Blues Piano Lessons - Chapter 14 Overview (Part 2 of 2)

 


In part 2 of this blues piano lessons video overview from chapter 14, we'll take a look at some of the up-close video that details all of the blues riffs, tricks and techniques used in this lesson.

This blues lesson contains quite a few advanced musical concepts - make sure you go through the original piano lessons course titled "Pattern Piano and Keyboard" as well as the previous chapters in this blues piano lesson course. Enjoy!

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Partial transcript from this piano lesson below:

This video is Part 2 of 2 in an overview of "Blues for Piano and Keyboard", Chapter 14.

[ piano intro playing here ]

In this video overview of Blues for Piano and Keyboard, Chapter 14, part 2 of 2, we're going to take a look at some detailed note for note studies of the blues riffs and the techniques that are used in this piano lesson. The full version of this lesson is actually an hour long but this short video will give you a good sample of what's included. Also in this sample clip, you'll hear me referring to a printable chord chart that comes with the full music lesson.

Also - because this is Chapter 14, the concepts that we study are really quite advanced. They assume that you've gone through the earlier chapters of this series on playing the blues. If you like to check those earlier chapters, simply go to keyboardblues.com.

To begin, here's a clip from the lesson where we're studying through Blues Riff #1. Enjoy...

[ piano video lesson here ]

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

We've talked about this Minor-Major interaction in the blues quite a bit and you'll see that in a lot of these blues piano riffs. I'll state it again: The blues, just like any good story or good movie, is full of some tension.

One of the ways you can build musical tension is to have a fight between Major and Minor scale modes happening at the same time. This can occur with your right hand sliding from the minor third to the major third, or it can occur when your right hand is playing the major third while your left hand is introducing a minor third. That's a lot of tension! Tension or musical "dissonance" gives the blues that "grit" that we really gravitate towards and like so much - watch out for that in a lot of these blues piano riffs. Minor versus Major, it's actually a great thing.

Let's jump ahead in the blues lesson to where we're studying  Blues Riff #4. We're going to take a look at about half of the Blues Riff #4 section - specifically, we'll examine the section where we're looking at what the left hand is doing. Here it is:

[ piano video lesson here ]

There's lot's of stuff going on in both hands on the piano. Let's start out by looking at what happens in both hands.

The C7#9 is played like this in the left hand, [musical demonstration] and this is actually a very common voicing on the piano for the blues. This has got a really nice sound, but what's missing is the root of the chord.

You've got the 3rd, the 7th and the #9. The normal 9 would be here, [example] right? The root of the chord would sound like this...

The #9 is really gritty because of the interaction between the major third of the chord and the minor third (actually the sharp 9th) of the chord. You could say that chord includes the major and the minor, right?

It's really a #9, but it sound like major against  minor. Sure does to me! So you've got C7#9... really get that one under your hands. That is a very useful chord voicing in the right hand. Next, it moves to a  shell voicing of F7.

Now a shell voicing is nothing more than a chord that includes the 3rd and the dominant 7. Here's F7... [example] What's missing? Almost everything except for the 3rd and the dominant 7th of the chord!

There's the full F7 chord  [example] but we're going to play a shell voicing. Here's the 3rd which is an A, along with the dominant 7 which is an E flat. It's called a shell voicing because it only contains the outer shell of the chord with nothing inside. Normally at this point, the lesson would go to the right hand, studying that piano riff, but for the sake of time I would like to show you a little something else from the piano lesson video.

Let's jump ahead now to piano riff #9. Like a big old fat cookie jar, piano riff #9 has got some good things to dig into. It sounds like this...

[ piano video lesson here ]

Let's take a look at what's going on with this blues piano riff. We're going to first study the left hand tri-tone substitution. Let's look at the last two measures of the introduction - A flat, G and C. Now the A flat is red because it's a point where I'm trying to indicate that you can play the tri-tone substitution. We've studied this tri-tone earlier, but to recap: the tri-tone from A flat is D, so instead of F to A flat then G to C, we'll do F - D - G - C, okay? So let's see if that works with the right hand piano riff.

[ piano video lesson here ]

So the A flat and the D are interchangeable. In fact let's go further. Let's do full chords on the piano...

[ piano video lesson here ]

So my point is this - those tri-tone chord substitutions are interchangeable!

How about the right hand? Let's play that thing nice and slow so we can get that piano riff...

[ piano video lesson here ]