Tasteful accompaniment playing should always be our ultimate goal. As I have stressed previously - Blues harmonica players only spend between 5-10% of their time on stage soloing. Therefore, it is important for every blues harmonica player once on stage to play some tasteful accompaniment. That means sometimes playing something continuously while others might take a solo or sing, or possibly adding something rhythmic to the sound. Do you like to lay down a solid rhythm while the band is playing? Is accompaniment something you enjoy doing? I will try to explore this concept a bit more in the future. Let me know what you think!
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I like to play the rhythm in the back ground adding fills mixing and matching with the guitar, If I’ve got a good experienced guitarist and he leaves me the solos to come in even better. But I kind of work it out with the band a bit before hand. The odd thing is some people don’t like me playing Rythm at all. I’ve had one or two vocalists say it throws them when they sing? I don’t really get it as I remain in the background on the Rythm as much as possible.
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