Re: [Harp-L] Third position

["Rick Dempster" <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is an interesting one Steve.
                                                  I sometimes play third on a blues that consists of major and dominant chords (which is about 98% of blues anyway)
Some songs it works on, some songs not. I have a friend who plays third most of the time, and makes it work very well.
                                                 The main difficulty lies in the fact that, in third, you don't have an 'open' major 3rd; on a C harp in the key of D, this is an F# which you can only get with a half-step bend on draw 2, an overblow on 5, and a half-step blow bend on 9. So you can't play a major chord, which means you don't have that solid safety net of the big root chord to fall back on.
                                                 If you listen to a song like (hope I'm remembering right) Little Walter's 'I Got to go' (or the one that starts with the lyric 'I ain't seen my baby and the evening sun is going down') which is in third, he actually plays a repeated lick at the bottom of the harp that includes the major third (ie hole 2 draw bent a half step) thus maintaining the major tonality, even though that's the only place he can get it (no, Walter didn't overblow!)
                                               When you are playing over a blues with major chords, using the pentatonic 'blues' scale, you are not really playing 'minors'.
                                               The flatted third (in second position, the third hole draw bent a half step) to be technically fastidious, is acting as a 
#9th, because the tonality of the chord is major, thus bumping the blue third from its spot as the harmony definer, and making it an added harmony to the dominant seventh. 
                                                If you listen to Hendrix, he uses that chord quite a bit; also in the instrumental 'Hold It' (Bill Doggett, I think originally) that is a defining chord, and that is the harmony you hear when you play a flat 3rd over a 7th chord with a major 3rd in it: G B D F Bb for example. That is not a minor chord but a dominant 7th #9th, the defining harmony of the blues, in my book.
                                                In tunes like  'I got to go', Walter uses the draw 5 in the same way as you would use the half-step flattened 3 draw in a 2nd position blues. It's a scale note only, not part of the harmonic structure.
                                              Most MINOR blues in third position uses a dominant/major IV chord, and here the draw 5 becomes the flatted 7th just like it is in 2nd position.
                                               I suggest you work on playing what I call the D7th arpeggio (that's on a C harp) from 1 draw and making sure you can make a clear differentiation between the major third (half step bend on 2 draw) and the blue 3rd (notice I don't say 'minor', cos' it ain't!) which is the whole step bend on draw 2.
                                               Stick to single notes for a while, and just be aware that draw 5 is acting like the half-step bend on hole three when you are in second; only thing is, it won't 'drift' up to that safe major third when you want it to.
                                               If you use that big, mighty-minor chord (draw 4-5-6) too much (until your ears are really used to the third pos-in-major blues  thing) it might tend to sound all wrong.
Hope this helps!
RD

>>> "steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <swebb@xxxxxxxxxxx> 3/12/2007 3:25 >>>

Since I recently began playing harp with a guitarist/singer, I have discovered that third position works better for some songs. Unfortunately, I'm not very good in third position. I can play third on minor blues songs, by ear, but I am struggling to find much in third on non-minor songs. Is it acceptable to play the minor blues scale over a major scale in third position? I am just not getting the feel for it. 
   What has been interesting, though, is that I find myself using 13 different harps in the course of a three-hour night of playing. What I'm doing right now is not at a very high level, but I'm in the process of trying to find harp parts on about 60 songs. Since I'm not the world's greatest musician, that process has been a challenge, figuring out fills and little solos and trying to fit harp into this acoustic sound in a tasteful way. Sometimes, the challenge is to make myself play less on a song.
  Steve Webb 
  Harpin' along in Minnesota
_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org 
Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx 
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l