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,...

rsl12

Sophia Aww, you're too hard on yourself with tempo!!! It's VERY easy for tempo to drift when you improvise, and you're doing great for a beginner--much better than other beginner improvisers. It's a major reason why solo jazz piano is much harder than playing jazz piano in a group. If you have a drummer, you don't have to worry about tempo drift. If you really want to work on it, you could practice with a metronome. But I think it sounds good.

Sophia

Something tells me that if Bach had lived today, he would have been into hard rock music.... yeah. I couldn't resist to play that to a disco beat 😃 (shh, don't tell the classical crowd - they would probably lynch me after that sacrilege)

Eh, this is a thread where we can discuss boogie, blues and ROCK!

hebele

Sophia that was smooth. J S Bach would be so amazed that he would buy such a keyboard for each of his many many children 😀. I believe they had many harpsichords at home. Imagine they had dozens of these 🎹 instead.

Nightowl

Sophia Nicely done, that made me smile. You're such a rebel, you'll be excommunicated from the classical community if this goes on. 😁

hebele That was great, you're making solid progress. 🙂

@WieWaldi No matter how many others might have a claim, for me you will always be the BBK (and anyway the other 2 you mentioned are dead, so someone has to wear the crown).

WieWaldi

This is a fun thread.
And this is a fun arrangement.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻³/₄

Now I wanna try something similar 😍

Screw you holding me off from my blues progress 👺

Sophia

WieWaldi Now I wanna try something similar 😍

Score is downloadable for free.. be my guest 😃 It's a fun piece... much more fun with a disco beat. @hebele I didn't know he had "many many" children - but I bet you anything they would do the same with their papa's creations 🤣

WieWaldi

Ok, got it. (Probably my fastest recording to be uploaded)

The 2nd most famous Keyboard riff of all time

(Right after this most famous one: Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J. S. Bach)

Sorry - no drum machine. Let's make noise with loudness and speed!!!

Sophia

Wowowowow!!!! Nightowl is sooooooo right.... BBK for sure! Or maybe BRK - Bavarian Riff King. That was excellent, loudness and speed summed it up well. I love learning piano - and blues - and this thread 😍

WieWaldi

Thank you!!
And thank you for making this thread to be that good!

Unfortunately, BRK means "Bayrisches Rotes Kreuz"

and BBK is already covered by the "Berlin Blues King"

Christian's great great great grandfather, Max "Clusterhand" Fuchs, who brought Boogie Woogie from Berlin to USA in 1873.

facts matter.

Sophia

WieWaldi Christian's great great great grandfather, Max "Clusterhand" Fuchs, who brought Boogie Woogie from Berlin to USA in 1873.

Ahhahahahaha, well in that case, BRK is definitely out. But we can still name you BBK the Second. No greater honour than to be named after the original BBK 🥰

Edit: wait, what about B. B. King?

WieWaldi

I would love to honor this name. 😍
But B B King is already out. You know, there is already a guy with this name... Look

Hmmm.... maybe WieWieKing 👑

hebele

It is time to bring this thread back to earth. Here is my attempt for lesson 5 of blues beginners course:

This lesson was fun also felt easier than lesson 4. But it was hard to get a decent recording. The mistakes make it authentic anyway 😁.

WieWaldi

Thanks for sharing. You played very well and confident. And I'd say laid back, very relaxed. And you got the turnaround right. Seems you practiced it a lot. Well done.

2 nitpicky remarks:

At time 27 and sec I think you hit the 1:11, you copied the previous phrase instead of lowering it.
It is the position when the 12-bar scheme comes from G7 to F7, you should play something on F7 than you did on G7.
On G7, the last notes are E G
On F7, the last notes are E_b G, instead

The turnaround is really well perfomed; love it, really. Only thing, you played it on a suboptimal position.
The blues 12-bar scheme is as follow:

C7 C7
C7 C7
F7 F7
C7 C7
G7 F7
C7 C7 :|| (repeat)

You added the turnaround after all the 12 bars, this sounds a bit weird. Instead you should replace the last both C7 bars with the turnaround and play it right after G7 F7. (I think we had this topic earlier, because Christian is not very clear, when to play it.)
It should look like this:

C7 C7
C7 C7
F7 F7
C7 C7
G7 F7
<Turn Around> :|| (replace the last two bars with it)

hebele

WieWaldi great ears 👂as always. Many thanks for the feedback.

