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Blues Piano Lessons - Chapter 11

Text-only transcription of this piano lesson:

This is section 3 of 4 taken from the introduction to Chapter 11 of the piano lessons series titled "Blues for Piano and Keyboard".

Now we're going to take a look at something called "Broken Octave Scale". This is something that's completely different from previous blues piano scales. It's going to be a way to get your hands to stretch out a little bit and gain a lot more strength. I noticed that when I began playing the broken octave scale for a couple of months, my hands seemed to get really strong. So let's go back to the video vault were we're going to look at the broken octave scale which is musical skill #5.

The broken octave scale is based on the blues scale. Let's take a look at it in the left hand for a second. Here's the blues scale in octaves:

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You see how it's the same on the piano as the blues scale but it's in octaves? Notice that every time that this area of my hand [ video ] comes to a black note, I've got to use my fourth finger. And anytime it's a white note, I use my pinky.

Okay you could start like this...

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But the broken octave scale, sounds like this...

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Now the broken octave blues scale is a tough thing to do. If you get on the keyboard and you've never done this you'll going to think, "This is impossible!" But it's not! Not only is it possible, this section of the piano lessons contains one of the most powerful techniques to make your hands strong. I didn't say it was easy. But once you get this under your hands, it's going to catapult or leap-frog your piano technique and musical abilities a number of levels up. So don't be discouraged. Let me show you a simpler way to start.

Do you remember the half scales that we played on the piano? You can do the same thing with the broken octaves blues scale.

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Let's try that now with the blues band backing tracks. You see how simple that is? Get your hands going. One more time! Now let's do the full octave...

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As you're working on the skill #5, the "Broken Octave Scale" let me just remind you once more. If you need to, you can cut it down to just half of the octave. Like this: [ video ] You can have the backing tracks play all the way through and you can just do this:

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When you get really comfortable with that, don't stay there. Push yourself so you can do the whole track including the full broken octave scale on the piano.

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I'm sure you've noticed we're just working on the left hand. Let's take a look at the right hand of the broken octaves scale on the piano. Now again the broken octaves scale is based on blues scale. It's the same exact notes on the piano. And remember when this pinky gets close to a black note, don't play it. Let the fourth finger play that note instead. The pinky plays the white notes. And that fourth finger plays the black notes. And the broken octaves are like this:

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Just like the half-scales, the full 1 octave scale, the 2 octave sale and the 3 octave scale, we go back and forth with the hands. So I'm going to zoom out the video now - I'm going to show you what it sounds like with the blues band backing tracks playing skill #5 on the piano with both hands. First I'm going to do just half octaves and then I'll to do full octaves. Listen now - I'll guide you through it. We're going to start with the left hand, and we're going to do half octaves, here we go:

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At this point, we are into college level musical techniques. You're playing both hands on the keyboard as broken octave scales - this is pretty heavy duty stuff. At first do what you can. If you can only do one hand, half of an octave, that's alright! But eventually, you'll play things on the piano that you never thought you could - breaking the musical barriers that you never thought you'd be going through.

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