3 Slow Blues Improv Techniques for Piano

[Music] hey guys Johnny main here and welcome to this week's quick tip where I'm gonna teach you three essential techniques for improvising slow blues piano now when students want to learn slow blues improv they learn the blues scale but they don't really learn what to do with that blues scale to make their improvisation interesting so in today's quick tip I'm gonna teach you three of my favorite techniques to help you take your blues playing to the next level so let's go ahead and dive in all right if you want to play blues piano the first step is to make sure you know your blues chords if you already know your chords you can skip ahead or I teach you the three techniques but if you don't know your blues chords here they are there are only three chords you need to know c7 c8 G b-flat f7 which is C E flat F and a and then a g7 g7 is D F G and B okay three chords that's it that's all you need to know to play the blues now you need to know the 12-bar blues form this is your order of chords so this is all written out here basically we have one measure of C one two three four then a measure of F one two three four and then two measures of C one two three four one two three four okay two measures of F one two three four one two three four and then two measures of C one two three four one two three four then with a quick measure of G one two three four then a quick measure of F seven one two three four a measure of C one two three four and then a quick measure of G seven one two three four okay now when you're playing the slow blues typically you want to put a chord on every beat we call this a four on the floor so this is gonna be a really nice left handed compliment this is actually something that you can practice with the backing track as well now before I move you along you can do a deep dive of the 12 bar blues form in the Blues chords in our 10 lesson blues challenge over at piano with Johnny but I do want to move you want I want to talk about these three techniques and the first thing you need to know is how to harmonize your blues scale okay and this is where I hear most students not really playing the full potential of the blue scale because they're just playing the single notes of the blue scale and you can actually do a ton of harmonizing okay which sounds is so cool and it's actually not very hard to play okay so here's how we're gonna do this we're gonna take our C blue scale C E flat F F sharp G and B flat and we're gonna harmonize the bottom five notes of the C blues scale with a high note C okay so go ahead and put your pinkie on that high C and now grab that low C on the bottom and we're gonna go index finger on e-flat index finger on F third finger on the F sharp and third finger on the G okay and then you can bring it back down I like to do my third finger on the F sharp if you can't reach that you can also do your two finger on the F sharp then two finger on the F two finger on the E flat and then thumb on the C okay now this is gonna sound so cool when you start creating lines because [Music] you can start to create lines like this where you're connecting different octaves of the piano if you guys are enjoying this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're new to the channel hit that subscribe button for more videos just like this okay so I want to move you want I want to talk about these three exercises the first is an eighth note exercise I love this sound check it out guys [Music] hey that's your eighth note sound one two three and four okay a great way to practice the eighth note sound is with this eighth note exercise that's up here on the top left of your screen the way it goes and this is something you can practice on twelve bar blues but I start here so I'm going one and two and three and four okay basically I'm grabbing F sharp and C G and C F sharp and C F and C E flat and C and then the octave C's that's it okay so we're gonna do this over our 12 bar blues form one and two and four let me change to F one and two and three and four and then we continue our twelve bar blues form so let's go ahead and play it with the backing track and I'll show you how to create some really cool lines with this here we go three and four there's the f7 back to C think about your accents notice I'm accenting one two three before you can change your pattern one and you can also accent the ends it also change the exercise to your own pattern if you'd like alright so that's your eighth no exercise if you want to develop your left hand a little more you can do a stride pattern like this that's totally fine root chord like this or if you're more of an advanced pianist you can also do like this okay we do have a full course on this topic over at piano with Johnny where you learn 16 different left-hand slow blues patterns if you want to develop that a little bit more but how do you play interesting lines using this technique well first of all you can play any of these notes and the key is to leave little gaps in between your phrases but here's another really cool trick I can start up high [Music] and transition into a lower position by using the blue skill