I think I am guilty of following the score blindly. It would be better to use the turnaround as a ... turnaround 🤣. The score has 14 bars repeated twice.

You are right, I was supposed to lower LH RH on bars 9 & 10! 😱. I will fix these before moving on. How do you pick these things? Does it sound dissonant?

For reference the bars 4 - 9:

WieWaldi

hebele How do you pick these things? Does it sound dissonant?

It sounds dissonant, but not too dissonant. At least not now, because I am away from home and listened via mono-bluetooth ear plug. A speech optimized one for telephony (bad music quality). Maybe I change my mind, if I listen to it on good speakers.

The real reason why I noticed is, because I practiced this routine by my own and I am still used to how it should sound. And I thought - isn't it supposed to change the tone here? And then I compared to Sophias version and was sure about it.

Talking about the turnaround and how to use it:
Play all 12 bars, then repeat the first 10 of them and add the turnaround as ending. That's it.

Sophia

Wow, yes that sounds very smooth indeed. I liked the lesson very much and it brought back happy memories. I didn't notice the little discrepancies until Wie "Radar Ears" Waldi mentioned them...

I agree, the turn around was fantastic! I always struggled with that. Very well played, so nice to see our little beginner's group make progress like that 😃

WieWaldi

OMG - where do you find all this fancy pictures?

Sophia

LOL, magic!

WieWaldi

I've started to work on my timing issues, cause I tend to constantly speeding up.
Molly G. made a video about metronome usage. There she advised the Time Guru app to be used as metronome. And of course she presented some brain activity scans to demonstrate that different regions in our brains are responsible to follow a beat vs keeping the tempo by your own. Therefore, I purchased it to give it a try. But whenever I needed a metronome, I reached over to the left button panel of my piano and used the internal one. It comes just so handy to use. The Time Guru app was just waiting on my smartphone, useless. But now I decided to use it. Trying to reach 50% of random mute-clicks for my next Boogie lesson. And I'll try to increase this number for future lesson. Molly suggested a value of 80% to be desired... Let's see how it works out.

@Sophia, how's your Fever lesson goin? I remember, this was one of the very enjoyable lessons. Probably one of the most fun lessons of all so far. Don't worry, there are a lot more very nice lesson to come.

Sophia

Ooh let me know how you're doing with your metronome. I must check out that app, is it one that slowly starts skipping ticks to train us to use our own internal clock? Sounds good 🙂 Of course, I won't need it for this lesson.... it has its own background track 😁

Fever is a very nice lesson! I haven't really started it yet, or maybe I should say, I haven't started the actual lesson (improv) just yet. I'm still getting the hang of the three LH chords, and playing the melody with the right. The chords are not hard, though from Cm7 to A_b7 is slow, and then from G7 back to Cm7 is... super slow. So definitely not using Christian's band just yet because I can watch the clock go round in the time I need to position my hand for the next chord 😃

I have also spent some time with Thompson, because the poor lad was getting upset that I didn't spend enough time in his Modern (in 1930) Course. So Fever is not going to be a fast project, I really plan on balancing my blues course a little more with my method book...

WieWaldi

Sophia is it one that slowly starts skipping ticks to train us to use our own internal clock?

Yes - exactly this one.
It is really annoying to get used to. If the random generator decides to skip 4 or 5 beats in a row, I am lost. I can hear the ticks again, but have no clue to what beat it fits. Sometimes the beat is with me, sometimes not. And sometimes the beat is with me, but I am a quarter note too fast. Or too slow - I really have no clue then.

You and your method books.📚
First Alfred, then Thompson and AFAIK you had an affair with Thompson before that, too. But hey - I am fine with. As long you spend some time on the method books, I can keep up with your pace at the Blues lessons.

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