Fast Piano Lessons Blog

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.

Werewolves of London has a really catchy set of chords. The basic set of chords are D, C and G, but Warren Zevon plays them with cool sounding embellishments that we can borrow! This embellishment actually gets used OVER AND OVER again in rock, blues and country piano. So make sure to learn them to some degree!

Ignore all the fancy stuff I’m adding in the beginning and just focus on the lick shown at :44 seconds into the video. There is a slow walk right afterwards as well! Then go back for the fancy piano fills.

The lick uses inversions and should be written out with slash chords like this:

CHORD #1: (Gmaj/D to Dmaj)

CHORD #2: (Fmaj/C to Cmaj)

CHORD #3: (Cmaj/G to Gmaj)

*If you’ve learned how to read slash chords, you have all the information you need! Otherwise you can watch the video to learn it. If you want to brush up on your slash chords, then go to my blog post on them here: SLASH CHORDS LESSON

In this lesson we’ll continue covering patterns for swinging rock piano! These are bass line patterns for your left hand. They really help push the song along and give it energy. These are meant to be played fairly quickly. They can also be fairly redundant because most of the attention is going to be on your right hand. Your left hand just plays a supporting role to drive the music, while your right hand gets the spotlight.

I came up with these notes because they’re notes from the chord. If the chord was C, we could play each of the notes in the C chord, one at a time: C E G. If we do all three at the same time too low on the piano it sounds muddy and has no energy.

Even though some of these are simpler, when I’m trying play and sing at the same time, I’ll use these simple patterns the most! There is just TOO MUCH to focus on in piano to do it all well!

Click on any of the examples to make them bigger!

Example 1: The first bass line you should start with. It outlines the same notes that are in a C chord: C, E, G.

Example 2: has a new note at the end: “A” (C, E, G, A). Fingering: Place your left hand pinky on the C and the thumb on the A

Example 3: is a little different than ex. 2. The notes are C, E, G and A, G. The last two are 8th notes, going twice as fast!

Here are the really flashy piano bass lines that will give the youngsters the challenge they’ve been looking for! These will work on a lot of swinging rock songs like “Great Balls of Fire” - Jerry Lee Lewis, “Jail House Rock” - Elvis, “Old time Rock & Roll” - Bob Seger and especially any swing dancing tune by bands like Brian Setzer Orchestra or the Cherry Poppin Daddies! The piano can really be a high energy exciting instrument with these patterns! Just watch any Jerry Lee Lewis video!

POST A VICTORY COMMENT IF YOU WERE ABLE TO DO PIANO EXAMPLE #5!!

Sheet Music Examples: Click on any of the examples to make them bigger!
Example 4: This example outlines a C7 chord, notice the Bb. The notes are C, E, G, A, Bb, A, G, E. Fingering: Left hand: Pinky plays C, Index plays G, Thumb plays A, Index crosses over to play Bb.

Example 5: This example sounds really fancy and is a little bit tricky to pull off. Its just like example 4 but now we’ve added a C in between each note. The notes are C, C, E, C, G, C, A, C, Bb, C, A, C, G, C, E, C.

Any song would work really, so I chose a song everyone is familiar with to see the different flavors it has when we use different patterns on the piano. The examples we’ve been talking about are blues, rock, swing, bossa. If you use just a few patterns from jazz, rock or swing it starts to become a song in that style…
Its up to you to decide how to use some of these ideas! I’ll keep showing you examples.

Here is a video covering what we talked about in the last blog post:

“What songs can you apply these patterns to?”

Celine had a great idea to do some reggae! but unfortuneately the video was already finished before I could add a reggae example. I’ll be sure to add more reggae patterns in future lessons!