Fast Piano Lessons Blog

Brad had a question, he wants to learn more about gospel music and get away from reading the music… His goal is to interpret and embellish what he reads on paper.

I’m not a gospel expert because I grew up in washington state… I don’t have a lot of experience playing that style of music or in churches! BUT I have really worked hard to make some of the elements of gospel music a part of my playing to broaden some of the sounds I can create on piano.

One of the books I recommend for learning more about gospel music is called Gospel Keyboard Styles. You should be able to read music before working through this book. I like that it has short examples of rhythms or chord progressions that you can pull out and put into your playing.
For example, they give you a cool walk up to do when going from a 1 to a 4 chord, C to F and then its up to you to actually apply that in a song you are working on, or transpose it to a new key! Not too much different than what we do on this blog with licks.
This book is great, because it offers a lot more concentrated information than a video would, going in depth to tell you all about when to use certain progressions and how things developed.

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Another good gospel book is Gospel Piano: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series. I like all the books in this piano series because they have a lot of good fills and licks and history. The only thing that I don’t like so much is it requires you to be a good reader, but it comes with a CD if you have a good ear.

Here is the famous piano crossover lick! It gets used a lot in blues, rock and country keyboard styles. Probably one of the most popular and common licks you’ll hear used on recordings. This can be used anytime you are improvising over a C chord.

You really should transpose this to other keys. Try and see how it is based around a C major triad and it will help you take it to new keys.

Click the music to blow it up!

Video outline:
The first half of the video is a different lick over a 2 5 1 progression. In this key the 2 is Dminor, the 5 is G7 and the 1 chord is Cmajor 7.
Right around :15 is where the lick demonstration gets slowed down.

In this blues lick exercise for piano, the trick to playing the grace notes is to slide your pinky off the first note and land on the next key–all in one action.

This is great to use in the first two bars, or sixth and seventh bars of the 12 bar blues where you’re going from C to F. It really highlights the change in harmony because there’s an E in C but an Eb in F7.

Click the music to enlarge it!

Grace notes are the tiny notes you see written in the example. Quickly slide your finger off the EDGE of the black key onto the white key.

Post a comment, let me know if the new digital keyboard (tiny one up top) is helpful!!!

Piano Video Outline:

:05 - An example of the lick

1:40 - This lick is shown over a blues and how to use some variations on the different chords, (C7 F7 G7).

2:20 - Changing harmony from C7 to F7 (watch out for the E natural going to E flat)

2:50 - A solo highlighting the change in harmony from C7 to F7.

In this piano lesson, we cover the Jazz standard: Summertime by George Gershwin. As usual I show you the final version first and then slowly break it down. STEP 1: DOWNLOAD the sheet music (fake book style) before watching the video. Then use it to follow along with the video lesson. Click here for the music chart: SUMMERTIME CHORD CHART

STRIDE PATTERNS:
Stride patterns are when your left hand plays just the root down and then jumps up an octave to play the missing notes from the chord. (2:19) The left hand is going to play the low single bass note on beats one and three. On beats two and four it will jump an octave up to play the chord. There are of course lots of different variations! In the video, I’ve slowed the left hand down half as fast. I’m only playing the root on beat one and the chord on beat 3.



GETTING STARTED WITH STRIDE: (Start Simple) 2:45
To get the hang of playing stride piano you want to first start out by practicing just with your left hand.
With your pinky, practice jumping from notes in different octaves. For example, play a low C (single note) then moving an octave up to play another C (single note). Keep working on this until you can do it in a steady rhythm without dropping a beat. Start off as slowly as you need to then gradually speed up!
The next step is to add the chords into the left hand on beats 2 and 4.

IMPROVISING:
To improvise on summertime, you want to use the Dmin blues scale. The notes for the D minor blues scale are [D F G G# A C D].

The Chords in Summertime:
Dmin7 can be played with the notes DFAC.

Gmin7 can be played with the notes G Bb D F. On Gmin7. In the video (:10 & :57), I’m playing an inversion of the chord (F Bb D) and leaving out the root because I played it earlier on beat 1.

Emin7(b5) can be played with the notes E G Bb D.
To add more walking bassline motion, I lead into A by playing Bb right before that. (:13)

A7 can be played with the notes A C# E G, however in the video I’m playing the root on beat one and then playing the chord without the root on beat 2

Fmaj7 can be played with the notes FACE. In the video (:24) I only play F & C to keep the chord from sounding muddy. Its a fast passage and a lot of notes are tricky!

Bb7 can be played with the notes [Bb D F Ab] but in the video (:25) I only play a shell voicing: Bb and Ab.

A7 can be played with the ntoes A C# E G and in the video I only play another shell voicing: A and G
When you’re playing chords in a low range on the piano, use only the outside notes of the chords (shell voicings) to keep it from sounding muddy. It also makes it easier to play 2 notes from a chord rather than all 4.

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.