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minor playing

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Sun, 06/01/2014 - 05:36
Francis
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Joined: 03/30/2013

Hello David. Why should I struggle learning to play minor position on a major tuned harp when I can run out and buy a minor tuned one? Is that 'cheating'? Thanks.

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Sun, 06/01/2014 - 06:48
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David Barrett
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Joined: 12/20/2009
Answer

Hello Francis.

Purchasing a minor-keyed harmonica is one option.

One way to look at it is that blues is a mixture of minor and major. The darker the blues, the closer to minor it goes and the lighter the blues, the closer to major it goes.

So, to learn how to play in minor is really to learn how to play super-bluesy... of which we can do in any song... in a light song we go there for only one lick sometimes and in a more aggressive blues we may go there every-other lick.

This approach is generally best done learning the blues scale (the use of the flat-6th of the minor scale is not common in our world and will sound out of place and should generally be avoided on the minor-tuned harmonicas).

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