Comments on: Great Balls of Fire: Part 2 - Jerry Lee Lewis - Boogie Woogie Left Hand

By: Tommy

Tommy — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:08:36 +0000

Hi Chris. I am a keyboardist trying desperately to improve my ACCOMPANYING skills. Meaning I have a tendancy to play the melody, which doesn’t sound good when I am accompanying a singer or a group. Can you walk us through how to do this as a professional? Help, please!

Thanks much and I am loving your site and learning a lot,

Hi Tommy,
I’m working on a site right now that will have more about that soon, but its still a few months off. A lot of good videos though.

GENERAL GUIDELINES:
I try to stick with chords in the right hand and the left hand plays a bass note or line.
Then if the singers stop or rest, I’ll put in some melodic fills… but I try not to do that at the same time they’re singing.

I have some videos here that would help out, but its more about playing and singing for an audience:
http://instantrockpiano.com/blog/

Thanks!
Chris Marx

*i’ll be sending an email when the accompanying videos are done.

By: john

john — Sun, 17 May 2009 11:01:33 +0000

Hi Chris,

I found your site wanting to play Summertime ’stride style’ Now I have the opportunity to play like Jerry Lee himself! It’s a super site, thank you very much. I can use the style for other songs as well (beatles Saw her Statnding There) so it has a much wider use than the one song. This leads me onto…..how about some rythm ‘jokers’ for common styles i.e. where the same style suits a variety of songs and a few examples of the songs that can be played. I double up the oh bla de oh bla dah rythm for Cecelia (Simon and Garfunkel) in the same way. You would be able to teach us lots of songs with limited effort!!!
Please keep up the good work
John in Jersey (Not New Jersey but the original Island between England and France) Duelling pianos is not popular over here but I always make the effort to go and see some whenever I am Stateside. I have a mate who has an ‘open mike’ night at a local club and I would like to get up and play. I’m not technically very good but very VERY enthusiastic - I can’t believe I’ve found a site that will teach me exactly what and how I’d love to play

By: David Greene

David Greene — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:22:24 +0000

Chris,

I just saw it. Thanks, it’s great. I love that other piano where the keys light up. How do you do that ?
I’m just curious, how long does it take you to learn a song like that with both hands fluent? Like I said previous, I feel like I can learn to play almost anything if I’m showed how, but it will take me a few months to perfect it, of couse, with my schedule I don’t practice everyday, and I can only sit for a couple of hours at a time when I do practice. How many hours does it take you to learn this song ?

What plans do you have next for up coming videos, if any ?

Thanks again.

Hey David,
I’ve been playing that at my dueling piano job for about a year now. It took me like 2-3 weeks to memorize it to where I could play it in front of the audience well… but then the other players told me I was still making mistakes. (Keep in mind that I was getting paid to perform, so I had more motivation to practice each day). I still need to whip out a lyric sheet for songs when I first play them.

The hardest part for me was getting the words right every time, even though I had probably already recited them 100’s of times. The secret is just more practice. Make sure to do it correctly and slowly each time until you can do it fast without a mistake. It gets easy after you do it enough.

Also the boogie pattern is good to practice on a bunch of chords, not just C, F and G. That way you’ll be ready for rock songs in any key!

Everyone learns songs at about the same pace. But all the practice you do for great balls of fire will pay off greatly for other songs in the future… Meaning you’ll learn the next song slightly faster.

I have some more paid requests to catch up on and then I’m going to try and add a bunch of special videos to the chords 101 course to really show some great tips on applying each of the pages in there. It’ll be fun!

Keep up the good work David!
Post a video or recording of yourself when you learn the song!
Chris Marx