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,...

Sophia

LOL! I know right??? If I spend the money... it means I must do it 😃 The Easy Licks in C has this cover:

I'm sure bundling that book instead of the 3rd part of the course was a mistake, but that's okay. I purchased it now and also the Easy Blues course. Now I have no excuse anymore not to continue (not that I wanted one) 🤩

Edit: I also wanted to add how much I enjoy this course! I completely forgot to mention that. I wanted to learn boogie woogie a long time ago, but any time I went into a Youtube tutorial, they would encourage to practise a boring left hand over and over and over for hours, days, weeks, months, non stop. Well, I'm not a factory worker... I like to make music. Practising is fine, but not like that! Sit in front of the TV and let my left hand play play play mindlessly. Besides, if I really did that, I think the people around me would quickly call some men in white coats!

So I appreciate this course. Christian provides the right amount of difficulty and it is never boring. He deserves some money for sure 😊 And thank you WieWaldi for mentioning this course, way back when, in another forum even!

WieWaldi

Easy Blues Piano lesson 7 is huge...
Maybe not particular hard, or maybe it is...?
It is at least not technically challenging. It is just to have a LH chord progression with 16 chords. 15(!) of them are all entirely different. Only the C triad is on bar 1 and 8, that's it.
I have the feeling this will never reach my muscle memory, nor can my brain somehow remember it. I can play em very slowly by read-playing, just feels not fluid in any sense.

Sophia

Oh that's so interesting! I actually feel the same about my lesson 12. I'm enjoying the "riffs in C". But I'm only 1/3 in and he already introduced two left hand patterns, two riff variations and five licks. I just can't remember it all, as soon as I add a new one to my memory, I forget three old patterns. I might have to cave and use the sheet music, record it in stages, or simplify the lesson.

Pallas

Sophia I'm not doing exams. I was trying to figure out which books to buy because my teacher asked. And people have been helpful and I've enjoyed the conversation. Feel free to join in if you want to. You're certainly welcome to.

WieWaldi

Sophia I might have to cave and use the sheet music, record it in stages, or simplify the lesson.

This! This is why I started to make cheat sheets for some lessons. Come on, LH is the same inside each lesson, no need to print it everywhere. In most cases it is baked into muscle memory, anyway.
And for recording, I often don't do the first and maybe the second lick, because they are only warmup licks (like a scale). Or a stripdown version of the next lick.

I would not call it simplifing the lesson, if I leave away the easy (warmup) parts. Recording in stages? Possible, but that takes away the fun.

WieWaldi

Pallas I have the impression, you accidentally landed in the wrong thread. At least I don't get the context, here.

Sophia

Yeah, I could definitely never do exams. Nor perform in public! You score a lot higher on the "brave" scale than me. I wish you wisdom in your decision 💝 I will follow your thread with interest!

Sophia

Case closed 😊 so to go back to blues discussion:

WieWaldi Come on, LH is the same inside each lesson, no need to print it everywhere.

Exactly. He prints the entire 12 bars, or in the case of lesson 12, he even writes out a variation of one note difference - but that uses an entire two lines up.

I still practise with the sheet for now, but I am already having to turn the page twice and I'm only one third into the lesson. I can't wait for your future cheat sheets - maybe I'll create one for this lesson.

How did you do it? Screenshot one bar of each lick and place them all on a single canvas?

Pallas

WieWaldi There was a comment mentioning me by name that has been edited and now my post no longer has obvious context. 🤷

WieWaldi

Pallas No worries. happens. I was just thinking you wanted to post in a thread where people are talking about books for exams. (And they probably won't find your comment, here)

Pallas

WieWaldi Again, my response is in this thread because I was specifically mentioned here in this thread. My comment no longer makes sense because that post was edited. Everyone in the other thread already knows what's in that thread. It seems to me that this is case closed.

WieWaldi

Sophia How did you do it? Screenshot one bar of each lick and place them all on a single canvas?

Musescore 4.0

Sophia

Omg, I suddenly feel like a complete

Thank you!

Nightowl

Sophia I'm actually the resident dinosaur, but it's good to know you're not a wizard in all areas - that could give the rest of us mere mortals a complex! 😁

WieWaldi

With musescore it costs indeed a lot of time to put everything onto one single page...

But the original was 7 pages in total - quite impossible to play to the sheet-music without losing the rhythm because of turning pages.

Sophia

You anticipated my next question 😄 I haven't installed Musescore yet (I know! Pathetic for a budding musician 😂) so I was wondering if you copied it directly from the pdf or put in the hard work. Sounds like there is no quick shortcut!

I'm still hoping I can stamp the lesson into my memory instead. I guess that once we go into full improvisation, it doesn't matter either way, but for now I feel I should follow the lesson closely.

Skipping the easy warm-up drill is no option, because that's the one I have firmly wedged into my active memory by now 🤠

Whoops, cross posted with my fellow 🦕 I mean 😴🦉🤣

WieWaldi

About warm-up licks: I would not skip it for learning the lesson. But often after you mastered the later licks, you often recognize, the warm-up is a subset in any way. Either it had a long pause and the follow-up lick filled this with notes. Or a follow-up lick adds a 2nd voice to the 1-finger melody. In this cases I assume it is safe to replace the warm-up lick by the next one.

Sophia I was wondering if you copied it directly from the pdf or put in the hard work.

This I do, too. Often I copy entire staffs from many pages to fewer pages and be careful about bad page breaks. Guess I can join the dinosaur club, haha

Sophia

So what's the difference between a lick and a riff? Christian mentioned something about "some licks can repeat like riffs" but he didn't quite explain anything further. And of course the Big Question is: does it actually matter?

WieWaldi

Sophia It is a very good question, because they seem similar.
AFAIK, a riff is a repeating section inside a song, so repeating that it basically can define the song. A lick happens to be in a song occasionally.

E.g. "Smoke on the water" has this very famous riff, repeating all over the song. Actually, this is the essence of the song itself.

"What'd I Say" from Ray Charles has a lick at 0:26 sec, (Youtube). It belongs to the song but does not define the song in a way like the famous "Smoke on the water" riff does.

TC3

A riff is usually a repeated phrase. It's often used as an important theme in a song, possibly the main melody theme or some other signature melody phrase that identifies the song.

Licks are shorter phrases, mainly used in the context of solos.

Sophia

Aaah thank you! Short but to the point! Makes sense... this lesson is entirely different with, as you said, a phrase that repeats every two bars and a lick that changes each time. It's strangely satisfying to play too, considering that and the left hand are so repetitive. 😄

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