Sophia The next one is called "slow blues" so I guess I can calm down now and start the lesson with a serene mood... and go sloooooooooooooooowwwww....

I already told about lightening up the Easy Blues Piano Course with actual pieces. You know, playing only exercises can get a bit frustrating over time. In the Beginners Course, there was the Saint Louis Blues, in the follow-up course, the Quick Five Blues, and that's it.
This one is my second one out the collection.

It was a tremendous easy piece, way, way easier than the Saint Louis Blues. It uses the brass style LH from the Beginners Course 8 over the good old trusty 12-bar form in the key of plain simple C. The melody is very repetitive and uses three times a turnaround based on our beloved MOAT. (Mother of all Turnarounds) No jumps, nothing. It is so easy, it can be played on a keyboard with only 49-keys. On top of it, the sheet music says "slowly", making an easy piece even easier. It was so easy, even I could learn this in about one week. Okay - I must admit a few days more practicing would have been nice - the recording isn't... nah... not that great. It sounds very clumsy afterwards. Needed probably more polishing.

    Wow, I love the sound of that! You said it was easy??? It is so wonderful that we can learn EASY pieces that sound AWESOME. It's good you got to practice the MOAT again... three times 🙂

    I said it to PianoMonk in his thread: this type of smooth music is quickly becoming my favourite. Your piece would actually sound a lot more polished if you had this band in a box behind you too 😃 But as it is, it still sounded great! I think I found my next book to purchase 😂

      Sophia I would encourage you to do. At least when you start the Easy Course. I would rate the difficulty level way below the St. Louis Blues and also way easier than all the lessons of the Beginners Course. Basically, you could start right now. But the Easy Course has 13 Blues lessons, so you must somehow get along with only 8 easy pieces, so it is maybe clever to wait until Easy lesson 3 or 4.

        You all seem to be having so much fun on this thread, so I decided maybe it's time to embrace the blues. 🙂

        Here is a link to Why Am I Blue, from Alfred's book 1:

        This is a piece I didn't spend much time on the first time around, but over the last few days I have been replaying my way through book 1 and decided to work on this piece as a change. I tried to play it with some swing and used the pedal a bit (in fact I think I overused it at one point). My bench is a bit creaky and my playing is a bit tense due to the usual red button syndrome but I think it's OK for a bloody beginner. 🙂

        "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

        Welcome to Candyland, @Nightowl 🎉
        Oh yes - this sounds blue, all the blue chords, and the blue notes (Eb is the "blue note", but don't ask me, why. Maybe because Eb to E bending on saxophones is used so often - we pianists slide) - this makes the soul and the spirit of a Blues. It is strange, Blues sounds so different to everything classical or contemporary - even if we press the same 12 black and white keys over and over again. Yours sounded like such a Blues.
        I would say, this is a successful premiere for you in this hatred genre. Well played! Even with quite much of confidence - despite the red-button syndrome. (My last recording took me an entire day, probably I did most of my practicing work during my recording attempts.... But officially, I blame the red button syndrome.)

        You said, you didn't spend too much time at this Blues, which is even more impressive. Told you, Blues is the easiest genre - except of Nursery songs, maybe.

        This piece doesn't sound very difficult to my ears, especially the LH has little chord changes, freeing your attention to be focused on RH melody. If you want, you can try out Christians very first lesson of his Blues Piano for Beginners playlist. (No sheet music required for the first lessons) Compared to your piece, his RH is stupid easy, but his LH is beefed up because you have to change the chord every 2nd note. Sophia called the LH pattern as Humptee-dumptee, and I kinda agree because this is repeated so often until you dream of it. But it is a very good exercise for hand independence. I remember when I did the lesson - I was so proud after I mastered it. I felt like being John Lee Hooker.

          WOW Nightowl!!!!!!! That is ADORABLE... yes you are a bloody beginner at blues, but in no time you will be promoted to lovely beginner, which is where I am right now. Christian himself promoted me in one of his videos. Which makes the course worth it just for that moment, haha!! ðŸĪĄ

          That is such a fun piece and you played it with confidence and happiness, well done! <now I must sneak off and whisper into WieWaldi's ear on how we can entice you even more into the wonderful colourful world of blues>

            In what lesson had you been promoted to a lovely beginner? Because in lesson 6 you were still a bloody beginner, so it must have been a bit later. ðŸ˜ĩ

            Correct 😃 It happened in lesson 9. I know he said it casually... but I took that as a definite promotion anyway.

