Customer Reviews

Barrelhouse and Boogie Piano

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A fantastic book. It gives you history, transcriptions and tips. It's not a great method book though, so between this and a good blues method book you can learn a lot about blues piano. You need to get recordings of the transciptions though to really get the feel for the differnt styles, and really understand the subtleties of the rythms that the notation really cannot fully show. Its fun to just listen and look through the transcriptions at times. I've tried playing as close as I can to the recordings then once the feel is there used it as a springboard for my own explorations. This book helps you both learn the music and appreciate it more.

I cut my teeth on this book, I bought it in the Spring of 1981 and bored the heck out of my parents, wife and then children learning classics like Peetie Wheatstraw stomp and Honky Tonk Train.

Recently I just bought another piano and I've picked the book up again.

If you want to play classic boogie and blues piano then you must have this book!

Does it still come with a floppy vinyl record?

This book is flat out great! Lovingly edited and transcribed. I have to be honest - it's not for rank beginners necessarily, but it's worthwhile. I bought this many moons ago. How long ago? When it had a flexible phonograph acetate you could play instead of a CD! Anyway..the included music is a great help. Now with the CD, the cool thing is in Windows Media Player 10 or above, you can reduce the speed 50% without changing the pitch - good for taking the parts apart i.e. "what notes was he playing on that line or phrase??"

While I've played for 30 years, I never gained good improvisational skills (guess you have to be born with that). So when I'd hear a tune I liked and ran out to buy the sheet music for it, I'd be disappointed that the basic melody would be there, but what made the song "cool" and fun to listen to was all added by the pianist (like buying Billy Joel or Elton John sheet music). Conversely, Barrelhouse and Boogie Piano songs have every grace note and riff written in, a CD that contains all the songs, and detailed instruction on how to play the pieces. This is for the technical artist. I would imagine the "natural" pianist would be very irritated with the level of detail in this music.

I checked this out from my local library, and FINALLY found piano transcriptions of blues songs. This isn't a book about how to play the blues; this is the blues. The sheet music is in many different key signatures, not just the easy ones. The CD is only snippets of songs, but enough to feel the vibe of each song.

I am thrilled with this book/sheet music. They took the time to include a CD of the original piano players/writers playing about 20 seconds of each tune. I'm new to playing bookie piano, so I need to hear it as well as read it. Not to mention, it's fun to get a sense of the history involved in this style.

Nice binding and well constructed book, but I'm not impressed with the contents. Not the songs that I anticipated.

i expected a better book
but i bought to use with my students and anyway i think it'll be helpful, althougt maybe not as much as i thought