How to Play Blues Piano

With this lesson, you are shown exactly how to unleash your hands from rigid standard piano playing and free them up to work the blues scales to their maximum potential. You can see in the video how he takes a common blues scale, memorizes it and then uses that scale to jump all over the keyboard, all while staying in the correct key.

This is why it's really important to really focus yourself on learning one of the popular blues scales and then simply grab notes from it as you move up and down the keyboard.



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How to Play Major Scale on the Guitar

One of the first things that serious guitarists learn when just beginning on the Guitar is how to play the Major scale. The Major scale can be seen as an important building block of music, as he mentions. Once you learn the Major scale, you can expand upon it and apply it toward many other related concepts on the Guitar.

With this lesson, you will see the Major scale demonstrated along with an outline of the fundamentals.

Try it with G, C, D and so on.

Just remember the pattern: Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half



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Piano Scales Fingering Technique

The proper technique for playing scales on the piano! These exercises will show you how to form your hands in the correct posture while moving higher or lower on the piano keyboard. You'll also learn the logic behind fingerings and different scales.

By understanding scales you will have a high advantage when playing musical pieces or improvising. It will also help you improve your piano-playing motor skills to play faster and smoother.

Keep practicing and don't forget to leave a comment by clicking on the comment link or entering them in the form below!

Learn Acoustic Blues Soloing

I liked this video for the method that he uses to show the simplicity of the basic acoustic E blues scale. The acoustic E blues scale is typically what a beginning guitarist is introduced to when learning the blues. By learning to play the basic open E blues scale, you will already have down the basics for a nice riff that you can then go in and add other "blues notes" and hammer-ons/pull-offs as he demonstrates.

Practice this simple scale and then move it up the neck by barring your index finger across any fret to discover other bluesy scales and riffs.

Keep practicing and don't forget to leave a comment by clicking on the comment link or entering them in the form below!

Free Online Music Games!

Here are some free and simple interactive online music games which can help you fine-tune your musical technique and have fun at the same time!

FlashMusicGames.com

These can be great for ear training. Let us know how you do!

The Differences (and Similarities) Between Sharps and Flats

Sharps and Flats are used to denote the movement up and down in pitch from a Major-sounding tone.

Sharp

Flat

A Sharp occurs when you raise a tone in pitch by either one fret or move up from a white key by one black key on the piano.

A Flat denotes one tone lower by dropping down a fret or by dropping down one black key on the piano.

Determining Sharps and Flats

The rule for determining the name for the Sharpened or Flattened note is by looking at which note it is right next to in the musical alphabet. For example, a D lowered would be a Db and a C raised is a C#. Where it gets tricky, and where many new music students get hung up is understanding that both Db and C# refer to the same pitch. Here's how--

It's easiest to visualize the relations of the Sharps and Flats to Major notes by looking at the keys on a piano keyboard. A keyboard is a very linear instrument and stripes out the sequence of notes very intuitively. Notice how Sharps and Flats are always present on each black key, yet they go by two names - the Sharp form and the Flat form.

(*Note the exception to this rule for the B-C keys and E-F keys, as no black keys exist between them)