Ask Instructor David Barrett

Hello Dave.  Just finished recording Study 4.  Tremendous.  I purchased "It Takes Three"  and listen to different songs daily to stimulate my practice sessions.   Do you have transcripts of the songs for purchase?     

Just receivd the transcrpts. " In Memory" was very moving and now I understand where your feeling came from.  If I ever memorize this, I don't think I would be able to play it with a dry eye...it will be a challenge to control my emotions.   Thanks for digging so deep.  Mic

Hi Dave, 

Do you think Little Walter is using some kind of different technique or accent when he starts out the intro to Boom Boom?

I've listened to it slowed down and played along at regular speed but my rendition does'nt sound quite right.  I was 

starting off with the 4 hole draw, then 4 blow for first two notes, but it seems he's doing more.  What do you think?

Hello David, 

A while back I never thought I could bend.  Now I am able to bend most notes.  I can get full note bends as practice while straining with the tongue etc, but working on the "feeling the blues" practice song I can only bend the half tones in tempo but can not seem to get lower than that.  Is this a matter of time?  Head you say on one lesson such mastery can take years.  Or, am I perhaps using bad technique?   continue reading...

David,  

Going throught the first accompaniment videos and listened to the explanation of "hook" with the track of dimples.  Is dimples on an MP3 on the website?  I looked but couldn't find it.  Would love to play along with it!

+Peace

Andy

Hello David,

Does Bluesharmonica.com or School of Blues sell any apparel?

I'm interested in seeing if you sell logo polo shirts or bowling shirts like I've seen you wear in your videos.

Brett W. Mallard

Hi David,

I am getting close to submitting my Level 2 material, however I am finding that if I play Temperature at the speed of the provided jam track I am not able to emphasise the slaps, dips and pulls as much as I would like. Is it okay to submit it at a slower speed or will that stop me from achieving Level 2?

Regards,

Geoff

Hi David

For correctly playing single notes I use HarpNinja. What do I use for chords?

Michael

I have been practicing scales. I started with quarter notes and then moved on to eighth notes, just to change it up. I have been building up my speed with this. Today, I tried doing 16th notes, and I noticed my max bpm was about half of my max bpm on 8th notes (this makes total sense, as I am fitting in twice as many notes).  It made me question: is there a real reason for doing eighth notes vs. 16th notes (or 32nd, 64th, for that matter)? These are just arbitrary divisions in time, right? Any multiple of 4 would work just as well, right? continue reading...

Dave Im not following how the chorus forms relate to the chord changes mapped out on the 12 bar blues, So for example the first 4 bars are using the 1 chord. The 5th bar suggests you then change to the 4 chord, but if you are doing an AAA chorus form these cord changes dont really seem to occur.

Good afternoon David, hope you're well.

I'm looking to submit Ex 2.2 Bass Lines as my Solo Harmonica Study for my Level 5. The thing is that I'm hearing a different Bar 4 than that shown on the music notation. Music notation shows 6+ pull, 5+ pull, 4 pull & 3 pull, but I'm hearing 6+ pull, 5 pull, 5+ pull & 4 pull.

if you could kindly let me know when you can that would be super.

cheers

Greg