Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical thoughts on learning boogie woogie piano

So, two people meet and have an exchange. They talk, back and forth, and you could take each of their 10-12 individual sentences and say that these form the basics of their conversation. Same thing would apply to music. If you have 10-12 boogie woogie/blues piano licks and play them, one after the other, each one of them would go into forming your own improvisational solo piano piece (or musical conversation). You can play each of them in different keys, up/down an octave(s), add ornamentations, add in extra notes, play around with the timing, etc - all sorts of ways to add to/enhance/embellish a given lick into something more than it was originally. It's all about you having control and deciding what it is you wish to do in the moment with the right hand stuff you are playing. But - first you need a repertoire of musical phrases that you can draw down from. So that means stockpiling/learning a series of motifs/licks. And knowing the ways to play it differently and embellish it too.

I can sit all day in front of Youtube and obtain tons and tons of licks/phrases from really great players. This is a good thing but you
do have to internalize it and make it your own. Sometimes you will play them note for note and at other times ideas will jump out at you and you have an "ah-ha" moment and transform it into something else that you created on the spot that you really like.

If I am right then I think I am getting a better sense of what boogie woogie piano is all about, sort of. Make sense ?

Hi

What you're saying makes sense, though I think if I was teaching someone to play boogie-woogie I would start by emphasising how important it is to master one or more of the various ostinato LH bass lines, which in my own experience means practising them for hours.

You need to be able to play these LH patterns in auto-pilot, so your RH is free to do all the things you mentioned.

Cheers

+1 on this. I am using Arthur Migliazza's book "How to Play Boogie Woogie Piano" and the first section is learning left hand bass patterns.

The other thing I would add to the OP is learning the transitions between licks. For example I can play the variations on the second lick in the book at three of them all start the same so switching up between them, jumping up an octave works but when I try to switch to either the first or third lick in the book it falls flat. There is a section on intos, outros and transitions but I am still a long way from that.

I think the conversation analogy works here. For example if this was considered learning a new language I can ask where the train station is and bathroom may be at this point but can't have a decent conversation yet. I think it's going to take years and years to get to that point and even then it will be at a slow pace. My current goal is to learn a lick up to 120 BPM. (I may someday get to 160 but at this point even getting to 120 is a major accomplishment)

I think the same thing could be said for the infamous 12bar Blues. I could choose a key, play it for a hour, never precisely playing the same thing twice. Conversation? Language? Yes.

How about this between 0:33 to 0:45



[oh, I dedicate this 78th post to Eubie Blake too; his composition score Memories of You is on my repertoire, hence today's My 78s video being that Song, but from a ballroom outfit in 1940 at https://t.co/Fm947LskpX?amp=1 , which is also the collection's 78th upload funnily enough, there's a 78 called Boogie Woogie in Berlin that I posted on the YouTube earlier recently and on a post here RE rolling bass, showing an immediate postwar example other than from the US.]

His technique looks to do what I've talked a little about before on a recent post, looking to almost slur and break from not quite having the rolling touching (is it - maybe better described as tenuto being not quite in slur or legato) by doing two notes almost together (different ranges primarily in octave apart) then after the passages unifying and spacing them out more for relief e.g. before 0:33 and then from after 0:50. The same combination is repeated I think later! I was thinking a similar effect could be gotten from a singular finger. I surmise that there're maybe differences in decade/age/schools by now. Is the LH more normal to be doubled up like this or singular? Not my subject. but interesting to hear about.

One mention of caution regarding learning and practicing the left hand ostinatos used in boogie woogie. Learned from experience using an active left hand part in other styles/genres.

Practice your left hand part slowly. Keep your wrists loose. When you put both hands together on the piano, play the two parts very slowly but with a steady pulse. If your hands/wrists start to get fatigued - STOP and give the hands and wrists a break. Powering thru the tension can bring on carpal tunnel symptoms. If you're getting the tingling sensation in your fingers (often the 4th finger) - pay attention and take a break.

It's making more sense now to me (Edwin) as I scan/browse over all those ostinatos online for walking-bass.

That one I pinpoint from Eubie above at (e.g. 33 to 45 secs): Itlooks like the piano reader is assimilating something like the bass-line shown on the stave at this png image here
https://pianogroove.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/boogie-woogie-basslines.png , provided the crotchets are spaceless into the quavers before quaver-spaced, hence the “3” above the bridged symbol; the crotchet really a quaver slurred/legato with the ending quaver of the links.

However, of more interest to me would be what’s your terminology of the following ostenato bass-line of the very common ‘dotted-to-halving’ bridged note combination (in fractions as 1/6-to-1/16th notes) at https://musescore.com/user/29423716/scores/5222969 – the structure is also found commonly in hornpipes and scots etc., but for melody-line (in reverse it's thought to be called the Scots Snap); hate referring to these as Scots Snaps because they're so common in many forms of music (blues a case in point) plus the fractions are a mouthful too?

