The Challenging Blues Challenge

Apologies for the very rambling post yesterday. I'm a writer, and you'd my blog posts would be neat, self-contained nuggets of clear writing, but ... well, they aren't even close to that. This blog is where I tend to let it all hang loose, and by "it," I mean entire paragraphs, as well as redundant phrases, misplaced modifiers, overly long sentences, and all the rest.

Today's post is different. I've been working on the "10 Lesson Blues Challenge" over at Piano With Jonny. I've been in Lesson 3 for a couple of weeks, not making great progress. But now that I'm in North Carolina for a few days with nothing but a 61-key keyboard, I've set Chopin, Maple Leaf, and even Bare Necessities aside to focus on blues.

Lesson 3 begins by teaching the blues scale, which was review for me because I've known the blues scale for literally decades. I never really new what to do with it, but it seems like I've always known the notes.

As with most "reviews" I've done on the PWJ site, this blues scale lesson has challenged and stretched my limits. The first challenge is being able to play the blues scale in eighth notes and in triplets ... easy enough, right? No. At least not when you're playing the blues shuffle in the left hand. And then there are the exercises where you're playing patterns of three and six ... and honestly, learning these reminded me of when I learned my first fugue. Or when I was trying to learn the contrary-motion scales.

I'm posting this video, which is full of errors, but hopefully it will give you a sense of how challenging this blues shuffle/blues scale coordination really is. I have come a VERY long way from where I started, but as you can see, I still have a VERY long way to go!

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