Hi,

I've been learning to play classical and blues piano for a little while, and one of the problems that I'm having when trying to follow along with music, work on my own stuff, or auditioning for bands is that I need more techniques for just playing nice stuff against chords.

Think the backing to 'Who Taught You To Live Like That' by Sloan, or 'We Used To Vacation' by The Cold War Kids. Simple bouncing off the chords, mixing in a bit of sustain to make it fluid, that sort of thing.

I've done a bit of googling on the subject but all it's given me is endless "Learn to Play Rock Keyboards in 48 Hours With FREE CD and DVD!" advertisements, which really isn't what I'm after.

Does anybody have any good pointers or weblinks towards common comping / improv / chord techniques for piano, rhodes, or organ? (I use a Nord Electro 2

Or can think of a Keyboard magazine issue that covers it well that I can back-order?

Try searching for jazz & blues /rock/ gospel/R&B technique books
but not out out and starter stuff.
I was on a site the other day that does DVD stuff for gospel music and they also do some Jazz stuff I think it was called hear and play.com and they do a new series for 'urban' as they call it. Its a bit odd to navigate the site though.

Keyboard Mag TV has some nice interviews with some tips and tricks ...

http://www.keyboardmag.com/

... also, I think you can use Youtube as a great learning tool. If you just do some different searches, there's all kinds of stuff you can see and do.

Jerry

I would say to find a handful of tunes you really like and learn to play the keyboard parts along with them, the more you do that the more you'll develop your own ideas.....

>>>Common rock keyboard techniques

chop and slice.

Hammond and a knife. Here's a small tutorial:

LMAO!

Seriously Mike,

I'm not familiar with the examples you cite (too old I guess), but it boils down to playing rhythm parts most of the time. Find a little space between the other instruments and play a simple part that locks in rhythmically with the guitar and bass.

Reggae is a good example of this. It's important to listen to the noise the entire band is making, and leave some space (dead air) in what you play from time to time.

When you get that down, then introduce little variations to the licks you play so that you maintain interest.

The 'Who Taught You To Live Like That' by Sloan sounds like an easy one to learn note for note. Do that, and apply the techniques you used to other tunes. For example, when playing many forms of rock you'll want to avoid playing notes in the bass player's spectrum, unless you want a muddy harmonic mess on your hands. Also, instead of playing full chords when playing harder rock, try the root and 5th, leaving out the third, or the root and the seventh, etc...sometimes less is more in that genre.

Ditto for YouTube. Not everything has the quality we look for, but it's still worth hunting. I also play acoustic guitar, and on YouTube I was able to finally get the right chords for several songs for which the "popular", web-available material is nothing but rubbish.

The same applies to some keyboard parts, although I never managed to get hold of any YouTube cover (or music sheet for that matter) of the elusive solo-piano version of Style Council's "My Ever Changing Moods"

You doing the following?:

Minor Blues scale (this is often called just the blues scale; Root, +1 ½ steps, + 1 step, + ½ step, + ½ step, + 1 ½ steps. If playing blues in the key of E, these notes are: E, G, A, Bb, B, D). You can play this over major or minor progressions, so you could use this all the time for blues songs if you want.

You can also play the MAJOR Blues scale which is the major pentatonic scale with an added note (a flatted third), so in the key of C, the major blues scale are these 6 notes - C, D, Eb, E, G, A (1, 2, b3, 3, 5, 6). If you're playing a blues song in the key of C (major keys) for example (C, F, G), then this scale sounds great.

For learning purposes if you're not familiar, the Major blues scale in C is the same as the minor blues scale in A, so if you already know that minor blues scale in A, then you could use it over a C, F, G progression (when technically it would be called a Major Blues scale in the key of C).

Take the "blue note" out of those scales for the pentatonic scale; you would use the pentatonic scale when not intending to sound bluesy. Those blues scales work though in their entirety over a TON of classic rock progressions.

Do you play the notes in those scales in any chord combination you can form? Experiment with combining notes in the scale. The vast majority of the time they sound great in and 3 and even 4 note combinations.

Then it's just practice practice practice. Listen to music you want to emulate and see what they're doing.

Good luck.

This isn't so much a question about rock technique as it is about r&b/soul/gospel/funk/etc. and related styles.

I'd like to find a "library" of "classic piano licks" to learn from. In order to play more appropriateply in various styles, I'd like to learn the well-known (stereotypical) piano licks/flourishes/runs in that style, then build on them by stringing them together and modifying them.

An answer such as "listen to your favorites and practice" will not be all that helpful to me. I would like to hear if anyone has run across print music (or video) that demonstrates such licks. e.g. The 20 most prominent Ray Charles-style licks, the 10 most well-known boogie-woogie licks, etc. (I'm having a hard time finding a piano teacher that can show me such things, so this would benefit me greatly in the meantime.)

Thanks in advance for any advice!

This is a big topic.

The following opinions are strictly my own.

Lesson 1: early 50's style licks.
Use an acoustic piano sound.
Learn classic progressions - I IV V I, I Vi IV, V, etc
Learn a variety boogie-woogie and walking bass lines. Listen to Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, any variety of doo-wop artists.
Learn how to comp chords in RH in 12/8 time, both using typical major and 6th chords, without fatigue.
Solos: commonly are a paraphrase of the vocal melody line.
Transcriptions are easily available: Try "Smokey Joe's Cafe"

Lesson 2: late 50's - early 60's

Listen to Johnny Johnson, Little Richard, Ray Charles
Learn how to do a Chuck Berry intro. Learn a Little Richard intro. Learn about crush notes. Learn how to glissando up and down, and in rapid repetition, with correct technique, so you avoid tearing up your hands. Learn "What I say" throughout.
Start using some organ patches, no distortion. Start adding some electric pianos.