Looking forward to a suggestion from fellow readers/commenters, even to say if there're no particular terms for it. I am a self taught beginner and will never find out on my own, the terminology of the notes in this particular boogie woogie ostenato (dotted quaver to semiquaver notes to make rhythm)

No words/description is possible from a players’ forum, but it might be lurking in composition literature/dissemination – so, not to worry anymore!

ooh WiFi working in my living-room today for a change, cool! oops maybe spoke too soon a 1/2 hour into editing this in the quick reply window - - back up tho fingers crossed!

Ps Edwin welcome to the forum!

If I may say: Eubie’s example seems tough all to get something that doesn’t swing in the end and comparably dead. I think that riff (my cited example A) is going 1 step further than ala Tristano’s constantly rolling slurred crotchets (1/4s) in articulation all the same doing slurred and broken 1/8s with a momentary spacing (e.g. A) instead of constantly unbroken slurred crotchets 100% spaceless.

I wonder if it'd be harder to master these octaves so articulated with 1/8s (as Eubie Blake here) given that plain 1/4s is such a struggle - as mentioned on the previous thread on this similar topic?

Back to my cited (B) example (hornpipatum as it were, the dotted-and-halving formula of notes to form a lilt that’s also prominent in blues to swing etc.):

Eubie actually chords the pattern too (in his Classical Rag) bringing the RH/LH closely together and at a slower tempo – and he gets it fluent keeping the handedness separate. Maybe underlying is a hint as to why there's a disinterest to discuss it (as later below again) – if it's hard to muse on unless it’s duo-handed rather than singly whatever the stretch (?) That said, he then overlaps the measure with pedal as opposed to spacing let alone slurring to emphasise the nice sound effects, however surrendering the spacing which IMO is the real key to engendering SWING from these same measures between the counterpart dotted-to-halved notes.

[ I GOT CUT OFF HERE DURING EDITING - I'll try to continue editing in WiFi until next cut-off! no why bother I'll leave this mornings' spiel unedited - it's not a great idea to leave oneself exposed drafting online - especially with all the bots interfering etc. I need to get on with uploading a 78 anyway. So the rest is an insight into my spontanously lost self, sorry... ;)]

I think it would be doubtful to find an example of this (dotted 1/8s to 1/16s) at such an octave stretch let alone per the posted latter notation example (with notes not that very far apart / or repeated) at any substantial tempo for boogie woogie (maybe why blues slows down, i.e. to make the most of it, meaningfully).

So in other words we’re stuck with ostenatos that are as dead as a doornail and will never swing, yet via a great (Tristano if not Blake) we cherish these anyway ERGO the form not being suitable for piano players.

Fiddler’s that race thru them are hardy convincing either – it’s really up to the classical or ragtime/boogie players to showcase the formula with the tight spacing required. It’s not wishful – I’d point to one of my 78s uploads onto YouTube – I’ll get a link

So if you will let me alter Eubie’s (like A but with octave stretch), which does at least offer the requisite 1/8th spacing breaks (as the piano-reader graph shows too e.g. 33-45secs) :-

1) Keep his breaks as is (the space to an 1/8, i.e. ½ of an 1/8th - the measure of the silent half or sound half because we’re not rocket scientists measuring from muddles);

2) half his ending 1/8s (yes, it’s a sound half) with ending 1/16s (yes sound halves – no different in measure to a spacing or silence half);

et viola (et pianola)

, but what about the initiating 1/8s : continue to slur them in with Tristao/Blake skill OR alter that too?

You’re the pianists and can tell me, but try the whole hog, so here goes:

3) forget slurring (Tristano/Blake – we probably can’t anyway let alone better them) and instead initiate with the dotted 1/8 (like the tutor example B shows without any challenging stretch), which renders those initiating 1/8ths as 1/6ths of a bar instead, but not at half sound half spacing/silence per se…

this is where we act and screw our faces up as tutors playing maths teachers ☺

We maintain what the HALF measure of that 1/6 actually is, which then leaves between the initiating 1/6s to ending 1/16s not a 1/6th of space by any means, but a residual remainder of an 1/8 of space – This equals the 1/8 breaks before repeating thereby equilibrating the spacing.

Now, there’s the whole hog – let’s hear it discussed more.

It brings symmetry and repetition together with ease in Strathspey composition whatever direction the device is flung – and melody in such strange scots stuff seems to becomes like a binary system of melodic flow rather than quite singly or doubly so.

Tempo is critical (not too fast) – a commenter replied on my thread of Scottish Snap – in the rhythm applying to classical. With the Scots trad developing beside the Irish Trad the art has been lost perhaps because one is perhaps striving to race beyond the other, but it’s in the slowing down where the real challenge is.

