The 1 Thing You Need to Get Good at Blues Harmonica

This one exercise can turn you into a Blues Harmonica player even if you can’t bend a single note.

Why is this the Blues exercise to rule them all? 

It accelerates your growth in so many areas.

Just this ONE exercise builds your:

👍 Ear Training (Internalizing the 12-Bar Blues Form)

👍 Technique (getting clean single notes, and moving smoothly between them)

👍 Rhythm & Timing (developing steady pulse, feeling swung 8ths) and 

👍 Sets you up to Improvise.

We’re gonna take this step-by-step, in levels. (Stick around for Level 4, because that’s where this stops sounding like an exercise and starts sounding like Little Walter.)

This is part II to my Beginner Blues Harmonica Lesson #1. So if you haven’t already seen that lesson, you may wanna check it out here.

Grab a C harmonica. Ready? Let’s gooooooo!

You don’t need to be able to play perfect notes for this – that’s part of the point of this exercise, it’s going to make your single notes better.

So we’ll start with the same bass line we played in lesson #1, but using single notes like this:

Now we’re gonna play that riff in the form and play everything else the same. As I showed you in Blues Harmonica Lesson #1. And if you’re struggling with getting a good draw -2, it’s fine to just sub out the blow 3 now.

Here are the harmonica tabs for beginner blues harmonica Level 1:

All right, congrats! You are playing a single-note blues bass line now.

If your lungs feel so full they’re gonna explode, remember that in order to keep our lungs empty, we need to push air out of our nose on those blow 5’s, using what’s called the “Nose Push.” 

Try playing the riff, but instead of playing the 5, just blow out of your nose, like this:

Do that a few times, and then start bringing the blow 5 back in and you’ll start to see what the nose push is all about.

So far we’re only using bass lines on the draw-chord sections.

Let’s take it to the next level and fill in the middle and the ending.

Everywhere we have our blow chord we’re just gonna play a 1-bar patter of 4 easy notes and here are the harmonica tabs:

It’s a one bar pattern, so we’ll repeat it twice, and then be back to our first riff.

OK so that’s the Middle of the story. Now let’s work out the End.

So for our climax we’re going to try something a bit challenging, we’re gonna play the -1 and slide up the -4 and blow out, and draw back in again – here are the harmonica tabs:

So we’ve got to learn how far that slide is from the -1 to -4 and the best way to do that is just to slide 1 hole at a time as slow as possible in sloth mode. 😉 (verrrrry slowwwwly.)

⤷ Then you start to do it at a nice, comfortable but still slow speed…

⤷ Then you start speeding it up gradually…

⤷ A little bit faster…

⤷ …and then at some point as you keep getting faster you’re gonna overshoot it. 

So try to re-calibrate, and if you need to, slow it back down.

Rinse and repeat.

And that’s 👆🏼  the kind of playing around you’ll probably need to do to get comfy with our bassline on the climax. 

You may find the most challenging part of this is getting from the last -4 back down to the 1 on the first note of our blow chord riff.

The trick here is just to “fall off” of that last -4 (slide to the left) as soon as you play it, so you’re already down at the hole 1 when you change your air direction to a blow.

Then to emphasize the turnaround we’re gonna cut the last bassline short and add in a -2 -1 -1. 

Here are the harmonica tabs for beginner blues harmonica Level 1:

Beginning:

Middle:

End:

All right, so now that we know basslines through the entire story, let’s put it altogether and jam with the band.

Now you’re not just playing a riff. You’re playing through the form!

Even if you’re barely keeping up, this is huge.

Playing these simple rhythms is training you to develop a steady pulse, you’re improving your single note playing, AND you’re learning the 12-bar blues form. 💪🏼

And whether you’re cruising through this, just barely hanging on, or totally overwhelmed, a clear practice path helps a lot. So if you wanna get serious, check out my step-by-step course Beginner to Boss.

But right now, this still sounds a little like an exercise. 

So for Level III, let’s make it bounce.

So once you’ve got that basic exercise, we’re gonna make it bounce.

To do that we’re just gonna whisper “yudda” or “dudda”.

When we play the blow chord, we’re gonna say dudda just the same way, and if you want to add a little extra frosting on top you throw in a triplet on the last beat on holes 2 to 3 to 2. So adding in the triplet, the harmonica tabs are:

That’s optional. You can just say dudda on blow 2 like this:

And then for the end when we get the climax adding that bounce in is a bit challenging we’ll do it like this:

OK and this sounds WAY more like real Blues now, and not just an exercise, let’s try it with the band.

Same notes. Better Groove…

But we don’t wanna stop here, it’s time to really make this sound like classic Blues harmonica.

Now I’ve mentioned before that the last 2 bars of the Ending are called “The Turnaround” because it turns us back around to the top, and this is a place where we can really insert a lot of flavor, and have a moment to flex without stepping on a singer’s toes.

This is the kind of thing that Blues players use on real gigs. I’m gonna teach you a turnaround riff I learned from the Godfather himself, Little Walter. Here are the harmonica tabs:

The trickiest part is probably when we slide from -1 to -2 back to -1 and blow 1, so maybe just play those tabs a few times:

So putting that all together our Ending sounds like:

All right, big congrats if you’re still with me. 

I know it’s a lot, but there’s no bending, so this is some seriously legit blues for a beginner. 

Like, if you’ve been playing maybe for 6 months to a year, this is totally achievable. 

That’s a real turnaround. You can use that.

Once you can play riffs through the 12-bar form, the next problem is obvious: how do you stop relying on memorized riffs and start making up your own solos?

Let’s work on that right here.