Hi all, I am a big Waylon Jennings fan and he used harmonica in a LOT of his songs, about as much as any non blues artist I know of. Anyway, the other day I was listening to a big hit of his called "Lonesome Onery and Mean" and in the song the harp was playing rhytm almost the entire song. It wasn't like most songs where it plays a few riffs and a solo. Of course I am not sure, but it sounded like the harp was playing lots of low chords e.g. 123, 234 on a low toned harp such as a G. anyway, I have noticed that a fair amount of songs, particularly country songs use harmonica in this way.

Is this a common style of playing and if so how do you do it, generally speaking

P.S. I hope most of you have heard this song by Waylon but if you haven't you can go to [www.amazon.com]
and listen to a 30 second clip of it there, and if you really want to listen to the whole thing, e-mail me at alcoaskillz379@yahoo.com and I will send you the Mp3.



Post Edited (01-09-06 13:02)

hi Aaron (smile)))

I did go and take a listen... and reconized the song as soon as it started playin'... I grew up on country artists like Waylon Jennings. My Mom still listens to CMT, everyday, all day long. (grin)))

Yes, this style of playing is very common. I belong to another website that's audio ready & most of the players "jam" to tracks in this free-wheelin' fashion.

I've been dabbling with jammin' with the radio or different blues tracks, but I'm not good at it yet. There's more to it then meets the eye with chuggin' & tongue slappin & terms I couldn't begin to describe. hehehe

If you wanna do it, just find the rhythem and go with it. There's no set rules to jammin along with a melody... just play what feels & sounds right to you.

Let me know how it goes (wink, grin))))

~always Maria.

Thank you very much for responding, Maria. And after reading your comments, looking at several other sites and other parts of this site as well, I have learned one thing. IMPROVASATION is very important to playing the harmonica! Because I played guitar long before I played harmonica this seems weird to me. Obviously a lot of the guitar riffs and solos you hear are orginal compositions, but they are not improvised on the spot. I am used to learning a solo by looking up the tabs on the internet and then practicing it numerous times till I get it down. But when I tried to apply this principle to the harp a lot of people told me that most solos are imporvised so they would be very hard to tab, you just have to figure it out yourself. Anyway, I guess I'd better learn to improvise.