And wasn’t blues the first thing to demonstrate this art even without toying with the symmetry aspects in strathspeys, keeping it flowing/swinging all one way round, but the slower the better for effect/expression.

It’s veering off the tempo for boogie woogie, and so for that to use the equal spacing in dotted-to-halving notes formula it may have to be technically-doable somewhere between slow blues and conventionally paced boogie woogie, that aforesaid speed applied in classical or non-irish influenced strathspey, or even circus music that really unashamedly had it properly paced and precisely spaced for that ironically displaced feeling of never coming or going, but always both not with elliptical wheels, but rocking on a unicycle and so forth – it’s spiel I repeat in the absense of others’ analogy and dearth of description.

So please report back – ANYONE – on whether that lilt has any real place in boogie woogie as it does in so many other forms of music. We’ve so often seen the notation for it for boogie woogie (B, in my previous reply), but never a result in performance/culture/play – maybe you can change that NOTATION = REALITY.

Especially now that we all know how it ought to be spaced (with that like SCOTS’ COMPOSITION NOUS of few centuries ago).

If you apply conventional half sound half silence THEORY it will fail miserably (it will put the 1/16 to close to the end to break), maybe which is why there’s no discussion on it; no evidence of the notation of it being actually used and maybe why there’s less notation for it than expected. When I searched for walking bass ostinatos of it I had to scroll past much more common others until finding that one (B) in my previous reply.

Even Eubie Blake avoided it at pace, so it probably doesn’t really have a place for walking-bass piano at all, even for the not very stretched-apart example I found – unless of course the right hand can help in the affairs, but I’m guessing.

Yesterday I was reminded that when mind-singing the vocal line along to the piano notation was another way of building mind separation skill - besides the LH/RH separate mindedness discussed in the other reply. Boogie Woogie isn’t vocal of course, but singing the vocal line of piano notated scores note-for-note does offer help in building interdependence.

That separate LH/RH mindedness is what I think Eubie Blake has used to nail those counterpart dotted to halving 1/8s – not for walking bass, but during many other parts to pieces – he brings the right and left hand together to express success in finding the measure, not necessarily spacing since he – as the piano-reader graph can show on Classical Rag – sustains with overlaps/pedal when celebrating them, e.g. as a link perhaps to break passages like a Lombardic in nature device itself to relieve from consistency and add spice!

Sorry Edwin for theory-bombing your post, so I’ll stop there!

Anyone, do feel free to ignore.

As promised here's that not 78, but 33 1/3 rpm disc - it's by Evalyn Tyner who does an EP of Sophisticated Lady, St Louis Blues, etc. as link below

3:22 to 3:27 octave reach (dotted to halved 1/8s no silent spacing breaks though as it's walking literally I suppose - not walking bass though - see later!) / to 3: 32 with separate hands like 1970s Eubie Blake. I like how 1st time round at 3:15 a strange apprehensive feeling delay!

Oh listening to 4:56 to 5:10 - Is She here actually managing the dotted-to-halving walking bass in different ways (and NB at a good pace reaching 120bpm)?

, but then practically commonly slurred singular cotchet rolls ala Tristano at 5:36 to 5:50 (& a 6:30 coda [or short recall] of it if that's the word?)

A short RH burst at 9:21

Maybe ignore 1st part of my preceding comment, I knew it was too good to be true, but it probably exposes why we won’t ever hear it performed as fluently as the Scots or Lombards possibly or surely meant it (in its post ancient world sense).

I thought I detected success when I heard Tyner roll out this common dotted/halved rhythm (the ¼ note based variety, but unbroken with silences, which would be even more daunting to comprehend for the humble players that we so are – I rarely hear these with spaces – IMO it’s not the rolling/slurring that links the counterparts it’s conversely the change of spacing regime which does that, i.e. going from let’s say the generality of halving [50/50] to suddenly the combined average of the counterpart notes : Dotted+Halved say 3 boxes +1 box = 4 ; then divided by 2 = 2 boxes of space; so it’s not one and the other [rudimentary] measures of space, but a combined average that then sets the true measure of how distant apart the counterpart notes should actually be – SEE LATER!).

My problem, I think I was wanting to hear it expressed for such a song as “Sophisticated Lady’, which is peppered with the device on the score not necessarily where she plays it (improvises on it in her own way).

I was suspicious though that it didn’t quite sound quite right (the measure) even with spaces omitted (ironically, maybe try getting the spaces right and there’ll be more chance of developing the right measure too, but they are hand in hand part of each other).

