What’s up my piano friends! In this blog post I’m going to teach you a simple blues piano improv technique that you can start using today.
This is a simple, easy to learn version, and I’ll bet you $1,000,000 you could learn this even if you’ve never played piano in your life. The reason I can say that, is because I’ve taught this to so many of my piano students and as long as they put in the practice and the work, they can play it.
First, a quick demo of what the finished product will sound like can be found here. It might look really hard and complex, and a lot of piano teachers will just show you something like that, show you the notes, and simply ask you to go play it. This really sucks as a beginner to try and learn it this way. It’s like asking someone to jump to the second floor of a building instead of taking the stairs.
What we want to do is take a step-by-step approach where we start off simple and gradually add complexity until you can play what I just played in that demo video.
In this blog post, we’re going to take the stairs, taking the easier approach to learning and the easier path to the top. We’re going to start off with three notes and then slowly and gradually add on notes, one by one, until you’re improvising across the entire keyboard. Also, we’re going to do some call and response exercises, which are really fun, where I play a little riff and then you play it back. This really helps get the attitude and the vibe of the blues into your bones and we’re going to really take it step-by-step.
One last thing before we get started, this is very important, I want you to promise me and commit to watching this entire video which accompanies this blog post.
If, half way through this blog post or the accompanying video, you click off to something else, I’m going to be pissed because I know that this works and that you’ll be so much happier actually putting in a little bit of effort, going through the entire thing, and learning something, rather than clicking over to cat videos on YouTube.
Getting Started Learning Blues Piano
Alright, so we’re going to get started with only three notes – C, E flat, and F. These are the only three notes you’re going to use to improvise, remember this is step-by-step so you’re not jumping to the second floor of the building.
To start, you’re not going to use the left hand at all, instead focusing just on the right hand. The big secret is that if you play just the three notes I mentioned, in any order and any variation, you can play them over the blues progression and they’re always going to sound good. So literally by playing just these three notes you already know how to improvise. I’ll take my $1,000,000 now 🙂
Of course, we’re going to take it to the next level, expanding the notes. The beauty of and really cool thing about these three notes is I’m going to show you how to expand these three notes into fifteen notes.
We can take any C, E flat, and F on the keyboard and anywhere we play them across the keyboard it’s always going to sound good in the blues progression. A good example of that can be found here.
Just by learning three notes, you’ve actually learned fifteen notes you can improvise over. How cool is that? Guess what? We’re going to take it even farther.
G Position
We’ve been playing these three notes in C position, but now we’re going to take these three notes and play them in G position and they’re all going to sound amazing in this chord progression. So, all we’re going to do is find G, which is the white note between the first two black notes of the grouping of three black notes on the piano. It sounds like this.
Just like our C position, we can choose any G on the keyboard and repeat this process. How cool is that? You can just play three notes in any order, move them anywhere along the keyboard, and you probably have 25-30 notes to work with already, but I don’t want to stop here, I want to start doing some call and response. This is a great way to get the vibe and the attitude of the blues down.
The Call and Response Exercise
This is how it is going to work – I’m going to show you a short blues riff, then you’re going to play it, then I’m going to play it again. You’re going to play it a total of three times.
The reason we do it this way is, let’s say you mess up the first time you play it, well, you can try to get it right the second time, and by the third time you have another chance to get it right.
First, we’re going to take a very simple one. Remember, we’re starting step-by-step. The first one is just the note C five times and it’s going to sound like this.
I hope that was easy for you. If it seems too easy, what I want you to do is focus on getting perfect rhythm and playing the notes perfectly in time. If this was challenging for you, you might have to rewind the video and work it a couple times through until you got it.
Now we’re going to make it slightly harder. This time, we’re going to play 3 Cs, then move up to an E flat, and finally come back to a C, which will sound like this.
We’re going to do one more, slightly more difficult, and then move on to something else. For this one we’re going to play C, E flat, F, E flat, and C. You can see this one here.
