Four Hot Blues Licks for Piano and Organ

Take your blues playing to the next level with this piano and organ video lesson, in which I will first play and then dissect four blues licks. You will learn how to incorporate these licks into your own piano playing as I break them on screen with special captions for you to follow.

Although the current lesson will use an organ tone, the ideas can also be applied to the piano or almost any other sound (electric piano for example), so if you don’t have the appropriate organ tone just follow along on your own keyboard of choice.

Now here is something very important every budding blues soloist should know: The trick for playing a successful blues solo involves learning a large number of licks, and then stringing them together seamlessly. Unlike jazz, blues relies on very complex licks incorporating double notes, triple notes, tremolos and many other dramatic devices which are very difficult to come up with on the fly as jazz musicians do. It is somewhat “cheating” but it is extremely useful and, well, works :). For those of you who want to learn more about my philosophy regarding improvisation in general, watch my video at:

Blues Licks (From Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lick_%28music%29):

In popular music genres such as rock or jazz music, a lick is “a stock pattern or phrase” consisting of a short series of notes that is used in solos and melodic lines and accompaniment. Licks in rock and roll are often used through a formula, and variations technique in which variants of simple, stock ideas are blended and developed during the solo.

In a jazz band, a lick may be performed during an improvised solo, either during an accompanied solo chorus or during an unaccompanied solo break. Jazz licks are usually original short phrases which can be altered so that they can be used over a song’s changing harmonic progressions.

Related Videos/Playlists:

My channel has many additional piano tutorial videos which I welcome you to check out. The main channel page is:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MangoldProject?feature=watch

Here’s an interesting video about voicing the 2-5-1 progression:

How to modulate between keys using the 2-5-1 progression:

Learn to play Bach’s Prelude in C major:

My playlist of inspiring piano harmony, chord and voicing tips and tricks:

(Inside you will find additional major chord voicing ideas for piano!)