Ha, ha, ha, high five at you WieWie, together we are strong against the might of Sophia! 
Now the truth has been exposed!
Sophia - You are indeed lovely... but you are not a BBB! Now have the decency to slow down a bit, before you give the rest of us mere mortals an inferiority complex!
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
Hehe, now, everybody coming back to earth again... let me derail the topic just a little bit. I did practice today, but only briefly. I got side tracked when I started to toy with DaVinci Resolve - what a complicated program! I have only scratched the surface of all the things it can do....
I tried a few small things when I recorded the JT book, but there are seven tabs and so far, I only used three of them (and only one or two things at that). I have no idea what Fusion, Color and Fairlight even do, let alone tried any of that! I don't think that's a rabbit hole I wish to descend in too deeply, that's for sure 
Sophia DaVinci Resolve - what a complicated program!
I wish, I knew this program before I bought mine. Mine is quite easy to use, very intuitive. But lacks of some functions, or others dont work as expected.
Even if it has almost 100 effects, I am only using a very limited number of them, but still missing some others that don't exist.
DaVinci Resolve is free for non-commercial users, so if it has the features you need and are missing on yours, you can switch between the two 
I have been playing around with it a little more, but honestly I wouldn't even know what to use most of those effects for... especially since I only use one cellphone to record my playing and most angles are too horrible to even try. So no matter what effects I add, the result will always be boring - there are only so many ways you can make two hands (and sometimes a frog cat) on piano keys interesting 
I have paid for Adobe Premiere (and still paying because I use other apps in their suite). But once I switched to Davinci Resolve, I never looked back. It is that good!
If you only need to trim video, there are better and simpler tools (e.g. Shutter Encoder). As soon as you need to apply any transition, or effect, or tweak the audio, it's worth to learn a real video editor like Davinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere. The reason is they all work quite similarly in concepts and in workflow, so learning one pretty much means you can easily be good with another. Davinci's own training videos on their website are superb.
Here it is, a first draft of Jazz Ostinato. I'll probably need another week to polish it, but I think it's ok enough to give an impression what it should sound like So much fun to learn! Actually that left hand pattern is almost addictive to play... so while I was learning that, the actual blues course had to wait. But that means I'll be a lovely beginner that much longer, so I don't mind ^_^
Oh yes - LH makes are wonderful groove! Really addictive! Aaaaaand - honestly, it sounds already quite polished. This one is certainly fun to play and I can understand why you want to "polish"
it a bit more. And nah - the Blues course doesn't have to wait, this was a nice excurse to a close relative style. And wonderful to listen to.
You are really gifted, music runs through your veins. If you believe it, or not - you got a lot of talent from your parents. This plus the work you put into your practice routine makes us mortals look like... like... like... dogs with brown fur sitting in front of a piano.
You are really gifted, music runs through your veins. If you believe it, or not - you got a lot of talent from your parents. This plus the work you put into your practice routine makes us mortals look like... like... like... dogs with brown fur sitting in front of a piano.
You said it, WieWie! I could not put it better myself.
Sophia You nailed it! Your left hand seemed to run on auto pilot, as the rhythm ran as smoothly as a Swiss watch movement. Your soul has found its musical home.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
Oh but animals with brown fur are excellent pianists and great buddies... especially when they play a duet for the first time!
The ostinata isn't as hard as it looks Because the left hand never changes, same same same notes over and over... so all I had to do was add the right hand and match the rhythm. The triplets were a bit tricky, but that was all. And you have to make sure the left hand doesn't start to drift, which it did once or twice. All those Christian blues lessons really helped prepare for this though 
Funny enough I don't really have a practice routine, I just sit down and, well, play the tricky parts until they are no longer tricky I think I spent about one hour per day on this lesson, this was so addictive. Definitely a little more than usual. That left hand pattern really has the ability to put you into a trance after a while! 
I'm just surprised about all the joy people get out of playing the blues, I always had the idea that blues was quite depressing, a bit like this scene from Naked Gun 2.5:
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
WieWaldi Ha, ha, you know me so well WieWie! I watched this film on TV last night and when this scene came on it made me laugh so much that I thought I'd share it with others who would appreciate it. The "Play It Sam" reference has been used many times over the years, as a nod to that iconic movie scene. I love the part where the usherette appears with a selection of drugs - genius! 
Talking of which, @Sophia that muppet clip involves some seriously clever playing! The creators of that show were very innovative.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
Nightowl, I found a lovely arrangement of this piece, free for the grab. There is a video too of how it should sound. It's way too much of a stretch for me to even try it yet, but it's absolutely a version that I'd love to be able to play someday!
