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The Online Guitar Store - Blues Piano: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series (Keyboard Instruction)
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List Price: $17.95
Our Price: $12.21
Your Save: $ 5.74 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781
EAN: 9780634061691
ISBN: 0634061690
Label: Hal Leonard Corporation
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 80
Publication Date: 2003-11-01
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Studio: Hal Leonard Corporation
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Editorial Reviews:
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Ever wanted to play the blues, but weren't sure where to start? Blues Piano will teach you the basic skills you need. From comping to soloing, you'll learn the theory, the tools, and even the tricks that the pros use. And, you get seven complete tunes to jam on. Listen to the CD, then start playing along! Covers: scales and chords; left-hand patterns; walking bass; endings and turnarounds; right-hand techniques; how to solo with blues scales; crossover licks; and more.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Just what I Needed
Comment: I have not had lessons but have been "fooling around" on the piano for years. I wanted to get a better dose of theory under my belt and have the ability to play things differently, and perhaps become good enough to play with other people! This book started out basic enough for me and it goes well beyond my current capabilities. This is exactly what I was looking for: a stepwise and slow progression through major scales, pentatonic, blues and mixolydian scales. I had heard of these things, but NOW I understand them. The CD also helps as you play along. I can recommend this book to anyone who is starting out in blues style piano. With this book the only thing standing between me and great blues is a lot of practice! But now I have a good pace and direction, and with that the practicing will be a lot more efficient than it has been.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great for learning blues techniques
Comment: This is an excellent book for learning how to play the blues. It includes music theory and clear explanations of various styles. The accompanying CD is very helpful and ends with 7 full songs in differing styles.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good but inconsistent
Comment: This is a great step by step introduction to blues riffs, chords and solos. I only have two complaints: firstly, it is somewhat inconsistent in the ability level that it targets. It assumes that you can sight read well, transpose into other keys, work out complicated fingering yourself etc, yet it also spends a lot of time on very simple scales and chords. A beginner will be confused a lot of the time, a good pianist trained in other styles will find much of it boring, and someone in between (like me) will alternate between the two states. Secondly, the CD is annoying in that there are so many tracks - 88 if I remember rightly. Every short exercise, even only a few seconds, has its own track, and many have both slow and fast versions.
If you are a beginner, you will need a more comprehensive book (not necessarily blues specific) to help you along. If you are a bit better than that, I would suggest using the book in reverse order. Listen to the full length songs at the end and learn the ones you like. Then work backwards to figure out the building blocks and how to use them yourself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Authentic Essential Blues
Comment: If you are on a budget and don't have a lot of free time, but still want to sit down at a party or open mike and wail the blues, this is the book for you. In chapter 2 you get 20 or so authentic left hand patterns. In chapter 3 you learn a variety of chords from basic triads to sharped fifths and ninths with various timing tricks for comping. And you play those over the left hand patterns you learned in chapter 2. In chapter 4 Harrison introduces the grace note technique and takes it thru Dr. John's "famous lick". That's 90% of what you need to play convincing blues. The key is that Harrison keeps everything in two measure units that you can easily combine. You aren't confronted with a 4 bar melody as in some other books, wondering, "Why am I playing this?" This book dosen't cover everything, but if you learn to play the exercises in this book you will sound good. If you have a few extra bucks, buy Tim Richard's book for a complementary approach.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Comment: I'm a blues guitarist and I'm in the early stages of learning to play piano, so I can't give the most credible of reviews of this book yet, but I can tell you that it's chock-full of really, really, REALLY excellent comps and vamps and licks. So far I'm only able to work on the simplest of the stuff early in the book, but I've listened to the CD the whole way through, and it's just one example after another after another of killer riffs, the kind of stuff that makes me think, "YES...that is what I want to be able to play." In all kinds of blues styles.
This is definitely *not* a beginner book. As I said, most of it is still way beyond me. It's not a "here's what the half-rest looks like" kind of book, nor will you find guides for fingering. One of the first signs that told me that this book is still over my head is that it shows chords like, say, a 9th chord, with all five notes shown, in a key where it appears to me that there's no possible way one hand can hit all of those notes. Does the experienced player just hit a broken chord? Is it supposed to be a two-handed chord, even though it's shown in the bass clef, and there are also notes in the treble clef? I don't know.
So this is a book for people who already have some piano playing ability. But the material is terrific, and there's a ton of it. If I can ever learn to play all, or even half, of the stuff in this book, I'll be a happy man.
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