Ragtime Piano – Swing Bass & Syncopation

https://www.playpiano.com/ragtime

Good morning. This is Duane. This morning I would like to talk about two elements that go into ragtime piano. They’re not the only elements of ragtime but two important elements that contribute to ragtime.

One is the swing bass that happens like this. You can see why it’s called swing bass because my left hand is swinging from a low note to a chord, low note, chord, low note, chord, low note, chord. Those were just two beats each but if I had four beats in a row, I could hit an alternate note. In other words, if my chord was E flat, I could hit a low E flat first time, E flat chord and the second time I could hit a low B flat say, or G because they are members of the E flat chord.

The low note needs to be the root and probably, unless you have a whole measure, and then you could hit one of the other chord notes as a low note. For example in the key of C, I could swing like that, C, G. I’m still on the C chord but I’m hitting an alternate low note. That’s sometimes called alternating bass.

The second element in ragtime is syncopation. Let me play Ain’t She Sweet and I’ll show you what I mean. In the right hand I’m playing the melody and under the melody I’m playing the chords but I break up the chords in syncopation. Not steady. Not like that but … something like that. Steady would be like this but ragtime, well, where did the word ragtime get named? Because it was ragged music. It’s ragged compared to classical music that generally is steady.

Two of the important elements of ragtime are syncopation and the swing bass. I use syncopation with my right hand and swing bass in my left hand to combine it.

Another element that is part of ragtime often, is a moving left-hand bass. I think in the bridge I’ll do this. That’s a walk up. I’m walking up a fourth. Listen. Let me do it in context. Now. Hear that? That’s a walk up. The left hand is playing … you could play an octave certainly and I often do, but there I played just a single note and in the right hand under the melody, I walked up a [10th 00:03:45] below root, parallel. You see? It’s like a third except it’s separated by an octave or two octaves in this case.

See that? Now we’re back to the theme. Incidentally, the form of this piece is AABA. The theme plays. Here’s the theme. Then that repeats. I won’t do it, but it repeats. You have AA, then the B section, B. It’s often called a bridge too, so B for bridge. And now back to A.

For an ending, I played the flat fifth, fifth, octave and then hit a low root and a high B flat, maybe with G below it or the whole E flat chord. Notice in the syncopation that sometimes you can go up or you can go down when you break up the chord. Either way is fine and the more variety you get into it, the better.

I started to say there’s two elements of ragtime. Actually that’s three because it’s syncopation, swing bass and walk ups. That happens a lot in ragtime. I have a course on ‘Ragtime Piano For Beginners’ – click on this link if you would like to learn about it: https://www.playpiano.com/ragtime

That’s it for today. If you enjoy these little piano tips, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips. They are free and they come up most every day so you can learn a lot if you watch these little short videos every single day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuMLhpPcr5c&feature=youtu.be
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