Slow Blues 2

In this original piece, I show you the essence of a ragtime feel. We will also cover many different left-hand chordal accompaniments and improvisation tips.

In this lesson you’ll learn how to create your own gospel/blues progressions while also learning more about dominant motion, alternate bass notes and 2-5-1 progressions. This is a perfect mix of how to apply music theory to create really cool chord progressions.

We begin by learning the basic minor groove. I’ll show you how to make rich chord voicings to sound great while also teaching you a simple bass line to accompany yourself while singing, playing chords or improvising. Next, we move on to learning the entire minor blues progression and I’ll also show a cool walking bass line that you can use over and over to create a jazz/blues sound. After mastering the basic minor blues progression, I’ll show you how to expand it with rich jazz reharmonization and chord substitutions. Then we will add some more flair to the bass line by adding in approach notes to give it a more “pro” sound. Finally, we will learn the minor blues in 6/8 time.

In this lesson, we will continue where we left off from volume 1. We begin by reviewing “The Thrill is Gone” groove and bassline. Everything is broken down for you step-by-step, making it easy to learn regardless of your skill level. After mastering a basic version, we will add more tensions to the chords to create a richer blues sound. Next we move on to improvisation. You’ll learn 8 new scales for improvisation. We will work through different ways of breaking up the scales to create your own unique blues piano solo. This lesson will focus more on improvisation. We will cover neighbor chords, trills, crushed notes, double-stops and more to create some cool sounding improvisation.​ Trills, turns and double-stops are an important aspect of blues piano playing. We will cover these in detail! You’ll also learn how to improvise using rhythmic cells.

In this lesson we will focus on the stride technique that we ended on in part 2. We will work through an easy and more advanced stride pattern along with licks and a new Minor Blues Stride song. The licks in this song can be applied to many other blues songs both in Major and in minor!