 Right everyone, so welcome to part 2 of our blues piano series. In this part we are going to look at a very unique left hand rhythm which can be used to play a ton of blues songs in maybe even rock and roll and then we look at an iconic right hand rhythm which can be used to play everything not just blues, even pop music. We'll also look at the way the blues time feel works, we'll explore a little bit of swing, what is swing, what does it mean to us and also how you can count this to make it really, really organic and natural for the body to respond to all that's going to go on, which is a lot really. So let's get started right away with the left hand pattern. So the left hand blues rhythm pattern is ridiculously easy, all you need to do is instead of playing chords we just play, we start with the fifth hold which is 1-5 so for every C chord whenever you see C major instead of playing the major third you play the 1-5 but then to make it more dynamic you play 1-5 and 1-6. So you go 1-5, 1-6, 1-5, 1-6 which for the C chord will be C-G, C-A, C-G, C-A. That's pretty much it isn't it? That's 1 bar, 1-5, 1-6 okay so if you're doing the first line of I'm tore down well I'm tore down almost lever with the ground yeah right so one two three four second bar two three four third bar two three four fourth bar like that and now we have to move to the next chord so if you have to go to the F chord which is the four you do F C which is the 1-5 F C and then couple it with the 1-6 which is F D F D okay F C F D okay that's your four chord rhythm and now coming to the five chord whenever you get the five chord which is just once in this 12 bar blues progression you do 1-5 G D 1-6 G E okay so with the 12 bar form and in the right hand just keep it very simple hang on a bit with the right hand because we are going to do another proprietary blues rhythm in the right hand as well coming up very shortly for now we just hold the chord if you can if not just only do the left and then bring in the right so I wanted to play the iconic left hand blues rhythm in the left and then hold the chord in the right that's pretty much the deal right now so it's pretty much the way we work fourth bar of the one and now for second bar back second bar of the one last line G F major and C let's now do it with some singing well I'm tore down almost level with the ground well I'm tore down almost level with the ground same bouncy rhythm well I feel like this oh well my baby can be found one more time well I'm tore down almost level with the ground and now we go to F second line tore down almost level with the ground yeah well I feel like this oh well my baby can be found yeah okay there's another thing you can do to embellish the left hand by adding eighth notes and blues has a very unique rhythm style in the sense that the eighth note is not played straight it's not done as it's done as it's always done like that so when you have to play the left hand rhythm with a little bit more punch or a little bit more dancy rhythmic vibe instead of doing for every chord you can end up doing eighth notes or quavers in swing okay I hope you've got that also notice the tonality of my left hand there's little bit of staccato and legato going on okay I'm trying to keep my wrist very relaxed because this can hurt this can heat up your hand especially the forearm so try to relax your wrist when you play okay I'm also bouncing my wrist so that gives me a natural dynamics if you can get that sound it makes it even more nice okay you can double that as a lot of flavor and just doubling the right so that's what your left hand could do either this or double okay so that was about the left hand I think we've made it sound very bluesy now moving on to the right hand so the right hand is going to play a very catchy rhythm called the Charleston rhythm named after the composer who played it probably the first time okay so it goes something like this and the first thing you want to do when you practice the blues is try to snap or keep a count focused at a one two three four a one two three four a one right ignore the ones and the threes it has to always be a one two three four in fact this is an important exercise to get cracking with now three four a one two three four what's important to know about the Charleston rhythm is when you play the on beat which is beat one you need to play that legato smooth and connected and when you play the off beats the end of the two in this case you're going to want to play staccato one and two and three where you lift your hand up or just create a staccato sound one and two and three don't forget the two and the four feeling okay so get this first with maybe a simpler left hand one and two and three and four and just hold that or play the pulse earlier the pulse was there now the pulse came here so one and two and three and four and one and two and right one and two and three so one bar with the Charleston there will end up being okay and with Charleston you can also make it even more interesting you can do the end of the one start at the off beat and then the next hit will be at the on of the three and remember what I said earlier when you hit the on beats that's one two three four you should hit it legato when you hit the off beats we follow that rule or objective to play it staccato so this is what I would call as the displace Charleston rhythm where you start at the end of the one and then go to the on of the three that'll be something like this one and three and four and one and while a normal Charleston was right you can even combine that you can do displaced and then go to normal sounds like a like a vocal acapella section or a heavy horn section and follow the blues next chord F and back to and then the so that's about the Charleston rhythm and then you can do it with the left hand rhythm which we learnt as well you can do it with a simple left hand rhythm we learnt you can put that together wow and then with singing even bigger wow right you go well I'm tore down almost level with the ground yeah well I'm tore down yeah almost level with the ground well I feel like this well my baby can be there's a unique thing happening there and a unique thing happening there right harmonically and rhythmically it's quite awesome so it's a great exercise to practice chords chord rhythms and it's a great genre so now that you guys have got the Charleston rhythm either starting at the one or starting at the end of the one or maybe then combine both those rhythms together you can also make the chord in the right hand a little bit more spicy instead of playing just the simple mundane commonly used major chord you could look at a dominant seventh chord so let me show you how to form this dominant seventh chord you take a major chord and add that dominant seventh note which is a seventh flat so for C major you need to add that B flat into all of your shapes so if you play in this shape the B flat comes there in this shape the B flat comes there so if I'm in this shape play C major and then tell yourself how do I make it sound more bluesy or more colorful bring in the dominant seventh chord which is B flat and now if I want to do F what is F's dominant seventh note E flat okay and then the G chord can add its dominant seventh which is F by doing this it'll give your chords a lot more texture right so it'll sound something like this doing the Charleston okay F chord well I'm told now yeah sounds very busy pretty much everything you're gonna do left hand right hand chords rhythm time feel scale everything is going to be unique in the blues okay thanks a ton for watching part 2 in the next part we are going to get to the most favorite part of it all which is going to be how to make a piano solo using pretty much the blues form and then developing a solo using simple concepts like phrase building using motif creation and of course the two iconic scales used for blues music so head over to part 3 and if you haven't already please subscribe like share comment on the video and it'll help our 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