Light Blue - An Introduction to Piano Blues Music
Born out of the appalling conditions of African Americans in the South, the Blues is a style of music that has gone through many evolutions. From Robert Johnson, one of the earliest African American Blues artists ever cut into vinyl, to exciting boogie woogie piano blues, to the blues “revival” where the signature sound of the blues was combined with large rock ensembles such as B.B. King, to arguably the second blues “revival” in New Orleans Blues, the Blues has a long, storied history with many iterations and different combinations.
But through all its different styles and forms, one aspect of the music remains the same – it’s always about things that make you sad (which is why it’s called blues music)!
One of the most amazing things about humans’ ability to create art is that limitation breeds creativity, and there are few places where this axiom is truer than in Blues music. The 12-bar blues, which is what we will use as an example in this post, is the most common form of blues played, and it is a fixed chord progression that is only slightly altered between different songs – and yet, there is a plethora of Blues music. You’ll only need a little bit of background to learn blues piano as a beginner, after which you’ll be able to join any blues jam in the country and feel right at home.
12-Bar Blues
12-bar blues is a fixed chord progression consisting most commonly of four I chords, followed by two IV chords and two I chords, ending with a V, an IV, and two Is (the last I is sometimes played as a V – this is the most commonly altered part of the progression). Here’s a quick review of keys and chords!
In C major, it looks like this (with all chords being dominant sevenths – check out our review of seventh chords!)
(For a quick review of sheet music, read this blog!)
The reason that this progression of twelve chords is grouped into three groups of four chords is because of the way that the musical phrases are composed – often, there will be one phrase which lasts for one group, then is repeated over the second group, ending with a different but equally long phrase played over the final group.
This chord progression is repeated over and over again, often with one instrument taking a solo over the entire progression before handing it either back off to the singer or to another instrument. It is this quality of predictability that allows anyone with just a small amount of training to be able to recognize and play over blues music, and most definitely contributed to this genre’s popularity. At Boston Piano Lessons, all of our instructors use the blues as one of the first steps in learning how to improvise on piano.
The Blues Scale
When improvising in any genre, it is helpful to know which scale to play in. After all, if you just press random notes, it doesn’t usually sound very good. Choosing from a specific selection of notes is essential to achieve a specific sound, and in order to make your piano play the blues, you must play the blues scale.
Though there are technically two blues scales, the only one you absolutely need to learn is the called the blues scale. The other one, often referred to as the country blues scale, can add a different flavor to your music, but it won’t be that exact blues sound. It’s still worth learning once you get good enough, just to add variety.
The blues scale is built off the minor pentatonic scale, but with a couple additional notes (referred to as blues notes, indicated below in parentheses). The blues scale in C and a couple other common keys (A blues and E blues) is pictured below.
Unlike in major or minor scales, where choosing the correct fingers for each note is essential, in the blues scale the fingering is looser. In fact, expert blues players often slide off and onto the blues note, using one finger (often the second or third) on a black key and immediately sliding onto an adjacent white key in one fluid motion.
It is recommended that the added blues notes (in C major, those would be the F# and the B) are used more as brief passing notes when playing rather than as sustained landing notes, as they are quite dissonant (which adds that blues flavor!) with any of the chords that are played under them.
To effectively improvise in a blues style, there’s no substitute for just listening to some blues music and shamelessly copying what you hear, but here are a few tips for playing the blues:
Keep your musical phrases short. If you continuously play long phrases, the expression can be lost, so it is more effective to play phrases even as short as three notes rather than extend things. Think about soloing as analogous to speaking – if you speak in a continuous monotone with no breaks or pauses or expressions it quickly becomes boring, or even unintelligible. However, if you add pauses, and vary the length of your phrases between long and short, it becomes much more beautiful and effective.
Repeat, repeat, repeat. When you listen to good blues music, you will quickly notice how often phrases are repeated, either completely identically or slightly altered. If you keep your phrases short, it’s easier to both remember and have time to repeat them. For example, in a lot of blues music, you will hear a phrase sung (or played) over the first four chords, then repeated identically over the second set of four chords, and then a chopped-up version played over the last set of four chords.
Rhythm is more important than melody. It’s more effective to play a few notes, but in a cool rhythm, than it is to play lots of evenly spaced notes. Again, if you keep your phrases short, but rhythmically interesting, it’s easier to repeat them, which leads to more effective blues soloing. For a more in-depth analysis of improvising, check out the improvisation section of this blog!
The Shuffle
While the right hand is going crazy playing blues licks, the left hand has the most important role of all – grounding the melody with an accompaniment that plays the role of bassline, harmony, and rhythm, all at the same time! This is easier than it sounds.
Most blues music is played in swing rhythm, which is defined by playing uneven eighth notes where the eighth note on the beat is twice as long as the eighth note off the beat. This can be most easily understood by dividing the quarter note into triplets, and then only playing the first and third triplet and ignoring the second one. It looks (and sounds) like this:
Listen to how the triplet becomes swing by just omitting the middle note, and then is graphically represented as eighth notes to make it easier to both read and write.
One of the simplest forms of blues accompaniment is called The Shuffle. This would be played by the left hand as the right hand (or other instrument) plays some kind of solo with the blues scale. Played in swing rhythm (as most blues is), in C major it looks and sounds like this:
It is essential that this left hand becomes rock-solid and automatic before any effective solos can be played over it. As your mind will focus on the melody (as that is being spontaneously created by you), the left hand must be as consistent as possible, or your melody (and you!) will get lost. I’ve been playing piano for over twenty years, and I still start many of my practice sessions with some left-hand patterns to keep them fully automatic. It’s also a common recommendation from piano instructors during practice sessions.
More than the melody or solo line, the choice in left-hand patterns is the most important identifying factor for the particular genre of blues you are playing. Single, fast-paced notes in the left hand is an identifier of one genre, while bigger, slower chords are an identifier of another. The Shuffle is so common that it does not lend itself to any particular genre of Blues, so it is a great starting point and always a good choice when playing the Blues.
Learn to play the blues in boston, ma!
Put together your automatic left hand with some killer blues solos in your right hand, and you’re already playing the blues! That’s really all there is to it – now go practice, practice, and, you guessed it, practice. The wonderful thing about this genre is that there really is no end to what you can add to it to make it yours, as so many amazing musicians have done in the past. Just keep playing!