THE MUSICARTA BLUES PIANO SERIES

Moving Pair Riff – Module Three
Liven It Up - Part 1

This is Module Three in Musicarta’s free online ‘Moving Pair Riff’ series of blues piano lessons. To get the most out of the module, you should click up to the Moving Pair Riff Module One and work through the modules in order.

Listen to this new, slightly more advancerd version of our Moving Pair riff.

Orientation

If you've 'just landed', please explore, or click up to the Blues Piano Lessons series home page for an overview of Musicarta’s other 12-bar and blues modules. If you’re totally new to Musicarta, please browse the tabs on the navbar, left, to get a feel for what’s on offer, or visit the Musicarta home page for a more methodical overview.

MIDI computer music files for this series are available. If you download MidiPiano, Musicarta’s recommended ‘virtual keyboard’, you can watch the music playing on a keyboard and unfolding in a helpful, intuitive ‘Piano Roll’ pane. You can also listen to MIDI files as basic audio in e.g. Windows Media Player.

Watch a short demonstration and learn about downloading MidiPiano via the left hand link below. Download the MIDI files for this module via the right hand link. (Check the folder for other learning material as well.)

Please take the time to download MidiPiano! You only have to do it once, and it will prove a valuable addition to your learning resources. Note that there is no waiting for video to buffer once you have MidiPiano installed on your desktop. If you need help ‘unpacking’ your zipped MIDI file folder, there are full instructions on the Musicarta MidiPiano page (link, above left) as well.

Here's the module riff again.

There are three new elements. We’ll learn them one by one.

A 'kick' in the right hand

The little ‘kick’ in the right hand on beat three of the bar is traditional in this riff. Here’s the kick right hand pattern in G with a plain left hand.

12bar_MP_Module 3 riff practice G pos A/M will be 12bar_MP_A/M8  NB MIDI not sequential, just too bad

A bar of written-out G pattern with the kick looks like this:

12bar_MP_11 

You can see that the kick (circled) is just:

• single next-door note ...

• added on to the middle pair ...

• on the way down.

‘Spelling it out’ helps you ‘fix’ the new material. Sticking to the fingering you learned in Module Two will help also – it gives you a reasonably strong finger for the ‘kick’ note.

Build-up in G

Understand and play the difficult bit first, then build up around it.

Img MP_35 

You don’t have to keep strict time or follow exactly. The music is only there to ‘give you an idea’ – you should rather work from the audio/MIDI, looking at your fingers and listening hard.

The value of the exercise lies in isolating the difficult bit and practicing just that, rather than ‘taking a run at it’ time and again and still not knowing what goes wrong.

The right hand ‘kick’ in C and D

Next, you need to find the ‘kick’ note and practice the right hand kick in C and D. Remember, the kick is:

• single next-door note ...

• added on to the middle pair ...

• on the way down.

Here are the audio and MIDI performance files for the kick in C.

Here are the audio and MIDI performance files for the kick in D.

Remember, you can slow the MIDI performance down in MidiPiano – and if you’re playing the MIDI file as audio in Windows Media Player. Also, try playing along and taking over as the audio performance files fade.

If you need to, repeat the ‘kick’ build-up in C and D. You should do it anyway – it’s the most efficient way of getting it into your fingers.

Here are the performance files - C first, then D.

The right hand kick completed

Practice the riff with the new right hand kick over a simple bass right through the chord sequence.

Incorporate what you know about ‘where you jump from’ (Efficient Practice Techniques section, Module Two). The right hand ‘kick’ goes straight into the jump. Here is a kick-plus-jumps drill.

Practicing popular music like this can seem very tedious - but it's ultra-effective! If you know what this audio is about and you can play it, you know the riff!

The next Moving Pair module teaches you how to play the off-the-beat left hand in the Moving Pair riff - which really drives the music forward - and adds a standard variation to the 12-bar chord sequence you've been using so far.

You don't have to be able to play the right hand kick perfectly to go forward - little tricks like this take hours of practice to polish to performance readiness, and you can always just play the riff without for now.

Click through to the next module here!

Thanks for visiting Musicaarta! Come again soon!