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Blues Piano Lessons - Chapter 11

Text-only transcription of this piano lesson:

Chapter 11 of the blues piano lessons series deals with blues scales and exercises designed to strengthen and set your hands free on the keyboard. In this piano lesson, we'll really dig in as we head into the musical gym. We're going to get a work-out!

I know this is what you've been waiting for... did you ever feel like your hands are chained to the keyboard? If you learn Chapter 11 in its entirety, I promise you that you're going to be free on the keyboard. Your hands will be able to run all over the piano and play all kinds of funky stuff. Now, if you want to stay where you're at - just turn the video off and watch T.V. or something. But if you want to really get good on the piano, learn Chapter 11 - we're going to learn some great, great stuff here.

Let's jump ahead - I'm going to give you an overview of everything in Chapter 11 that will speed up and strengthen your hands on the piano. This is just an overview of this piano lesson. If you want to grab the whole lesson, head on over to keyboardblues.com and you can grab the whole thing there. If you really want to go to the wood shed and strengthen and speed up your hands, stick with me.

The basic building block for Chapter 11 is the piano blues scale. Here's what it sounds like...

[ piano video lesson here ]

That's in the scale of A, you'll see later on that I'm going to break it down note for note. I'm going to give you exact fingerings. But for now, this is what it sounds like. [ scale here] Whether you're brand new to the blues, or whether you're an advanced piano player, there's lot of stuff in this piano lesson for you. First, I want to talk about a few different sections, a few different levels of study.

Let's talk about the "backing tracks". If you ordered this piano lesson as a disc set through the mail, look at one of the cds. You'll see that it's labeled "backing tracks". What we did is have a band come into the studio and then we had them play through the 12 bar blues for two and a half minutes in every key. Here's how it works: after I teach you each new section of this piano blues lesson, I'll have you kick on the backing tracks. As you play along, it accomplishes two things: the first thing is that it's fun, right? If it's not fun, why are we doing it? Playing the blues on the piano has got to be fun. You've got to be smiling and having a great time. So when you're playing with the band, you're having a great time.

Here's the second reason, and it's probably just as important as having fun. Keyboard players are notorious for sloppy timing. And the reason for this is that we're usually playing piano by ourselves, right? Saxophone players grow up in school playing in the band with other people, but keyboard players are like the lone musical cowboys: we're out there playing piano by ourselves. What happens is that our timing gets really sloppy.

So as I teach you each one of these new things to play, regarding the blues scales and all the different musical skills that I'm going to teach you, I'll always have you turn on the backing tracks and play along with the band. We'll be having fun and establishing rock solid timing on the piano!

Watch the Video Version of this piano lesson (top of this page)

Let's talk a little more about those backing tracks. Not only does the blues band play in every key through the 12 bar blues, it also plays at three different speeds. So, for instance, on the backing tracks for the key of A, you'll find that the band plays through one time slow, and then it plays through at a medium speed, and finally it plays through at a fast tempo. All of this just in the key of A! And then for the key of B flat, there's a slow version, a medium version and a fast tempo version - of course you can guess why. It's because as you progress, you want your hands to be able to play at higher speeds on the keyboard. Also within each one of those tempos, the band slowly speeds up over each two and a half minute section. So this is a really kind of a gradation of accomplishments as you go through on the piano.

So far we've talked about the backing tracks. That's what the blues band has recorded. The band has recorded the blues in all 12 keys at 3 different speeds for you to play with on the piano. What specifically are you going to play against those backing tracks?

Through the course of Blues for Piano and Keyboards, Chapter 11, I'm going to teach you seven musical skills that are essential to playing the blues. Seven skills that are increasing in complexity. Once you have mastered these 7 skills and can play them in most of the keys, up to speed, your music is going to explode! All of a sudden your hands are going to be cranking. People are going to say, " What happened to you Superman? What is going on?"

So I'm going to start now and show you each one of those seven musical skills. Let's pretend that I've come to your house and we're going to learn this together. We're going to learn seven musical skills in the key of A.

So there we are at your house, and we're going to learn the blues. We need to see some video that'll show you exactly what to play. So, no matter what format you ordered the course in, whether that's downloadable video or DVD video, you simply go to the main video menu. On the main menu you see there's a button that says "video vault". Within the video vault there are short videos that show all these seven musical skills from both hands in EVERY key. So there's quite a lot of videos! So you'd look under the key of A, and you'd look for skill #1. That would show you a video that would look something like this.

[ piano video lesson here ]

The next thing we do in this piano lesson is to get out the backing tracks cd (or click on the appropriate "backing tracks" section of the downloadable version of this piano lesson). Find the slow version of the A blues scale and play the half scale along with it. This is what it would sound like:

[ piano video lesson here ]

See how simple that is - you already have half of the A blues scale in both hands. What I want you to do is let the track play all the way through as you just keep alternating the right hand, then the left hand, then both hands. You do that a number of times until the track plays all the way out. By the time you've gone all the way through the track, you're pretty comfortable in both hands with the bottom half of the A blues scale on the piano. And now you're ready for musical skill #2. So you go to video vault and you take a look at skill #2 for the key of A. You'll see that instead of half scales, now it's a full one octave scale on the piano. Let's take a look at that video from the video vault. Skill #2 key of A, full 1 octave scale...

[ piano video lesson here ]

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