Beginners blues/boogie/rock discussion

Yep, we've all been there, Sophia! Some of those publishers should be sued under the Trades Descriptions Act! Talk about misleading!

Christian just said: "One week left, you can still manage to learn one of those Christmas songs..."
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.

[frustrated]

I can see why you grew tired of it - it's not exactly an inspiring piece and there are some really fiddly sections as the piece progresses.

The first minute went smoothly, then you seemed to lose concentration a bit, but if you're not enjoying the piece it's understandable why your brain might be desperate to wander off somewhere more pleasant! That's how I was at school, during maths lessons... my brain just refused to operate in such a dull situation! I think you did well to plough through a lesson that wasn't enjoyable, now you can move on and play something more enjoyable.

Hi Sophia

Firstly, well done.

My first reaction when you started playing was - this is slow. I think you'd find the LH easier if you played it all a bit faster. At that tempo it's quite difficult to keep the LH consistent. No doubt that is the tempo advised in the lesson, but if your RH can cope then I think speeding up a bit will help you. That LH pattern can be played and used at virtually any tempo with a variety of rhythmic subtleties.

Are you using music there, or playing from memory?

When I learnt to play the blues many decades ago as soon as I could I started trying to improvise around the blues scale, and that's what I'd advise you to start doing asap. If you know that blues scale in C (C Eb F F# G Bb C) and can keep the LH going start experimenting. What you don't want to do, is make all this effort, working through these exercises (written by someone far more talented than me I'm sure) and at the end of it only be able to play the exercises. That's a complete waste of time IMHO. I'm sure the improvisation aspect will appear in the course you're doing anyway, but if it isn't, that would be a big red flag for me.

The main thing is that you're enjoying it, having fun, and clearly making progress.

Cheers

Hi Sophia

As I probably said eons further back in the thread I strongly recommend practising the LH on its own; a lot! Get that LH 12 bar form down so you can do it without thinking about it. It won't happen overnight, it took me a long time, but surprisingly suddenly you'll realise you no longer have to think about your LH. It's like its on auto pilot. When this happens it will free up your RH to improvise.

For that reason I'd also advise you to practise the blues scale in RH alone, very robotically (to start with) if required, as well. Forget what is written in the course and start playing the scale C Eb F F# G Bb C. Experiment with it! You really can't hit any wrong notes if you stick to those notes. Virtually any order will work. That way you will start to find things yourself. Play them in groups of 2 or 3, slide from one to the other. Again almost anything will work. A bonus note for the blues scale is E (natural) and sliding from Eb to E gives you one of the classic sounds in the blues. Minor 3rd to major 3rd.

You really can't go wrong, after that it's all about rhythm!

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Sophia You played with some really nice groove - loved it! And your metronome sounds way better than mine^^ Still, I would encourage you to play on the Yamaha instead. You know, hammer action and correct finger feeling and yada yada yada. Nothing wrong to play along the keyboard's rhythm as a metronome - can you let the keyboard doing the drums, and you do the lesson on the piano?
About the tempo - I liked it. It is this slow cool mood and your left hand plays very clean with very nice staccato. Actually, you had this good LH from the beginning of your Blues journey. Well - talent is talent.

About the ending: I always told you not to rush, and now you are venturing into Jazz improvisation - highly advanced!!! In this lesson the standard turnaround would maybe had fitted better, or one of TC3s ending:

TC3 Beginning Blues Turnaround / Ending

But - no! You must rush into advanced Jazz territory!!!

Here is my rendition of "At Last", from the final section of Alfred's Self Teaching Adult Piano Course (AKA book 1).
I skipped this piece the first time around, but recently I've been replaying everything in the book and I decided it was time to finally tackle this classic piece. My recording is not perfect, but I'm moving on from it before I kill my enjoyment of playing it, because sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. When I finally managed to get a passable recording, the title rang very true for me.

[

Thanks Sophia! I made a mistake in the second half but carried on, because the piece is longer than anything else I've recorded and several times I had played it quite well throughout then made a complete mess of the last measure - totally maddening! I'd need to work on it for another week or two to manage a note perfect recording, but I'd had enough. It's an apt way to finally say goodbye to the first book before I focus on finishing book 2.
Blues music has grown on me over the past year. It helps that much of it is played at a slow tempo - in fact that piece has the instruction "Slowly, with feeling" - ideal for a slow coach like me! If anyone notices slight hesitations I can claim they were intentional, as I was "feeling" the emotion of the piece!

WieWaldi Thanks WieWie, your words really made me smile and the video you linked made me laugh - that man is one bad ass comedian! Some of the phrases he referred to are not used much here in the UK, they are much more prevalent in the States, but his observations were very clever.

500th post - yes, that's quite a landmark! Maybe I'll make the 1000th post - if I remember to get my ass in gear when the time comes!

By the way, I was so sad to see the news about the attack in Magdeburg - just awful! I hope you and your loved ones stay safe, I fear that the repercussions of this incident might become widespread. Take care of yourself.