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By Reverend Keith A. Gordon, About.com Guide to Blues

How To Play Blues Harmonica

Wednesday November 29, 2006
The easiest Blues instrument to carry around is a harmonica, or as it's known in Blues jargon, a harp. Here's how to play the Blues on a harmonica.

Comments

December 4, 2006 at 9:51 pm
(1) Steven C. Barr says:

Talk about OVERsimplification…?!?!

So, along the same lines, “How To Play the Blues Guitar”…

Pick up the guitar. Your “dominant” hand (i.e. your right if you’re right-handed) is used to hold the pick…your other hand is used on the strings.

Note there are six strings and you only have five fingers…start worrying!

Also, note that when you just play the strings as they are, you don’t get a nice chord. This may be because you haven’t tuned them yet. Find a guitar player and have him tune it. But it still doesn’t play a chord. That’s why you have to press down on certain spots on certain strings. You can buy or borrow (or otherwise acquire) books which show you where to press on the strings. Ask the people you are playing with to call out which chords should be
played, and quickly find the right page in your book. You’ll have a hard time keeping up with the other players at first, but you’ll learn!

Congratulations! Once you have learned three chords, you’ll be a real blues guitarist…!
:-)

…stevenc

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