Complete Unknown Bob Dylan - learn to play harmonica!

In this lecture we learn about the to short phrases (riffs) on harmonica and organ.  

We also study the chorus to give you a general sense of the tune.

Now we look further into the chords and melody of piece in preparation for more in-depth study following lectures.

In this lecture we study every single chord of the whole piece, we learn how to play them, and we learn how to put them in the right place. 

This way we are able to understand tune in a chordal and harmonic sense and this will help us very much when we are improvising.

In this lecture I teach you how to play single notes better than ever you have before we take a look at puckering and tongue blocking to enhance your skills on harmonica.  

We learn to play the scale of C and the pentatonic scale of C in a later lecture and this is the preparation.

In this lecture we play through the whole song using only chords. 

The C and G chords can be played with for notes (four holes), the D minor chord can be played with three notes, the E minor and F chords are played with two notes only.

In this lecture we learn how to play all the ‘root’ notes in the right place and at the right time. 

The root notes are really the basis of the chord and the note that gives the chord its name.

Another name for root notes is ‘tonic’ notes and this is especially helpful in understanding the harmony of a piece of music, which in turn, helps us to improvise better.

In this lecture we will learn about all the melodic lines of this piece.

It is rather difficult to figure some of them out because when Bob Dylan sings he doesn’t necessarily use a particular pitch but I have studied the song enough and listened to other peoples’ versions of it to have come up with what I think is the best fit. It was never really meant to be played on harmonica so in a way we are putting a square peg into round hole but it’s lots of fun to try anyhow!

In this lecture we finish off the melodic lines that we did not have time for in the previous lecture.

In this lecture we learn how to improvise. We will learn the C major scale and the pentatonic scale that derives from it. The pentatonic scale is a five-note scale as you might imagine from the name and it is nothing more than the major scale with two notes extracted – the 4th and the 6th

The beauty of the major pentatonic is that you can use it to improvise on major key songs and it does not clash with any of the chords generally speaking. The minor pentatonic scale (not taught or used here) does the same thing in minor key music but it also works very often in major key music so has more use than the major pentatonic.

This lecture sums up and finishes course giving you some different ideas on what to do with the piece including like Mick Jagger dance in the live performances when the Rolling Stones play Like a Rolling Stone.