Tuesday, October 20, 2015

What Did You Miss This Week? (Week 420 #465)

Help Me!!!

Speaking of Help Me, how do you survive playing in minor blues? Well, Joe's got just the thing for you with his Blues Harp Players Guide To Surviving Minor Keys handout. Admittedly it's titled "surviving", not mastering, but hey, minor blues is tough, so start with reasonable expectations.

If, for example, your band insists on a minor tune and your bending chops are not up to snuff yet, recognize that and remember the most important thing is to sound good, so invest in a minor tuned harp for the time being. It is also a great tool for you to find your way around the scale and practicing back and forth from a minor harp to a second or third position harp is valuable.

Use page three of the guide to arrange your harps in the circle of fifths - this makes quickly grabbing the right harp for various positions, minor or otherwise, easy to do. You can do a modified version of this with the usual set of seven you likely carry around.

Spend time with the four pages of Joe's guide - it it dense and super valuable and will get you on your way to better minor and position playing.

Class Notes

  • Next week is the first class of the session, so get yourself re-registered.
  • Joe will be out of town the next four weeks. Zoe and Grant have you covered in the Level III classes and Shoji and RickEy are planning things for the Performance class discussions, so don't miss it. Be sure to bring a copy of your Level III transcriptions along for Zoe and Grant to refer to as you play.
- Grant Kessler, B1 Blues Crew