piano blue book – It may have been underrated when first broadcast on PBS on consecutive nights in the fall of ’03, but executive producer Martin Scorsese’s homage to the blues is a truly significant, if imperfect, achievement. “Musical journey” is an apt description, as Scorsese and the six other directors responsible for the seven approximately 90-minute films follow the blues–the foundation of jazz, soul, R&B, and rock & roll–from its African roots to its Mississippi Delta origins, up the river to Memphis an…Read More

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Blue Scales, Alfred’s Basic Piano Lesson Book 2&3

Blue Scales, Alfred’s Basic Piano Lesson Book 2&3 Studio of Lillian Simmons Round Rock, Texas, USA xld.com Piano Classes North Austin, Piano Lessons Austin, Piano Teacher Austin Piano Classes Round Rock, Piano Lessons Round Rock, Piano Teacher Austin Piano Classes Pflugerville,…

You can start improvising with the help of the blues scale today. You will learn three easy left hand chords and how to use them in your improvisations.

We will use the key of G-major. The first chord to learn is a three finger chord for your left hand that is usually called G13. If we should stick to music theory too literally such a chord would consist of the following scale steps:

1 3 5 7b 9 11 13

In G-major this would be the notes:

G B D F A C E

That’s theory, but the chord doesn’t sound very nice actually! Normally you can keep the F, B and E. The root G will probably be played on a bass guitar or can just be omitted. Anyway, here is the G13 chord in a very common form:

G13: F3 B3 E4

The numbers indicate in which octave the notes are to be played. C4 is the so called middle C in the fourth octave.

I will now give you the blues scale. First only with the scale steps so you can apply the scale in any key:

1 3b 4 4# 5 7b

It can also be considered a G-minor pentatonic scale with a raised fourth added.

Here are the notes you can play and improvise upon as you hold the G13 chord with the left hand:

G4 Bb4 C5 C#5 D5 F5 G5

We will now take a look at the C9 chord. It is a fitting chord to change to from G13 and also easy to find:

C9: E3 Bb3 D4

It’s time to construct a chord progression:

G13 / / / C9 / / /

The advantage of using the blues scale is that it can be used over many chords. We will now try to play a blues progression in G-major with this blues scale. We will need one more chord to construct a three chord blues. Here is the D9 chord:

D9: F#3 C4 D4

Now it’s time to play the blues:

G13 / / / C9 / / / G13 / / / G13 / / /

C9 / / / C9 / / / G13 / / / G13 / / /

D9 / / / C9 / / / G13 / / / D9 / / /

Of course you can use notes in the blues scale higher up on the piano keyboard. However, an effective blues solo doesn’t need a lot of notes. Try to use only a few notes and focus your energy on creating music.

The ability to play blues piano is usually not expected of beginning pianists. There are reasons why most beginning pianists start out playing old songs written by classical composers from centuries past. Many songs written for the piano by such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky were originally intended as pieces to be used for lessons. Plus, the conventions of classical music lead to chord structures, harmonies, and melodies that were comparatively straight-forward, perfect for students who were not musical experts.

Attempting to play blues piano presents new challenges for pianists. Many non-musicians don’t realize the technical difficulty of blues and jazz music, but in fact, to be an accomplished musician in one of these genres requires years and years of intense training and practice. Some would even say that these musical genres are actually more complicated than pre-20th century musical forms, which would mean that blues and jazz musicians are, in general, the most accomplished and versatile musicians out there.

So, as you can guess, the decision to take the plunge into playing blues piano should not be made lightly. In order to have a true understanding of blues, its scales, harmonies, and rhythms, one needs to have at least a basic understanding of more traditional musical forms. Blues isn’t a parallel form of music to Classical and other traditional genres; no, it’s an augmentation of traditional music. Just like jazz, blues actually complicates traditional music. Thus, your study of blues piano requires at least a solid bedrock of musical knowledge.

I presume that you already know, at the very least, about the traditional major scale. For example, in order to understand and play the C blues scale, you must know the C Major scale.

If you have that knowledge, then it’s pretty simple. The blues scale simply takes the major scale and adds three extra notes. That’s it. The three extra notes are a flatted third, a flatted fifth, and a flatted seventh. Thus, the C blues scale has all of the same notes as the C Major scale — that is, C D E F G A B — with the three additional notes being E flat (or D sharp), G flat (or F sharp) and B flat (or A sharp).

That’s right, if you look closely at the blues scale, you’ll find that there are only two notes that are not included. In the C blues scale, only C sharp and G sharp are not played.

If you want to play blues piano, learning the blues scale is your first step. Even doing nothing more than playing the scale, you’ll hear a “bluesy-ness” to the scale, and if you are a fan of blues, it will sound great to your ears.

Once you can do this, you are ready to play blues piano. The next step is to try improvising. Come up with a chord progression. C F G C is a standard blues chord progression, except — and here is another important point — it is fairly standard in blues music to turn nearly every chord into a seventh chord. So, this progression, in blues form, would be C7 F7 G7 C7. Of course, with the new notes added in, you must remember that, in most cases, these should be played as minor 7th chords. Thus, both the C7 and F7 chords use notes that are not in the traditional C Major scale.

Once you have your chord progression down, improvising is easy. Come up with a simple, bluesy melody, and go from there. Just remember that in order for the music to have that special blues quality, you need to utilize those extra three notes that are not in the traditional scale. Those are the notes that give blues its edge. In that light, it’s really not difficult at all to play blues piano.