Beginners blues/boogie/rock discussion

Sophia · 2024-05-29T17:17:55+00:00

I have always been fascinated by boogie woogie, but of course I am limited by my very limited piano skills 😃 However now that I'm in the second Alfred book,...

Nightowl

WieWaldi OMG Both those T&J videos are pure genius! 😁 If only it was that easy to learn piano!

Sophia

Heh, I had a nice experience today. Visited a friend and of course we talked about her piano... she said she stopped playing years ago but she asked me to play something. Long story short, I didn't have any sheet music and I don't know anything from memory out of my Alfred book. I was about to tell her sorry, no go... and then I remembered I'm learning blues "improvisations", I can do that!

Sat down and played some licks from my recent Lesson 8 - she was bobbing her head and really enjoying it... and next we knew, she felt inspired to play again and we were rummaging through her old duet books. We picked out an easy one that each of us will practice for next time 😃

Oh, to stay on topic slightly - WieWaldi, you can lean back in some comfort, because I have decided to take a little break (VERY little, so don't get too comfortable!) from the blues lessons to concentrate on duets - and also going through the entire Alfred book 1 and 2 because I just don't feel ready to move on to book 3 until I KNOW I master all the lessons 🤔.

TC3

Sophia That's fantastic! There's nothing quite like sharing music.

Sophia

Yes, so true! I was smiling the entire time. We picked a super easy Mozart duet which she copied for me so I can learn the part. I'm really excited to visit again. Also, it gave me a chance to play a real piano again after many decades... which was an absolutely fantastic experience in itself. I love our Clavinova, but nothing beats the real thing 😃

Sophia

Well............. watch out.... I ended my little blues break and started lesson 9 today... the ☠️😛 (drone lick). I'm looking forward to it!!!

WieWaldi

No pressure.... right?

Sophia

Never! 🥰

Sophia

Wait, what??? That is not fair! I finally learned the four variations. I was happy, now I can polish it a little more and put together a nice recording... Then I find out there are more variations in this lesson! And hard ones too - though he keeps saying that EVEN you beginners can do this 👺

WieWaldi

The video is only half through at this point, and there are still 2728367 pages of sheet music in front of you... What do you expect? 😄

Don't be overwhelmed by the amount of sheet music. There is a lot of copy&paste going on. The drone lick itself isn't hard, or hard to learn at all. Actually the licks itself are easier than what you have learned so far. The only complication is to use a more hand-stretched fingering, with the pinky always on C or B_b, meaning you have only 3 fingers left for the lick itself. And if you consider, the actual lick can be played with three fingers, in very limited range of your keyboard, it must be easy. So everybody can play this, even you lovely beginner, right? 😘

Sophia

True! So after I finish lesson 9, does that mean I have graduated to lovely beginner? Which is somewhere in between bloody beginner and total beginner? 🥳

WieWaldi

Sophia So after I finish lesson 9, does that mean I have graduated to lovely beginner? Which is somewhere in between bloody beginner and total beginner? 🥳

Hmmm.... I don't think so. But feel free, to set your beginner grades as you like. haha

WieWaldi

Okay, if you are moaning about soooooo much more variations to learn, it is a sign you will upload your video in a few hours...

In this case let me post first:
Eight lines and a chorus was a lot of stuff to learn. I bumped it up to 123 bpm (this is the speed of Rita Moreno in the Muppet Show) and voilà: Under 4 minutes - not enough time to mess it up.
The lesson itself was quite easy to learn. Left hand just is doing here and there a chord. Mostly the same chord. Every 2nd bar or so. Right hand plays a simple melody, most of the time only a one-finger-melody. And in backing track, my trusty drummer and the bass player make it sound well. 😎

Basically it more cheating than playing piano, but this lesson is what it is. 😀

This time I tried another audio recording, because my recital had a lot of hiss noise. I used headphone-output to the PC and recorded with audacity in overdubbing mode. The 1st version was a recording test and for the 2nd one I did't delete the first version, so I was distracted by my last playing. You can hear that I messed up the 2nd trill around 2:03, looking to my computer with three question marks in my face. 😵

rogerch

WieWaldi Very cool piece! Nice playing!

Sophia

Wow!!!!!!!! First of all, I absolutely ADORE Fever. Before, my two most favourite versions were Rita Moreno in the Muppet Show, and Elvis smooth voice. But they may have to make place for WieWaldi now 😋 (proof: I cranked up the volume and I'm playing it AGAIN as I'm typing this)

You are really make great progress WieWaldi. Your timing is becoming bang on and very confident, relaxed playing now. Also I noticed lots of little emphasized notes that show you truly feel the piece now. Plus you look like you are having fun with it... number one most important feature of our piano hobby that we should never forget 🙂

Well done! I'm so proud of you!

WieWaldi

Sophia My favorite is Peggy Lee's version. Followed by Rita Moreno, because of the Muppet coolness factor. She even won an Emmy for her role in The Muppet Show. And Elvis! Ahh - if moves his hips and the ladies gets loud. 😆😆😆 I am so in envy of his talent. ^^

Sophia

WieWaldi Hahaha, well, I'm too old to be fainting at Elvis now, and too young to faint when he was still alive (and by then he wasn't all that faintable anymore).

I'm not familiar with the Peggy Lee version, I must listen to that soon. But yes, Rita and Animal had great chemistry together. I think that, together with Mah Nah Mah Nah are my favourite Muppet scenes 😃

WieWaldi

Easy lesson 5 is weird... It has two parts: one is very lush and has some beautiful chords, the other one feels like Hanon exercises in Blues from.

Sophia

Ooh Hanon! Blegh! Actually I'm struggling with my lovely lesson 9 too. I can play all the variations now (somewhat, my left hand still messes it up sometimes). But I can't seem to decide on how to put it together now. I could play each variation each over the full twelve bars, but that would mean EIGHT boring repeats. Why eight? Because there is the initial drone lick. Then six variations. That is seven. But Christian cheated a little and he sneakily snuck in two different flavours of variation 4!

So my alternative idea is to record all the variations over two twelve bar progressions... but my poor brain refuses to remember when to switch and to what.

I could cheat all the way and just record four bars of each variation over the C chord, but I don't want to do that. So with my break and with the start of Alfred 3, I feel a little stuck with lesson 9. Right now I feel like Rowlf.... just replace "onion" with "blues lesson" lol!

WieWaldi

Sophia but my poor brain refuses to remember when to switch and to what.

I know exactly what you mean. Each lesson is spread out over several sheets with a lot of empty space and unlucky line and page breaks. The drone lick lesson alone has 10 (ten) pages. That is a lot to remember and I struggeled with that, too.
But good news: In lesson 4 (fever) of the easy-blues&boogie course I came up with the idea to add a lead sheet, to have everything on 2 pages. Bass line repeats anyway and is a waste of paper. I did it for lesson 5 as well and I will probably continue as long I am a total beginner. It costs a few hours per lesson to do it properly, but I think it is worth the effort.

You have only ten more lousy lessons to go, before you can benefit from that. Keep going! Each lesson will be more fun than the last one. (Execept the Blues-Hanon, yawn... Still struggling with line 1 of 7 - and it is the easiest one)

Until then, you should lay out the sheet music like this:

Sophia

Lol! Good idea 😁 I don't really like to use sheet music for my blues lessons. It is one of those styles where you would like people to believe you come up with those ideas on the spot 😆

But I may need it for this lesson. You gave me an idea to take just one bar of each variation and print those, that should fit on the piano stand. Or I could spend a little longer to remember them all... there is no rush 😊

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