Customer Reviews

Rock Keyboard - The Complete Guide with CD!: Hal Leonard Keyboard Style Series

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

 

 

As a mainly classical piano player, I have never been good at playing from lead sheets or improvising. I have a few of the other books in this series and find them all great! Scott Miller is a wonderful composer and teacher and has a very similar style to Mark Harrison (another composer in this series). This book includes important information about vamps, different time signatures, walking bass lines, various modes, octave bass, pedal points, boogie patters, inversions, licks...anything that is used in any type of rock. It goes through classic rock, pop rock, blues rock, southern rock, hard rock, progressive rock, alternative rock, and even heavy metal! The book moves quickly but provides the information that is important for those of us looking to play. It comes with a very handy CD which allows to hear what it's supposed to sound like. I highly recommend this book.

I started playing in bands about 3 years ago and over that time have bought several books with ideas for different riffs, fingerings, styles, etc.

This has, by far, been the best of the books I have bought.

A great book that includes valuable fingering notation. You should know how to read music, though fluency is not required and the CD examples help re-enforce any question on rhythm. I would recommend listening to the whole CD, marking off the tracks that a "within reach" of your ability and then doing those exercises only. Work the right hand, work the left hand, then maybe try to put them together. Only gripe is sometimes they give you impossible right-handed chords...you could easily shave a note off some of those 4-note chords as long as you have the left handing working. This is a minor gripe. The book is more piano-oriented though there are some raw keyboard stuff in later chapters (Southern Rock for example).

Bought this book for reference material.

It teaches 8 different Rock styles which have many different pattern drills(97) for left and right hands to practice to and some also play along with backing track that comes with the book. There are 97 backing tracks on the CD which let you hear what each of the example practice drills sound like and most of them go through the pattern drills twice.

Examples are in easy keys, C, G, F, Bb, and Eb.

The example practice drills throughout the book really don't pertain to any top artists persay, and there are no songs at the end of the book like some of the other books in this series.

For me it is a good reference book on Rock pattern styles,

Dave

The book includes a lot of useful stuff, in every style. After going through the whole thing quickly to sample the content, I have been working my way through trying to master most every example. Taking a while but really useful stuff, the CD is really helpful.

The part that is a struggle for me is figuring out how I apply the stuff in the book to the songs I am playing with the band. He starts with really basic chord changes, but then a lot of the lines are over nonstandard chord changes that might work or might have to be 'twisted' to fit, you have to hear it. I think it is going to come naturally, but it is a bit confusing at the moment.