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

Well, I wasn't going to submit my lesson just yet.... but I decided to just get one of my practice sessions recorded. And then I thought it might actually good to show how most of my sessions go... I played the entire thing with Simba in my neck, purring... so here is lesson 8 and I will still do as rsl suggested: combine it with lesson 9 for my next recording 🙂

rsl12

Sophia How much of this is improv and how much is planned? In particular I notice you are doing something cool called "displacement"--repeating phrases, but starting on a different beat of the measure, or changing to double time.

Sounds like good progress! I may use the licks in Lesson 8 to help me with my February recital piece, so I thank you for showing it to me!

Nightowl

Sophia I'm amazed that you manage to play so well with Simba clambering about on you, using you like some human shaped cat perch! Although maybe you brought that on yourself as you left a pile of books on the corner of the piano in the exact place where he usually sits! He is clearly training his human slave to realise that such behaviour has consequences! 😁

WieWaldi

Wowwwww! That was fast learning. Don't know if I call it learning of the lesson itself, or learning how to improvise. Anyway, this is a big step forward. Most of those licks and melodies are entirely new to me. Doesn't sound like Christian too much. Okay, some elements were there, every so often. What impresses me even more is the fact, you did everything without sheet music. Except at 0:10: Here you are looking at the sheet music, but the paper wasn't there.
Confused I am.
Talking about sheet music: Wasn't this the lesson with all the funny pictures, every picture should remind you of a chunk. Like 'Circling the E' or 'Butterfly' and many more. I printed those icons, to have them in front of me. Making something like a playing routine and getting this stuff into the 12-bar scheme.
Not to mention, you get some bonus points for having Simba distracting you all the time.

If there is anything you should work now: make LH a bit more faint. Sometimes it overpowers your right hand too much, it feels like the RH is trying out something new — very gently — while LH pushing like a bulldozer.

Wait: this everything took you only two weeks?
This means, annoyingly talented turbo rocket fast learner Sophia is back on blues
And this means, annoyingly talented turbo rocket fast learner Sophia is back on blues
🚶🏻‍♂️~~~~~~~~~🏎️💨

Sophia

Thanks guys 🙂 Let me try to reply to all of it, probably not in order though 🙂

WieWaldi If there is anything you should work now: make LH a bit more faint.

Thank you so much for this much needed reminder!!!! You are sooo right. I keep forgetting, and I definitely got carried away enough to forget this. Appreciate it 🥰

WieWaldi Except at 0:10: Here you are looking at the sheet music, but the paper wasn't there.

Haha, I know it looked like that, but I bent forward to let his royal majesty king Simba climb on my shoulder easily. Of course he turned away as soon as I did that, and then again when I offered my shoulder one more time. Once he made sure I wasn't going to bend forward again, he got up himself. Cats - they have to be independent!

WieWaldi Most of those licks and melodies are entirely new to me. Doesn't sound like Christian too much.

rsl12 How much of this is improv and how much is planned?

Answering both in one go: some of those licks are indeed from the lessons, and some from the book Licks in C. In that book, Christian started with a number (7 in fact) basic licks, such as this:

Then I noticed that in the rest of the book, he created all kinds of licks around those basic phrases. The thing is though, I don't really want to sound like Christian... he is a great teacher, but eventually, I want to sound like me (hope that doesn't sound too snooty) 🙂

So I took those notes and improvised my own combinations and rhythm around those. Hopefully in time, I will be fluent enough to actually come up with new combinations all by myself 😃

WieWaldi Wait: this everything took you only two weeks?

Not really 🙂 Remember when we all encouraged you to start improvising? Well, that's when I figured I might as well take my own medicine, and started tinkering with it then. This lesson 8 was just a nice coincidence - but also a great, SUPER great lesson in combining existing licks into something new.

I can't wait to start lesson 9!

WieWaldi

Sophia Well, that's when I figured I might as well take my own medicine, and started tinkering with it then.

Not many people swallow their own medicine^^

My current lesson isn't going to go. I stuck at the very first lines. Even the left hand alone is challenging me. Old pattern, but black keys where they weren't in the key of C or G. This screws up my muscle memory so badly. Christian mentioned, Blues in E is great, because a lot of guitar players prefer to play in E. For whatever reasons. But I think a capotasto would help out guitar players with any key. It's not that they are bound to weird keyboard layout, that prefers one key and screws every other one. Making us piano players need to learn a new muscle memory scheme again and again for every new key.

