WHERE to use the blues scale?

[Luke]

It seems like there are kind of two different questions inside of this thread.

1. Positions

2. The Blues Scale

Short answer on positions: what hole is your home base?
1st pos: 1,4,7,10
2nd pos: -2,3,6,9
3rd pos: -1 -4 -8
4th pos: -3", -6, -10

For your first 5 or 10 years, probably 1st and 2nd position is basically all you need.

What the Heck is a Harmonica Position? (And WHY do I need to know?)

Different positions create totally different style sounds… wanna blues style sound? or do you want a folk style sound? …this is why you should care about position Explaining positions is a minefield but I’m going to take a crack at it here. If any of this goes over your head don’t worry, just absorb what you can and call it a start. Strap in! In order to understand what the heck is a harmonica position , we really need to understand wha…

Maybe some 3rd position.

Regarding the Blues Scale, it’s just a group of notes that you can draw from to improvise over the blues that sound good. You can use other notes too, but it’s a great jumping off place, and 2nd position is the most common place for Blues.

@kjlarochelle made a cool graphic of all the blues scale notes that are available on a standard harmonica without overblows or overdraws:

C Diatonic Harmonica 2nd Position (G) Graphic

Hi Everyone, Made this graphic of a C Diatonic Harmonica as I’m a visual learner and need to see something as I commit things to memory. Just want to make it’s correct before I start learning: [C Diatonic Harmonica 2 Position (G)] Any corrections would be appreciated, Kevin

Missing the -3’ in the upper octave is the note that harmonica players always wish they had, which is the nice thing about a Parrott tuning.

Hope that helps! Rock on!