How to use the Blues Scale on Piano - Riff ideas from Paddy Milner | MusicGurus

[Music] welcome back in this lesson we're going to look at what's kind of known as the blue scale which is which is it kind of not sure actually exists but the kind of sound of it is used a lot within the Blues world but it's kind of more how it used that's the important thing so let's start the the blue scale can be thought of as these notes in the key of C BC B flat F F sharp key G flat and C and it has this kind of sound [Music] the elbe see it does sound bluesy but you can't just go up and down it otherwise it's going to sound it's going to get repetitive and boring I really want to get you playing blues in a really authentic sounding way and it's really what you do with it that's important and how you mix it up with the other the other aspects of improvisation the important things for you to get to grips with now it's just to get to know the sound of that of that so-called scale and get it feeling natural under the fingers so the important things there got this really strong flat v which which is which is a dissonance which sounds great when it resolved so let's look at some some little riffs and melodic ideas you can improvise using using that blue scale so rather than just going up and down it there's a good good one [Music] chicken sounds sounds quite fast and difficult but it is a repetitive thing which when it's used in context just sound really authentic for example here that in there so the note are just the first five notes of the blue scale are you rolling rolling down and starting on the G and then the F sharp to the air the D flat C and I'm sliding off the F sharp to the F with the third finger it's definitely that note is the strongest sounding note in terms of timing I'm kind of playing it with the G starting with the left hand and the C hitting the second note of the left hand so in a way it's just but with the other notes in between so yeah in terms of practicing that start at the slowest tempo that you find that convenient and just work up so yeah I think it sounded like a pretty cool blues riff so let's look at something else you could use repeated notes for example so there I've been I'm just which is literally doing that you could also add the C to that to go there's all notes from within the blue scale how about mixing those two riffs up the and [Music] so we could have [Music] Oh [Music] now the beauty of the blue scale is that you can depending what notes you're using from it you can use it over all the cords in the 12 bar blues sequence so there it works on the sea and on the air I make a try on the g1 Oh [Music] so yeah something that you can use as a repeated thing throughout the whole tour by sequence and sounds pretty cool and kind of what I love about that idea is that you're playing you're playing the same riff but when you move up to a different chord it's the same riff but it's in a different context so it kind of takes on a different different character adding the adding the C to the repeated G it gives it some extra weight and suddenly with that we're really into the territory of things that you'll hear on here on classic blues records that kind of thing and even and if you've moved up the octave you get a kind of that really sort of jangly high-end piano thing that you'll hear ya hear on all sorts of records three-oh [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah I mean it that particular thing I played was a bit repetitive kind of staying around the same octave but it's out it just sounds them sounds like something you might hear on here on a classic blues record and the aim now is to really start sort of mixing mixing things up so we've got our kind of blues scale blues scale ideas there we also have a riffs in our in our rips from previous lessons so between the two of them I think we can generate something that sounds really authentic and kind of classic signing pieces blues piano yeah so before we finish this lesson I will go around a 12-bar couple times and just show you a few different variations of the things you can do with that blues scale don't worry if some of it seems a little ambitious at the moment it's just for some ideas and of course you can keep replaying the video to it to see what I'm doing so here we go a one two four one two three four [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah obviously some quite involved stuff there but it was all using the blue scale so yeah have a go at working out some stuff I was doing in there I'll put as much of that stuff as possible in the PDF you to check out you [Music]

Channel: MusicGurus

Views: 394,000

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Keywords: blues, blues scale, scale, piano, blues piano, paddy milner, musicgurus.com, learn piano, boogie woogie, meade lux lewis, albert ammons

Id: MDMQEExCO7k

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2017