A Piano Blues Riff You Can Play At Any Speed You Choose

Here is a blues riff you can play at any tempo – slow or fast – part or complete.

Good morning, this is Duane. It may be afternoon or night there, whatever, but it’s a morning for me; always record early in the morning. Today I’d like to share with you an easy blues riff that you can use at any speed. I say easy, it’s not easy if you’re a beginner, but it can be mastered and even part of it can be mastered. The nice thing about it is you can do it at any speed; any speed at all. Okay? What we’re going to do is we’re going to start … Let’s do it in the key of F. We can do it in other keys too, but I’m going to play the blues in F. (piano playing)

Okay, that kind of feeling. Now that was a slow blues. If I use a slow blues then I’d probably use a slow riff. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start on the flat fifth, I’m going to slide my finger off, or use my third and fourth fingers off B-flat to B-natural there. It’s really C-flat, but I’ve got to call it C-flat, but it looks like a B-natural, doesn’t it? Okay. Here it is: (piano playing) Got those four notes? Fourth, third, second, first. (piano playing) Let’s do that a few times. (piano playing) You see those four notes, I can use them interchangeably. I can use them straight down or I can jump around (piano playing).

Okay, now it continues. What you do is you cross your finger over; I’ll do this. (piano playing) You repeat the last four notes down there, but in between that you hit E-flat and C. So it’s … (piano playing). That encompasses basically two octaves, doesn’t it? (piano playing) There it is a little faster. You can use a super slow … (piano playing) I don’t play much blues anymore; I’m really sloppy. Anyway, that’s a little blues riff that you can use at any speed, and if you’re a semi-beginner, or advanced you can still use that. If you’re more advanced then you can play up, speed it up a bit. You can do that in other keys, too. As in the key of C. (piano playing) Basically the same notes because it encompasses the flat third and the flat seventh and the flat fifth of a major scale.

Okay, so there’s a little tip for today. Hope you enjoyed that, and if you do, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our whole series of videos. Hope to see you there! Bye-bye for now.

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1Tg3qAzc8&feature=youtu.be

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