I hope this call and response stuff is starting to work. This is the process of learning – you start with something easy and slowly add more notes to make things more challenging. Now, I could have had one super long video that has the progression all the way from beginner to expert, but it doesn’t make sense for a couple reasons. One, it’s going to be a super long video. Two, somebody might want to repeat all of the beginner exercises four or five times before you move on to the next one.
So, it really would be better to have this split into a bunch of different videos in a video series, which is why what I did for you guys is create a bunch of extra bonus videos to go along with this video. What I also created was a bonus PDF cheat sheet that will help you remember all of the notes. To get these bonuses, just go to this link, which will take you to the free signup page where you also get access to my free “Become a Piano Superhuman” course.
When you sign up you’ll see there are beginner level exercises which are just like the call and response exercises we just did. Then, there are going to be beginner level exercises with extensions. Next, there will be intermediate levels, advanced levels, and finally, expert. Once you get past this level you’re going to be a great blues improviser.
On the bonuses page you’ll also see three different free play tracks you can use as well as a useful cheat sheet that shows you the notes in C Position and G Position so you know exactly what to play. It includes a normal one as well as one with extensions, which we’ll talk about shortly. For now, just worry about the normal three notes.
Piano Extensions
Now, we’re going to talk about extensions, very simple ones, to give us even more notes to play with. Our first extension is going to be F sharp. We already have the other three notes, C, E flat, and F, and we’re just adding the F sharp with our fourth finger. In the bonus videos I mentioned, it’s going to have specific call and response exercises for using this fourth finger.
Here’s a little secret for you. I’m sure you’ve heard of the blues scale. A lot of times teachers use the blues scale to improvise over, well guess what? You just learned the blues scale and you probably don’t even realize it.
The blues scale are these notes – C, E flat, F, F sharp, G, B flat, and C. We already learned the first three notes, then the extension, and moved to G position where we have the last three notes. You literally already learned the blues scale, but isn’t it easier to learn in three note chunks instead of trying to learn the whole thing at once? That’s what I’m trying to do with this blog post. I’m trying to really simplify it for you guys.
Alright, so let’s talk about another extension. We have our three notes, our top extension, and now we’re going to add a lower extension. We’ll take our second finger and move it to a B flat. This is going to sound good as well, which you can listen to here. It adds another cool “bluesy” note to the mix. The secret to this note is we want to keep our thumb hovering over the C and then play the B flat with the second finger. The reason is, a lot of beginners move their entire hand down, but then it’s hard to get back to the home base of the three notes of C, E flat, and F.
Now we have five notes in C position, so let’s talk about some extensions in G position. This is going to be very similar to the C extension notes. For the G position we can add an upper extension which is a C sharp. This note isn’t actually part of the blues scale, but it’s a not that sounds really cool.
With the G position we also have the option of playing the upper extension of E flat, still played with our fourth finger. This extension isn’t quite as harsh and “Bluesy” as C sharp, it’s a little more mellow. You can mix those extensions in when you’re improvising to give it different colors.
Alright, so now we have our G position, two extensions, and we’re going to add a lower extension which is going to be an F sharp. Just like with our C position, when we play this F sharp, we keep our thumb over G so we can get back up to G position and not lose our place. This is what that one sounds like. This one has a very boogie woogie kind of feel to it.
With all the notes I’ve shown you, you can go very very far in the improvisational world. I mean, literally there’s enough where people would tell you that you sound like a professional blues piano player, without having to know any other scales or any other progressions. Because of this, I suggest you really drill this down using the bonus call and response exercises I mentioned previously.
The next step for this will be to go onto the left hand. I’m realizing that would make this blog post incredibly long and I want you to focus on the right hand for now, so I’ll have another blog post on the left hand that you can read through for that.
What I want you to do right now is click on this link to get the bonuses I’ve talked about. Don’t just watch the bonus videos though, take action! Get in there and start practicing.
