Fast Piano Lessons Blog

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!

I was working Holly Brown today who is a great vocalist in Seattle. We were playing through some jazz standards and kept having the same problem with finding the right key for Holly’s voice. Most fakebooks or lead sheets are not written in the perfect key for the vocalist’s voice. The solution to this is to transpose the song so that the extreme high or low notes are in the singer’s range.

I tried transposing on the spot as I read the music, but that was extremely hard to do. When I’m reading a new song, I can only transpose down about a whole step before I start to get very confused. Luckily, a whole step was close enough to bring the song down into her range.

Using Keyboards to Transpose:

If you play with singers a lot, learning to transpose on the spot is almost essential! However, if you have a digital keyboard you can use the keyboard’s transpose function. The keyboard does all the work for you while you read the music in the original key!

Using the Internet to Transpose:

For those of you that are still learning to transpose, I’ve been introduced to a great free webpage online that does the transposing of chords for you: Online Transpose Tool.

Be sure to bookmark it!
(Unfortunately, you can’t input a pdf or image file of sheet music, only text).

It transposed Sentimental Journey for me from the key of C:

C
Gonna take a sentimental journey
C                    D7        G7
gonna set my heart at ease.
C                    F9
gonna make a sentimental journey
C                  G7       C
to renew old memories.

To the key of A:

A
Gonna take a sentimental journey
A                   B7          E7
gonna set my heart at ease.
A                     D9
gonna make a sentimental journey
A                 E7        A
to renew old memories.

The transposing tool is easy to use. Just copy and paste your song (with chords) into the form and choose the keys you want to have it converted to. It does most of the work for you and saves you a lot of time. Its also a great tool to check your work with if you’re still learning how to transpose!

Jerry Lee Lewis is a great piano player to learn from because he has so much energy. In this piano lesson we’re going to cover his song, “Great Balls of Fire.” Its a fast song that we can use the basslines we have been working on in. In the video lesson, I’ve broken down the basic but fast pattern (at :28) that gets used on the C F and G chords in this song.

VIDEO NOTES:
As the annotations in the video say: watch my pinky in the left hand for clues about what chord i’m playing. In this song as in most songs, the root of the chord gets played on beat one of the pattern.

In the beginning of the song (:18 through :28) notice I’m playing octaves in both hands. (Octaves are the same note, but 8 notes apart). In fast rock and roll, we are focused more on playing really fast and loud rhythms, so we give up big lush chords in exchange for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that it would be cumbersome and inaccurate.

Ending:
Don’t worry about trying to copy the ending I played in this video. We will talk about endings in future blog posts. I got a little too excited during my solo and didn’t really plan ahead for the right ending. So I quickly tagged on a much better ending lick. On the plus side, you get to see two different possible endings to the song!
If you would like to learn more standard endings for the Blues, Rock, Jazz etc. Please post a request as a comment!

Authentic Bass Lines:
The bass lines we have been talking about in previous blog posts will work for this song, but someone noted that they are not completely authentic and Jerry Lee Lewis would use more of a boogie woogie pattern.
I would say that the focus is really on what your singing and right hand is doing, so your left hand doesn’t get enough attention for it to really matter what specific notes it plays. As long as the left hand rhythm is steady, the exact bass line doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Here is a country piano lick that would work for any part of werewolves of london or sweet home alabama. I like to use it in Jazz songs as well. For now, try and use it on ANY SONG that you’re playing with a major triad! In the video, In the video I show you how to play it on D major, C major and G major, but it will work on any major triad! Challenge yourself by trying to figure out the same notes on an F and A chord!

The pattern for this lick is: FLAT3, 3 8. These numbers are relative to any major scale. For example, lets use the C major scale (C D E F G A B).
The 8 means you count up 8 notes in the C major scale. The 3 means go up three notes (to E), and the Flat3 means count up three notes in the C major scale (to E) but then lower or flat whatever that note is a half step (Eflat).

To take this to other keys, you really should know the major scale for the key you want to play it in so that you can use FLAT3, 3, 8 to find the notes.

IF you don’t know the major scale, the trick is to find the third of the chord or triad. Lets start off with a triad like C which has the notes C, E, G. The E is the major third because its three notes up the C major scale from C (3). Count down one half step from E the major third and that is your minor third (Flat3). And then to find 8 is easy, its just the root of the chord (C) but 8 notes up.