6 of 101+

I have a page on this site entitled 101+ ways to sound better playing harmonica which was inspired by a Guitar Player Magazine article similarly titled. For the next 100 or so posts, I'm going to go through the ways, and elaborate.

6. Miles Davis advised "Think of a note. Now, don't play it." Pick a note in your solo to avoid. Now solo all around it. Now, try the opposite - pick a note in your solo to repeat as much as possible. You maybe wouldn't want to do that onstage, but it will teach you things in practice.

One thing you might want to work on is minor pentatonics. There's a note in the minor pentatonic scale you can easily avoid and it sounds better that way in a Blues context. I leave it to the reader to TRY the scale and find the note to omit.

Now the other way: you know, one thing that's cool about horn players is that they understand that it's OK to repeat a note. Or a phrase. Or even an entire passage.

HINT: A really good time to repeat a phrase is when you make a mistake. Usually 2 repeats is a good amount.