Well, that is indeed lovely, but if it's too much of a stretch for you there's no way I could play it! I sigh heavily when I see yet another nice piece that's currently out of reach for me, but I have to be realistic. My piano playing is grade 1-2, but I sigh at grade 8. I also have a Masters in Wishful Thinking.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
Haha yeah, I hear you! I have a whole cupboard full of books that are on the "someday" pile. But with every piece I learn that someday is getting closer... so I should be able to play at least a few before I'm 100 
Hello hello, beginners blues people.
I am considering to start Christian's "Blues Piano for Beginners" course. I've already went through lesson one. Initially I didn't believe him when he said beginners usually struggle with basic hands together rhythm. But it looked so easy. And of course, it was not easy. But after some practice, it is coming together.
I don't really listen blues. My goal is to start practicing improvisation and realised that classical resources are not going to cover it much. Do you think this course will help towards that?
Christian also have some improvisation videos but I didn't see anything structured as the beginners blues course.
Whooo hoooo, another bloody blues beginner Welcome, welcome!
I am currently learning lesson 16 and I have to say that so far, Christian hasn't really covered improvisation as such. He does mention a few times though that his lessons are paving the way towards that goal, and usually he is really focussed on "what sounds bluesy" (which I guess is very helpful in getting the hang of improvisation some day) and, as you said, hand independence. So I think the course will be useful, we gotta start somewhere, right?
Of course my big improvisation hero is @rogerch so I'm sure he can explain it a lot better than I ever could
Sophia Thanks Sophia!
My improvising isn't blues or jazz style. I'm not sure what it is! It's probably a combination of classical, ragtime, and New Age because that's mostly what I played before I started improvising.
I started improvising about 4.5 years ago after a lifetime of playing from sheet music. My approach was to start with scales and chords. I played all the major and harmonic scales and went through all the chords in each one. Every day after playing that day's scale and chords I would improvise in that scale. I did that every day for about the first three years.
At this point I can somewhat comfortably improvise in any of the major scales using all the chords for that scale. I mess around with chromatic playing and with non-diatonic notes from time to time but most of the time I stick with scale tones. Even though I worked on all the harmonic minor scales I don't seem to want to use them as much so I'm not as good at the minors.
I use various left hand patterns, and also work quite a bit on improvising in both hands at the same time with no set pattern for either hand. It's tricky but slowly gets easier over time. Work in progress!
When I practice I usually sit down, play the first note, and let things develop from there. Playing one thing makes me think of something else so the playing evolves within a session. It's super fun!
I've started cycling through the scales again, not playing the scales themselves but making sure I'm covering all the major scales. I'm trying to avoid getting better in some scales than others. I have tons of areas for improvement: minor keys, modes, modulation, non-diatonic, variety of articulations, tempos, styles, etc. It's never-ending and immensely satisfying!
If I decide to tackle blues or jazz I think I will use a similar approach to enable playing those styles in all the scales. I think blues and jazz improvisation is awesome and I'm looking forward to hearing all of you blues students try it out. I think you will like it!
Sophia thanks a lot! Yes, that was my understanding as well. I need to get comfortable with rhythm and hand independence first. I think I will follow the course and then try to introduce more improvisation on top of it. Blues seems nicely structured for this.
I've also looked jazz improv courses but they have some scarry looking chords . So I'm not touching those for now.
Following up on my own post: improvising has been fun and rewarding from the first day. I started with the book Improvisation at the Piano. I've only made it through about a third of it but it did help me get going.
The key to learning to improvise is to sit down and do it. The first time you try, play a note, then play another note. What do think? Play another one. It took me a while to develop little patterns and sequences I like, but even in the beginning I was able to play music that was fun for me to play that I liked the sound of it. My early improvisations tended to be very slow, and frequently based partially on patterns from music I knew. I still have fun with simple, slow improvisations!
I think the blues lessons you all are working through lay an excellent foundation for improvising! You've got left hand patterns and you've got various licks. I suggest playing one of the left hand patterns you can play on auto pilot and playing some random notes in the right hand. If you like what you hear, riff on it! If you don't like what you hear, play something else! Don't worry about it sounding good, just experiment and have fun!
My point is that I loved improvising even when I first started so please don't be intimidated by what I wrote about playing all of those scales! I encourage anyone at any level to start improvising. I'm glad I did!