so what I'm doing is I'm doing a harmonized line and then I cross over B flat G and now I can harmonize down here this is really cool you can start way up high and use this technique all the way down the piano do want to make a quick note the lesson sheet music you're seeing on the top left of the screen is downloadable and printable over at piano with Johnny calm you can also change the key with a click of one button you can practice this in all 12 keys with our smart sheet music and you can download the backing track I'll put a link to all of that below but I do want to teach you the triplet exercise and if you want to take it to the next level you've got to be able to play triplets here's your triplet sound [Music] of the triplets out it is so much fun to play okay here's what we're doing we're basically taking that blues scale harmonizing it with that hi-c but we're doing a triplet figure okay triplets go triplet triplet triplet triplet one and two and A three and a four and one okay here's a little exercise to practice your triplets we're gonna go trip belitz we're going f-sharp G F sharp F B flat C and then the same thing F sharp G F sharp F E flat C okay we're gonna do three of these per chord trip both at triple the triple their trip bullet and again you can practice this over the 12-bar blues form let's go ahead and play it once with the backing track and I'll show you how to create some lines with it here we go nice work you can change up you're letting your left hand here's a different left hand and here's a bigger left hand here's your G chord we're gonna go ahead and stop there you get the idea for the exercise if you want to create lines using your triplets you can do the same thing that we did earlier basically you can play any combination of these notes [Music] the key is to leave little gaps in between your lines and then the other cool thing is you can start high on this one and you can come all the way down the piano it's super super fun to play I do want to mention another very fun slow blues course over at piano with Johnny it's called Bernie's slow blues it's a ton of fun we talked about how to take a lead sheet and develop it into the slow blues sound it's a ton of fun ok last exercise slides if you want play blues you have got to be able to play slides use your slide sound okay that is the coolest sound I think is when you can do harmonized slides that's exactly what we're gonna do here okay harmonized slides basically we're gonna take that high note see we're gonna slide the G below that C with the third finger like that okay so we're grabbing the G flat up to the G okay and then you can do down slide like this down to the F with the C on the top okay so that's the up slide that's the down slide up slide down slide and you can practice this just like this alright now the exercise goes one two so the two times on the G and then down slide F three and four that's single notes a flat C very simple exercise one two three and four one two okay let's go ahead and play with a backing track and we're gonna improvise with it and here we go you change the rhythm a little bit make it your own [Music] alright let's go ahead and stop the backing track again you can practice this over at piano with Johnny now how do you create lines with this same thing we've been doing can also come down the scale the real key is to leave gaps in between your lines the final technique I want to teach you is how to combine all three of these elements eighth notes triplets and slides here we go we're going to play with the backing track and I'm going to kind of walk you through what I'm doing here we go simple eighth notes [Music] let's do some slides let's do some triplets [Music] slides [Music] let's do a triplet line down the piano [Music] alright guys thanks for watching this quick tip and if you enjoyed this lesson I want to encourage you to check out piano with Johnny comm we have over 700 step-by-step lessons in blues boogie woogie jazz cocktail jazz Latin jazz theory technique improvisation it is the full learning platform for all playing levels also want to encourage you to check out the piano with Johnny membership this gives you unlimited access to our entire chorus library plus you get to be part of our live monthly events including our live Q&A our live workshop lessons we do student assessments where you can send me a video and I'll give you personalized feedback we do weekly challenges for our members and we have a ton of fun so go check out piano with Johnny and I'll see you in the next quick tip [Music]

Channel: Piano With Jonny

Views: 385,814

Keywords: slow blues, improv, technique, piano, lesson, jonny may, piano with jonny, blues, blues piano, slow blues piano, blues lesson, blues piano lesson, how to play blues, how to play slow blues, how to play blues piano, how to play slow blues piano, blues improv, jazz, blues scale, blues chords, 12 bar blues, harmonized blues scale, solo, how to solo, exercises, exercise, 3 essential techniques, improvise piano, beginner, intermediate, advanced, dr john, oscar peterson, piano lesson

Id: jefot2q70ec

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020