Turn up the volume, watch and give it a listen! This is a great exercise for getting your foot in the door to achieving left hand independence with any new bass pattern you learn. Otis Spann and Pinetop Perkins, two legendary blues pianists, were both heavily influenced by Pinetop Smith. It tended to be working-class music, born in communities of workers lumberyards, railroad workers and so on , or urban rent parties. The Fundamentals Of Boogie-Woogie — In 7 Lessons! To keep things simple, in this version the right hand only plays chords. That means it tends to be fast and upbeat, with a light-hearted spirit.
Much easier than I thought it would be. The first wave of boogie-woogie players was influenced by ragtime music which we discussed in another video , whereas later boogie-woogie players were more influenced by blues music. This course covers the fundamentals of boogie-woogie piano. In this video he is joined by the 2 amazing dancers. Song Intros, Part 1 Ex. That's exactly what I did when I ran across some YouTube videos of people playing boogie woogie piano. I uploaded the original as a low bit rate, low resolution quickie, due to having a lousy internet connection where I was at the time.
Lesson 1 — The History Of Boogie-Woogie Piano We start with an overview of the history of the music and its development throughout the 20th century. Whatever you decide, I hope your love of the piano continues for many years, as mine has. Improvising on piano is the same; the little riffs and figures are the words which you can put together into longer, more complex figures which become the sentences, played through each trip around the chord pattern becomes the paragraphs, and the song, beginning to end, becomes your statement, your story, the story of what you feel, what your experience is. Practice the hand independence exercise shown above in the new keys of F starting the left hand pinky finger on F, and playing an F chord in the right hand and G starting the left hand pinky finger on G, and playing a G chord in the right hand. The Left-Hand Driving Force For the solo piano player, the left-hand becomes a driving force, the freight train engine powering the song.
Practice in C, F and G separately. Another common way to begin a boogie-woogie is by using the first two chords of a turnaround progression, the I7 and I dim 7. This tutorial teaches you everything you need to know for right-hand comping patterns. In the late 1930s you could see piano performances of boogie-woogie at Carnegie Hall. In boogie-woogie piano playing, when the right hand is not playing chords to accompany vocals or another soloist, it usually plays licks.
Chicago Blues Boogie-Woogie made its way to Chicago as well. This article has also been viewed 68,551 times. This creates extra drive by anticipating the upcoming chord change. It tended to be wild, unpolished, and oftentimes performed on old and out-of-tune pianos. If for any reason it really doesn't matter why , you decide that it just isn't for you, simply return it for a complete refund minus shipping. To create this article, 11 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This is highlighted by the C minor chord on the first beat of the bar, which imparts the feeling of a diminished G7 chord without actually playing one.
As you get more confident, you can be more adventurous. The short downward glissandi at the end of bars 3 and 6 are executed by holding the top note with your little finger and letting your other fingers roll onto the remaining notes. Lick 1 is the most basic, and consists of keeping the right hand in the basic position of a C major triad. Like previous examples, this is in the key of C and uses the 12-bar blues scheme. On drums french Simon Boyer.
Unlike ragtime, boogie-woogie is meant to be played with an eighth-note swing instead of a straight beat. Check out my powerful video course today and you'll be sounding like a pro before you can play a C major scale! Here's an example of how this might sound. Boogie Woogie Breakthrough But then I got to looking over a list of all the different piano courses I've produced over the last few years, and I found found one glaring hole in my catalog. Most all are based on an 8th note triplet pattern. Then the feeling moved down into your hips and legs, and you found yourself dancing.
This is an African American-led genre, so the music draws on the tradition of spirituals and the powerful rhythms of African music. Boogie-woogie lasted about one and a half decades — from the late-thirties to the early-fifties. The bassline plays the role of both the drummer and the bass player, rolled into 1 to create the driving force which propels the music forward. And maybe you thought, this feels really good! When listening to boogie-woogie recordings, it sometimes sounds like the player has 4 hands… steve shows you how this is achieved and sets the foundations for the next lessons in the course. The main feature of it is a very active left hand.