Comments on: Blues Swing Piano Lesson #1B: How to play a Blues in C (video)

By: chrismarx85

chrismarx85 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:15:49 +0000

The more practice, the faster you will learn.

But you have to practice the right things for reading the leadsheet:
Reading treble clef: use every good boy does fine and FACE.
Also playing chords in the left hand.

Do these separately at first for 30 minutes a day if you can.
For example, only read treble clef notes in your right hand from a Fake book.
Then only work on playing the chords in the left hand, on brand new songs in the fake book.

Reading rhythm always slowed me down, so I worked on only reading rhythms to really improve my reading. The same rhythms happen over and over again.
I’ll post to the blog with some tips!

Thanks Karyen!
Chris

*PS where are you from?

By: Karyen

Karyen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:05:33 +0000

Hi Chris, thanks for all the info and lessons. I appreciate it very much…
I would like to know how can i learn up all my chords quickly? I’ll be having an exam whereby i have to play 3 songs, and also sight-read lead sheet..However, my sight reading skill is very poor..
WHat do you think is the best way to improve my sight reading?
Please let me know a way to do it.. I’ll greatly appreciate it…
Thank you.

By: chrismarx85

chrismarx85 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:21:24 +0000

Hi Lorna!
Thanks for the kind words, I’ll answer your question in the next post in more detail.
But the short answer is:

All of music is interchangeable. Think of what I’m showing you as interchangeable parts, or pieces to build a song.
You could put a blues bassline on a classical song, or a song that should be bossa nova… You could even make twinkle twinkle little star bluesy! It all depends on what flavor you want to give the songs!

By: Lorna

Lorna — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:14:08 +0000

Grateful thanks, Chris, enjoyed so much. Saw it a few times today.
Love it!

Which songs can we apply your country rock, bossanova, blues/swings to?
Very much appreciated.
Blessings,
Lorna