However, she’s as close as arithmatic can get to it – Arithmatic is not good for arranging space to notes. We need a graphic cromprehension as I said – consider a simple Greek Key graphic

(or 16 boxes with 17 goalposts, and the generality of the goal-line as space; and goal-bar as sound; the posts – in a less general sense – being what everything parts from or centres around in whatever way you want/feel – dead centrelines being robotic/skeletal about it)

as a way of seeing sound and space through time. Nos get confusing on their own without this and hence we arbitrarily end notes or ergo join them without spaces wherever we feel based more on arithmetic than graphical sense – great to have the freedom to think there’s nothing beyond counting and nos., but we lose composition in culture.

Tyner is rolling these dotted/halved counterparts with almost the measure I’ve always suggested, which without frightening off with spaces would be graphically 5 boxes rolling into 3 boxes then back to 5-3-5-3-etc to & fro:

Tyner however here is rolling these boxes 6-3-6-3-6-3-6-3 (as improv to 2 bars of normally equal quavers) not because she can divide a bar into 18 rather than our classic 16 spaces, but because it’s easier for the mind to change it’s metronome and deal with straight halves – note the cunning change in tempo prior to the bridge ending there then back to the proper tempo again.

It almost fooled me into hearing precise scots snap set rhythm (lets call it for now).

She’s probably also doing this later for the actual 1/8s set walking bass example too – actually I’ve had a listen there (back on topic)!

It’s unclear sounding when analysed closely (it sounds like bells chiming when slowed down to 78 rpm), but where it’s clearest and the technique applied for certain, she’s actually rolling the 5-to-3 boxes into each other.

There, she wouldn’t be metronome guided of course because of the speed change to 1/8s based snaps – This is telling because it shows that we’ve got a better chance of finding that naturally occurring balance when we’re not trying to take control of it.

That said, she hardly pulls through like Eubie Blake does (so consistently) on that Piano Reader on the other former example ostinato on my original post.

It must be a really tough thing indeed, and that’s something I didn’t understand with those so musing with Tristano ability to keep the rolling flow for ages albeit with straight 1/4s rather than anything more complex…, I’m supposing!


Without understanding the graphic basis:

To get the Snap the rolling blues way round comfortably spaced (the graphical equilibrated spacing mentioned above being the most natural to in turn find the measure to the next note, forget counting) there are 2 ways:…

[as opposed to the symmetrical reverse commonly added in Strathspeys that gives it it’s Scotch Snap name – it’s all one really despite not easily notated, hence all this confusion for what is a relatively simple structure, graphically.]

… 1) play the dotted note it’s full way (while imagining it stopped in its proper measure). This tenuto approach does not shift the next or halved note of the counterpart (we tenuto a lot – so it’s one way); or the other way of reading it being

..2) play the dotted note fully then image the following halved note with an accent sign above it. This in effect shunts/shifts the halved note closer/earlier towards the dotted note leaving ergo the comfortable equilibrated spacing going back to the next dotted noted (we accent even more – so it’s another way).

I can and do tenuto relative to note value, but I don’t with accenting yet – All my accents for whatever note start is a 1/16th shift. Therefore for me (2) will work for i) the dotted/halved 1/8s variety not for ii) the longer 1/4s, not that I use any of these 2 ways anyway, but good to know I can fall back into whatever cradle

You can like Tyner then omit the spaces and roll it all together seamlessly (theoretically with skill aside at an expected tempo). However, you might instead later find the spaces to be indispensible because of the swing feel it generates (tempo and skill aside again because it must be so tough to pull off even rolling let alone spaced 1/8s – we’re not Eubie, so best perhaps explored for the 1/4s instead.

I have no such recommendation for reading it in reverse for the symmetrical version known as the Scotch Snap proper.

I’ll try, so : 3) imagine the full note that’s to be played halved (that’s what stacatto does for me, you can therefore imagine the full note – whether for the 1/16 or longer 1/8 snap variety - with a stacatto dot beside it thereby halving it by notation whilst retaining the rudimentary space to the next note – not to be confused with 1.5x dotted annotation -), but I see that the next note would be marginally late; so let me see…

Ah you would then accent the 1.5x dotted following note by a third of it, whether that’s i) accented by a 1/16 for the dotted 1/8 note [yippee] or
ii) by an 1/8 for the dotted 1/4 note variety.

It wouldn’t be me, IMO it’s best to get the graph paper out and start mapping the measure out; and one will then see the measure with and without spaces

3 to 5 boxes without spaces (rolled); or
1 to 2 to 3 to 2 boxes with spaces (hop-scotched ha!)

symmetrical reverse for blues/swing etc.:

5 to 3 boxes without spaces (rolled); or
3 to 2 to 1 to 2 boxes with spaces (hop-scotched ha!)

Say that’s the measure for the 1/8s variety; simply double the numbers to read longer the 1/4s (or keep same nos. using a double-sized box):

no more 3 to 6 boxes from now on please

best to discover the 3 to 5 (or 6 to 10), but with spacing too (for that swinging feeling) if manageable!