much sure you will get benefit of this online free lesson I’m offering to you. I’ll hope to see you here soon, and visit my online harmonica school for to know the courses avilable for you. Keep playing!