Blues Piano Lessons Course Chapter 8

Transcript from this piano lesson below:

Congratulations. You made it all the way to Chapter 8. You must be very interested in learning to play the blues on piano!

Now back in Chapter Six, I taught you something called a "static blues riff", it sounded like this:

[ piano lessons video here ]

If that seems familiar to you, let's go on. If not, go back and check-out Chapter 6 of the blues piano lessons because we are going to build on that today.

We call this a static blues riff because it never changes. That's what static means. Like static on the radio - "sshhhh", the static never changes. You'll only hear that if you fall asleep in front of the radio and wake up at two in the morning...

Now this static blues riff, [ piano lessons video here ], is played by the right hand in the same exact spot every time while the left hand plays different chords on the piano.

[ piano lessons video here ]

You can go back to Chapter 6 and review that if you need to. But today, I want to show you something different about that static riff that I kept teasing you about in Chapter 6. Remember at the end of the 12-bar blues I've always played these long bluesy phrases...

[ video here ]

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

...and then I told you I'd show it to you in the next chapter and I never did. (!) Don't worry, we'll get to it today. But in Chapter 7, I ended up showing you those powerful left hand comp chords. Remember that?
[ video here ]

I hope you enjoyed Chapter 7, there was some great stuff for your left hand in there. But today, we're going to dig back into the static riff from Chapter 6. [ piano lessons video here ] And I'm going to show you how to extend it into a nice long bluesy phrase on the piano:

[ video here ]

Now that long extended version of the static riff might sound really complicated to play but let me blow your mind: The long extension of this static riff [ video here ] is really simple! In fact, you know most of it already if you learned Chapter 6.

It's actually the same static blues riff [ piano lessons video here ] two times, high and low. Now in between the high static riff and the low static riff, there's a tiny little riff that connects the two. I call it "the connector". What a great little name, how did I ever think of that?

This is what it sounds like: [ video here ]. So here's the static blues riff [ piano lessons video here ] with the connector [ video here ], then you play the same static blues riff an octave lower. Now here's what it sounds like altogether up to speed [ video here ]. Let's do that one more time. Here's the static riff up high [ video here ], here's the connector [ video here ], and finally the static blues riff again, lower.

Now that was nice and slow. I can't wait 'til you can play this on your keyboard, but there's even more. Once you learn to do that, you can keep running the static riff and the connector-static riff and connector all the way down to the bottom of the keyboard - it sounds fantastic! Let's play it like that once. This time we're going to kick the tempo all the way up and we're going to run that thing all the way down the keyboard. Here it is.

[ video here ]

Now I know that may be a little over the top to make that riff roll all the way down the keyboard -a little flashy, a little dramatic, but every musician has got to have a few tricks in the bag, right? I mean drummers can twirl their sticks so keyboard players, when they do, roll this baby all the way down the keyboard, then look at the drummer and say, "Hey! You're not so tough."

[ piano lessons video here ]

At this point in the blues course, you either are really digging into the keyboard and really loving this stuff or maybe you're scratching your head and you're wishing you could understand it just a little more. If that's the case, you really need to go through our course, titled, "Pattern Piano and Keyboard". You can check this course out online at playpianotoday.com. Go there and it'll give you an online video demo of what it means to play the piano or the keyboard by ear using the revolutionary technique of rhythmic patterns. This course starts simply from the ground-up. It assumes that you've never played but then it progresses quickly to college level techniques. By the end of the course, you'll have an entire arsenal of rhythmic patterns that you can use to play any song by ear.

In addition, a large part of this course is taken up with teaching you to create your own patterns. Now, this is where you'll develop your own unique style on the keyboard. You'll be able to create songs and arrangements that are all your own. This is super exciting stuff. If you really want to study the piano, if you really want to become a great musician, buy that course and go through it. It's really not that expensive but it's very thorough and it'll get you up to speed quickly.

Now before we play through the 12 bar blues in this chapter, I want to show you one more thing. If you remember way back in some of the earlier chapters in this blues piano lessons course, you'll remember the very first right hand blues riff that I taught you. [ video here ]. Remember that? It was called "Riff #1". Now, if you need to, go back and review those chapters. The reason that I'm bringing it up is because we're going to use it when we play through the 12 bar blues in just a minute; but I'm going to use it a little different way than we learned it. I'm going to play it up really high and twice in a row like this... [ video here ].

The thing that will really change the blues riff character this time is that I won't play it on the same beat that I did when we first learned it. What I mean is this: when we learned Riff #1 for the first time, I always started playing it on the first beat of each measure, 1-2-3-4... [ piano lessons video here ]. This really emphasized or accented the first chord. [ video here ]

This time, I'll start on the second beat of each measure then I'll play it twice in a row. 1-2-3-4...

[ video here ].

This really makes different sections of the blues riff accented.

Once again, the concepts covered in this lesson build on the original piano lesson course titled "Pattern Piano and Keyboard". Make sure you check out that course for a solid music foundation!

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