Now once again, the reason that the static riff works over every chord in the blues is because the notes that make it up are taken from the blues scale. Now in Chapter 11 of this Blues Course, we go over every conceivable blues scale, zoomed-in in ultra slow motion. But just for reference, let me show you the C Blues scale here.

<C Blues Scale>

Now, here’s the  Two Octave Blues Scale, [ transcript note: in the piano lessons video, piano music plays here ]. That’s the C Blues Scale.

Chapter Eleven of this Blues Course is one of those chapters that you really have to nail really solid if you want to become a great blues player. It deals with foundations and it deals with all of the blues scales. In addition to the standard blues scales, we go through a lot of different kinds of blues scales. For instance, the “Turnaround Blues Scale” is really useful in creating great blues riffs. Let me show you an example of that. Watch for the hand turning around within the blues scale.

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

<Turnaround Blues Scale Demo>

Now I’m not going to go over all the detail fingering. You can go through Chapter Eleven and it literally goes through every key. It will work you through in different speeds until you become very proficient at playing the blues scales. That will really open up your world of playing in the blues because your hands will be free. But the Static Riff, <music/demo> is very simple to play. There’s the first two notes, and then I play the next note with my thumb. Now I go over my thumb and come down with my thumb. Pretty simple. Kind of the skeleton of that blues scale. And again, that’s why it works so well over every chord in the blues.

Now the power of learning all these different blues riff comes when you learn that you can put them into your own music and into your own songs and alternate, mix and match them any way you’d like to come up with powerful arrangements of any song on the piano.

Now this really is the premise of our course titled “Pattern Piano and Keyboard”. If you haven’t yet learned to play by ear, and you want to learn all of the foundations of these blues stuff is based on, go through the online piano lessons demo found at PlayPianoToday.com.

Alright let’s get to the good stuff. We’re going to play all the way through the twelve-bar blues again. This time we’ll alternate riff #1 <riff#1 demo> with the static riff, riff # 2 <riff#2 demo>. And as I play through, watch for both riffs played in different octaves or registers on the keyboard. Alright, here we go.

[ transcript note: in the piano lessons video above, music plays in this section ]

Alright! There it is. Lot’s of fun with the few extra goodies thrown in there at the end. Actually, that long extended riff all the way down in the keyboard – we’ll go and study it in just a couple of chapters. So stick with me, we’ve got a lot of great of stuff to dig into. If you’d like to see more, come over to keyboardblues.com.

Online demo c. Music Unlimited Inc., another Piano Lessons success story!