            I have been a lovely beginner ever since and even updated my avatar

            WieWaldi Thanks WieWie! I'm pleased that you can hear the blues in my playing - maybe I picked up a thing or two watching the videos on this thread. 🙂 By the way, I never said I hated this genre (although I might have said something similar about certain dire pieces from Alfred's books).

            Sophia Thanks, high praise indeed, but I am a long way from being a "lovely beginner"! I remain a bloody beginner - I know my place! 😁

            "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                  Nightowl I remain a bloody beginner

                  For now, and only when it comes to blues 😃 It is unavoidable, we all start there. Of course WW has reached "total beginner" (he missed out on being a lovely beginner because he didn't pay attention)

                  We all agree that we will remain "beginner" for eternity, but at least he put together a whole list of all the beginner stages we can look forward to.
                  That should keep us busy for quite a while...

                      Sophia (he missed out on being a lovely beginner because he didn't pay attention)

                        Edit, and now for some more "serious" (yeah right) fun, this popped up in my YT feed... I love it!

                        4 days later

                        I still haven't started my new blues lesson - though I did try to learn my next Alfred piece. I'll get going soon, I promise! I still need to buy Christian's blues pieces book - and I will.

                        Meanwhile, I purchased the score of Sax and Violence... maybe in a hundred years I can play it like this:

                        THIS!
                        This is how you can stack your Yamaha on your Yamaha. And use the Sax-sound of your Yamaha, while you play piano on your Yamaha. And with a keyboard split on your Yamaha, you can do the triangle sound on your Yamaha, too. Hurry up, and put your Yamaha on your Yamaha.

                        1-2-3-...7-8..... Yamaha! Yamaha! (Yamaha grants me a discount, if I write Yamaha 10 times, 12 times ðŸĪŠ)

                        Right???? That's how I envisioned my need for dual pianos 😎 Or I could try to train our music loving Simba to do all that... I'm sure he would be happy to use one of the kitten heads for the "cloink" sound...

                        But yeah I really enjoyed that video. Even though it was a little off topic 😋 I always liked the Muppet Show and even more since I got married... I shall share why that is. If you really insist on reading it, sit down, grab a cup of for a long, boring and completely off topic story... don't say you weren't warned ðŸĪŠ

                        My husband was a professional child actor (both stage and film). Of course he had to spend a lot of time on the set and became friends with a teenager who was always drawing situation sketches. For example at some point my husband started to grow a little too fast, and the other actors had to stand on boxes to maintain the height difference. Then his friend would create a cartoon around that...

                        Well, this talented young man became one of the creators of the Muppet Show and later Fraggle Rock, coming up with many of the creative ideas. So I guess that may explain at least partially why we're so fond of the zany creativity of that brilliant show 😄


                          Okay - this explains something. No wonder why you know everything about the Muppets. And also background stories...

                          Who is your husbands friend? (Jim Henson himself? No? Is he? Maybe Frank Oz?!?)

                          Would be happy to hear your first "Muppet-song", with two Yamahas stacked on top. But from hearing alone, I reckon this song is very difficult. For sure, it is beyond bloody beginner - maybe extended beginner, late beginner or (shock) eternal beginner - if not an amateur level.

                          Btw - I am currently pausing my blues journey. Got sheet music for a my fav Christmas song. Turned out, it is far beyond my level... After a week, I can play only a third of it with the third of the required speed, but three time more mistakes as acceptable.

                          Heh, oh yeah, my Muppet song is many many many many moons away still... if ever! But it's nice to dream 😃

                          So, back to reality for me too... I started the next blues lesson! It is the slow blues lesson with the punches. So far it's not very interesting, not like the Muppet punches between Mahna Mahna (I had to look up his name) and Zoot. Ok, speaking of Mahna Mahna, that's another song on my wish list! Oh yes, we said back to reality ðŸĪĢ

                          So I do have a question for you. The lesson starts like this:

                          It requires sliding the middle finger from F# to G, little finger stays on Bb. How did you manage to do that without pain? If I slide in between the keys, it hurts a little, even though I don't have fat fingers. But if I slide down towards the broad part of the white key, my little finger slides with it, sometimes even off the black key. So how did you manage it?

                          Also, are you going to give up on the Christmas song for this year and try again next year? It sounds like this is something you will be able to master, it just takes a little more time, right?

                          It feels kind of natural for me, now. In the beginning, it was weird to have the pinky up on a black key, but after 50 bottles of beer it became 2nd nature.
                          And there isn't any pain. I could play it all day long - the only risk is to get drunk again.

                          Thank you! I guess bottles of beer is the only thing I haven't tried yet! Good tip(sy)

                          It's good to ask, then you find an approach from all angles 😂