Fast Piano Lessons Blog

Here is a intermediate boogie woogie piano pattern for two hands on Dominant 7 chords! (G7)
It builds off of our last post Boogie Woogie Piano 101

This version gives you a much fuller blues boogie sound. It would work great while playing behind a singer, soloist or even all by itself. Try to tranpose this into the keys of G, C and D, then you could use it on a blues in G.

First I show you the key to this pattern: Your pinky fingers stay on the same note G. (:35)
Then we break it down step by step. (:52) Your left hand stays on the same note while your thumb moves up. In the right hand part, again your pinky stays the same while your right thumb moves the same direction as your left thumb. This creates a nice harmony between the two notes as they move together.
By moving your thumbs, you’re changing the notes from GDBG to CECG. This changes the chords from Gmajor to C major.

Watch out for muddiness! As you get lower on the piano with your left hand, you need to make sure to spread the notes out wider and wider. Rather than playing a G major triad in the low octaves (GBD) leave out the middle note and just play G and D.

In this intermediate-advanced piano lesson we are just using the song Hit the Road Jack as a set of chords to practice our blues scale on. If you a beginner, you still need to watch the video to learn the correct fingering for the D blues scale and get an idea for how to use it! You’ll be surprised at how much you can pick up!

CHORDS:
There are only 4 chords in Hit The Road Jack. The chords are: Dm, C, Bb and A
You can use power chord voicings in your left hand by using these notes:
Dm = (D,A). C = (C,G). Bb = (Bb,F). A=(A,E).

BLUES SCALE:
BUT The D minor blues scale will work over all those chords!
The notes in the D blues scale are D F G G# A C D.

THREE LICKS:
I show you three very cool sounding licks in this video that are based on the D blues scale. Then we put them all back to back. You should practice performing the three licks in a different sequences to create a different solo each time.

Trills:
One of the licks is a trill. THESE SOUND AWESOME! ..so practice them When you’re playing a trill, make sure your wrist is the muscle that is doing all the work, not your fingers. If you use only your fingers to play a trill you will probably hurt yourself!

In this video piano lesson, I walk you through at a fairly fast pace how to play an ending lick on a song in the key of C. This is an intermediate lesson, you’ll need to go back and rewind quite a few times to pick up the patterns.

How to create other Ending Licks:
Learn the Left hand bass line first and play it as close as you can to the way I played it in the video. Then learn the notes I play in the right hand for “STEP 1 at :20″ of the video. But realize, the right hand parts can be improvised using the C blues scale. That means just make up a bunch of stuff with the notes: C Eb F F# G Bb C and it’ll sound great! (But only if your left hand is providing a solid foundation). This opens you up to many different variations for ending turnarounds.

Dominant7#11 Chords are The Chord to End a Song With!
The C7#11 chord is spelled: C E G Bb D F# A.
Its a great voicing to use at the end of any Jazz, Rock or Blues song.
The Bb is the b7th. The D is the 9th. The F# is the 11th. The A is the 13th.

So its October, The month for dressing up in costumes! Thats why I’m wearing the glasses, they help me see the keys a little better

VIDEO REQUESTS:
This video was a request! I’m getting swamped with requests, but keep reminding me with posts on the blog and eventually I’ll get to your request. I’ve also been doing paid requests which are much higher quality and more in-depth. I usually run a rough draft sample lesson by you and then based on your feedback I make a custom video lesson for you!

This video continues on from the last piano lesson: Boogie Woogie 101 where we focused on some 2 handed patterns. In this video “Old Time Rock and Roll” I show you how to use those patterns in a song. There really isnt too much more to it!

The chords follow the 12 bar blues progression in C. This means the chords are C, F and G. Each time you start another 12 bar blues section you need to play the hook in the beginning.

The notes for the hook in the beginning are: C C C C C Bb A G.

Oh and Halloween is coming up, see if you can find the pirate hat!

On a side note: They used this song in a cat food commercial but changed the lyrics to, “Just take the Friskies off the shelf, your cat can eat them all by himself.”

When they were recording this song, one of the recording engineers made a mistake, which caused the false start at the beginning of the song. After listening back to the mistake, they decided to keep the changes.

In this video lesson there are 2 boogie woogie patterns for the left hand. In fact, its these LEFT HAND patterns, (not right hand) and the swing that are characteristic of boogie woogie. For the left hand boogie woogie pattern, I would only focus on the easy one at :42 seconds.

The right hand patterns can be used in many styles, not just boogie woogie.
I really like 2:04 - swing 8th notes in the right hand and would practice that the most.
You could use that pattern on a blues or on a song like Great Balls of Fire.

Make sure you practice these patterns in different keys so you can apply them to songs other than a 12 bar blues in C.