If I play another key besides C, G is my current favourite. G sounds better then E and the muscle memory is closer to the one of C.

WieWaldi

Sophia Haha, I know it looked like that, but I bent forward to let his royal majesty king Simba climb on my shoulder easily. Of course he turned away as soon as I did that, and then again when I offered my shoulder one more time. Once he made sure I wasn't going to bend forward again, he got up himself. Cats - they have to be independent!

Nightowl He is clearly training his human slave to realise that such behaviour has consequences! 😁

Yup

Sophia

Well, it sounds like there is only one possible solution: move to the next lesson. You have no reason to stick with this particular one if you're not enjoying it.

There is absolutely no reason to force yourself. I know that we have gotten into the habit of recording our lessons, but there is no shame in not doing so if you're not enjoying it.

I learnt that lesson with the gospel blues. In the end I stuck with that one because I thought there were some important elements to learn, but in this case, I fully agree with you. Time to call it quits. Even our cats agree that they would never force themselves do anything they don’t like 😸

WieWaldi

Sophia Well, it sounds like there is only one possible solution: move to the next lesson. You have no reason to stick with this particular one if you're not enjoying it.

I think I will make a compromise: Finish the lesson, because this part of my brain needs to be trained as well. To be precise, my brain contains of a lot of boxes. The box with the label "Learn something new, you douchebag!" is currently quite dusty.
But I won't polish it as much and move on earlier. I think that's the best I can do.

diretonic

Just to add to @Sophia, I would ditch E until you have more time and/or motivation than you know what to do with. As you say, E requires a substantially different muscle memory and does nothing to inform what you can already do—and more easily improve—in C and its neighbouring keys, F and G.
I sometimes, but not often, noodle in other keys, more successfully the closer to C I choose in the circle of fifths. It's not easy to assess the benefit of straying. I might sometimes do a deeper dive in a more obscure key but haven't found it to confer any benefit in my more competent keys. That said, if my hand holds up for this months PIYW, I might try Eb just to get away from my stale C,F,G riffs!

I was reflecting on this: just how skilled are our revered pros in the more obscure keys, Dr. John for example? Here's ChatGPT*
I doubt ‘proficient in all keys’ really means his best-key skills were fully transferable, and it's unsurprising that he became proficient in Bb and its neighbours since he needed to work with horn players.
Also, he apparently disliked E and B. Had he cut his teeth in a guitar-based band, these might have become his favourites.

- interesting further detail on this if you request it - seems like blues/jazzers should be playing in F, Bb,Eb, horns or not!

WieWaldi

diretonic Interesting. And funny thing, that Dr John doesn't like E as well. Seems, I am in great company. To me it is mainly the muscle memory aspect. Playing old trusted patterns, but having black keys in awkward places screws my muscle memory totally up. Additionally I don't like the sound of the key too much. It sounds too high, not groovy enough. Or too muddy if I go an octave down.
This muscle memory thing brings be back to an old thread (WieWaldi) , where I posted different alternative keyboard layouts, but in the end I stuck with this one as my final approach:

All natural notes are white keys (7 of them)
All flattened or sharped are black. (5)
But you've got 6 upper keys and 6 lower keys
The white+upper keys are bit longer to give blind people tactile feedback
For the decision what is white/black or long/short, I went for a solution to have as much white color as possible. This is nicer for the eye and gives better contrast

The advantages of this keyboard would be:

One muscle memory for 6 different keys played equally. Just start with another key.
As player you only need to learn 2 different muscle memories and you can play all 12 keys.
If you want to play an octave, your hand spans only 7 keys instead of 8
If you want to play chromatic octaves or sixths, both fingers always move parallel (With our current keyboard, sometimes we work parallel, sometimes we use a black and a white key — it toggles! We need to learn this different for every different key or note-span)

And I know there are disadvantages as well:

If you start and play your first nursery song, your fingers must go from the lower to the upper keys and vice versa

In my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

rogerch

I like to improvise in all the major and harmonic minor keys because each key sounds a bit different from the others and I tend to do different things in different keys. I like to have some variety. Being able to play in all keys also enables interesting modulations.

It was a lot of work to get there though: years of systematically studying all the keys! At some point I’m going to tackle modes and multiply the work by 7!

Nightowl

WieWaldi Ha ha ha! Very clever cartoon, the end startled me slightly - I didn't see that coming! 😆

Sophia

Hahaha that sums up our cats.... 10000% !!

« Previous Page