Customer Reviews

Blues Piano: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series (Keyboard Instruction)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I got this book along with a number of other blues books, and this one has been my favorite. It doesn't contain as much material as the multivolume Alfred series, but I find the organization, presentation, and *especially* the examples to be superior in Mark's work. The way the examples build section by section and chapter by chapter is exquisite. They are musically interesting yet very focused on the point at hand--I always enjoyed playing through the examples, but was never confused by unnecessary complications.

The companion CD is the best I've seen in any music instruction book, ever. Most examples have the left and right hand parts on the left and right channels, so you can mute one speaker or the other for "hands seperate" practicing. I personally don't use this much, as I prefer to work it out with the metronome, but I'm glad it's there and you may appreciate it. On tracks that have a backing band, the band is on one side and the keyboard on the other so you can play along to just the band. Finally, the "complete" examples at the end of the book feature a "slow" and "fast" version on the CD. One nitpick: I wish he'd included (in the text) the metronome settings he used, making it easier to practice/jam without the CD.

I've got several of the Hal Leonard books in this series, and they're not all by Mark Harrison. His books are definitely a cut above. All in all, if you have any interest in the subject whatsoever, you can't go wrong with this book.

Having a good musical ear, yet with very weak sight reading skills, I'm always searching for good books that can teach common blues licks/runs on the piano, while also explaining the "why" of how it works. This book is perfect. It can be used for a variety of things to learn:

--Licks/runs...there are hundreds of examples of great sounding, commonly used runs (as opposed to other books, whose runs can sound very un-creative or cheesy). Each run is usually only a few measures long, easy to pick up, and the book teaches you a great deal of different sounding ones in all the various styles of blues (boogie woogie, n. orleans, funky, jazzy, gospel, etc).

--Left hand bass...while only a few pages long, this section is flawlessly explained in a clear, straightforward manner. Harrison covers about 15 major (and fairly easy to pick up) left hand bass teqniques covering all the major blues styles. While it took a lot of practice to get all of them down pat, they have increased my playing monumentally. He also teaches you to always be mixing them to have variation in your bass.

--The "By Ear" element...unlike MANY other books, Mark Harrison's included CD is a god send. If you're like me and suck at sight reading, this cd is a blessing. The examples are short enough that once you can pick out the general notes, all you have to do is pop in the cd and hear clearly played note for note examples of what is on the page. I've found that hearing it cements the sound and timing of it in my head, making it easier to play, and also allows you to tinker and improv off the examples he gives you.

--Great summation and lead from basic to complex...the book incorporates more and more licks as it goes on, and covers more and more styles. By the end, when your listening to full 2-3 page blues pieces (the cd gives two tracks each for these; slow solo piano, and a faster one with a backing band), you can really get a feel for how all these runs are simply tools at your disposal to fit any given blues progression. Also great is that Harrison doesn't teach the very beginning licks as forgettable "step 1" sounding fodder...the licks sound great from the beginning by themselves, but are also used as building blocks to form more complex runs and comping later on.

This book is an absolute treasure trove of blues ideas, and a huge reason for my playing having increased so much over the past year. Mark Harrison's Smooth Jazz book is also good (it has a lot of great explanations for jazz chord voicings) but this book, and his "Jazz-Blues" book, are the two to go out and get immediately if you want concrete results without having the theory bog you down.

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.

This is a wonderful book. I have taken classical music lessons for many years, but had never really been able to play from lead sheets or improvise since I didn't know any riffs or have my scales down pat. This book covers those topics I missed including chord progressions, modes, voicing, comping, and walking bass lines, but covers them with a singular emphasis on the blues. The blues is a great genre to study because it is the basis for jazz, pop, and rock as well. The book moves pretty quick though, don't be fooled by the very introductory first chapter. A good set of left hand chops and a fair amount of practice are required to make it entirely through. The provided CD comes in handy here. Practicing with the CD at first can really help the reader get a feel for some of the more complicated rhythms, especially if the concept of swing eights is a new one. The audio however is really cheesy and unfortunately entirely emotionless. Such a pity since emotion is a defining part of the blues (or any musical genre for that matter) and the provided CD could have been the perfect medium to convey those subtleties to the listener. If acoustic sessions had been used instead, there would be no reason for this book to receive less than a 5 star rating. Regardless, this is still a fantastic, if not frantically paced, crash course into a vitally important facet of contemporary piano study.

I think anybody who wants to play blues piano wants to know not just that a standard 12 bars progression is C7 F7 C7, etc... but we all know playing those full chords sounds silly, and if you try to play that in a band situation you'll never be called back.

Musicians want to know what different ways they can play those notes on their left hand, and good solid advices for 'riffs', turnarounds, etc. This book excels at giving practical techniques. Highly recommended.

I learnt how to play the piano using only this book. It does take a while to go through the first chapters, but when you get a hang of the major and blues scales there's nobody stopping you from exploring the world of music on your own. It simplifies what other books often explain too thoroughly, even I who have a short attention span (threw away all my other piano litterature in frustration) found it very easy to follow. There are a few bumps on the way to getting past those few tricky chapters, but when you've done so you won't be able to walk past the piano without playing a little blues improvisation or two.

What this book won't teach you is in depth theory, which is fine with most people - for that I would pick up other titles. But if you're a piano beginner, or just someone who's been into other styles and want to get a hang of how blues piano works then this is the right book for you. It covers scales, chord theory, basic improvisation and is accompanied by a CD which makes the learning experience a whole lot easier.

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.

I took piano lessons as a kid, although my skills aren't far beyond reading specific (and simple) pieces of music and playing them pretty much as written.

On the other hand, I play guitar with semi-pro bands and ensembles, and write and arrange a lot of music for those groups and for church.

This book was exactly what I needed...it provides basic licks and techniques for comping and playing along with an ensemble. Further, it relates practical theory along with the lessons...which allows anyone with a bit of musical knowledge to transfer the lessons to many different situations. Finally, while it's not enough material to turn anyone in to a complete solo pianist, it would be easy to pick up a few tunes to play for your friends.

Great book, great approach, not an overly ambitious curriculum (which I see as a positive...there are lots of well known study materials for "serious" pianists).

This is really quite a good book. Concepts are explained quite well, and the exercises fit the concept they are trying to get across. Blues piano is not rocket science but it does have an important part. This book gives you a good start in understanding it.

The CD does not add a lot of value. It is cheesy MIDI computer sound at its worst. I think if they would have used a real accoustic piano, or even a better sampled sound with a good MIDI controller, you might get a better feel for what the exercises are really supposed to sound like.

This is a very well written book. The author does a great job of first explaining a concept and then showing how it can be applied, far better than other similar books I have read. I have found it easy to apply the ideas in this book to create my own riffs.

It would be hard to cover the entire spectrum of blues in a single book, and this book does not accomplish that. What it does well is to introduce a set of commonly used patterns and phrases which can be used to build a basic vocabulary of blues phrases and comping patterns.