Lesson 3: mid- late 60's

Lots of different styles to master.

- classical based stuff of Ray Manzarek (full transcriptions available). Lots to study there.
- transistor organs. Learn 96 tears, Double-shot of my baby's love, House of the rising sun
- major minor progressions of the Zombies. Learn "She's not there".
- use of piano with early Rolling Stones - lots of parallel 6ths.
-use of pianet by Beatles - learn "The Night Before", "Get Back". (Full transcriptions available)

Lesson 4: 70's rock.

Even more variety:
-Experiment with power chord 5th's, like Deep Purple. (Don't play SOTW, unless you're going to play it correctly.)
- Try some circle of fifth's, baroque inspired solos, like "Highway Star".
- Keep working on your hammond technique, with leslie. Learn Santana's Evil Ways, including solos.
- Listen to the minor 3rd- major 3rd grace note lick in Sweet Home Alabama. More major 6th progressions there too.
- Learn how to play a rhythm part and fit in the pocket. Essential for anything funky.
- Listen to ELP, Boston, Yes, Jean-Michel Jarre, Rick Wakeman. Learn "Smokin'". Learn "Hoedown".(transcriptions available).
Learn how to use portamento / glide in a mono synth solo.

That's enough for now....hope that get's you started.
There isn't a "here are all the secrets of rock keyboards" book , AFAIK. So you have to do it on your own.

One of my problems is that I don't have a well developed enough ear to figure out what he's playing, but I've heard that technique before, which is why I'm wondering if it's well known.

I _think_ he's alternating between the bass and the treble with sustain, but I'm not sure. Sounds like a fairly widely spaced chord, too, possibly just the first and the fifth, as you mentioned.

Interesting posts by Stepay and Tom. I could be mistaken, but it seems that Chuckers is after actually seeing these songs played by someone that could focus on teaching the licks, period.

It might sound silly for those that already know what is being referred here as a trick, but I'd love to get someone to show me some further things like appoggiatura (I learned the name after learning the trick on my own). And yes these things are damn hard to learn from a book and much easier to learn if someone can actually show you and, in my case at least, point out immediate examples of its use in music I actually enjoy. In my unfortunate personal experience, piano teachers are never under sixty-something and never have a clue about any “modern music” …

Yep, I'm already familiar with the blues scale, and pentatonic scale, and how useful it is for improvisation, but thanks for confirming it as a way to go and fleshing out some of the details and uses for me!

Excellent, thank you!

While you haven't detailed the techniques themselves (probably because with the number of techniques you've listed, that would take a while), you've certainly given me plenty of direction and enough information to follow up myself.

For classical piano, a general rule for any appoggiatura is that the "little" note must fall precisely on the count of the big note to which it belongs. So even if the little note appears more "at the left" on the manuscript, it should only start at the time of the bigger note to which it's attached, taking its time value from it. Sorry about my poor use of English for the explanation.

Thanks Cydonia, but I get the tempo by ear, not by the manuscript. I also get the notes (and more often than not reasonable renditions of the chords) by ear as well.

That does not change the dire need to have someone actually showing me the physical technique for tricks such as appoggiatura. Once I am introduced to the technique itself, I am pretty savvy with recognizing it in the songs I intend to play and thus incorporating it as a regular feature of my playing.

Unlike the notes, chords and tempo, the techniques employed to obtain the sonic results I hear on recordings I like are extremely hard to guess, and I would kill for having objective "workshops" filling in the technique gaps on the songs I've played "guessing" for so long.

Unfortunately that would demand people acquainted with the songs, knowledgeable with each song's particular technique and actually inclined to share said knowledge. Given the slim chance of ever finding a teacher fitting this bill, I'm left with myself and a lot of persistence.

No apology required.

Hell, I'm just mighty glad to have you back on the forum.

I'm just getting my feet wet in rock keyboards, but i think having a good fondation in the blues is essential.

As far as books go, there are a few note for note series on rock and R&B by published by Hal Leonard. Also they have a good series of sylistic books (comping and likcs)

Andrew Gordon has a fine series of blues licks, Tim Richards book "Improvising Blues Piano" is outstanding. Alot of guys recomend Mark Harris book "The Pop Piano Book".

Homespun Tapes makes some good DVDs related to blues and rock.

Of course having a good ear is very important because there isn't a whole lot the rock oriented keyboard transriptions available. Your going to have most of the work yourself.

Why is it that rock guitarist have almost ever solo ever recored, transcribed and available to them often for free on the internet?

This will undoubtedly not be welcome from everyone here... But I may have a different perspective... For me, I had 12 years of training in mostly classical sight-reading. Then I took two years of jazz piano. My parents and teachers were all pushing me to do it for a living. Way too much pressure... I learned alot, but I still couldn't seem to play in rock bands. Yet deep down, I loved rock music and WANTED to play it...

Until one day I let go of my own perfectionism. I was trying too hard to hit the right note at the right time and encorporate all that I had learned from my piano teachers, that I forgot to feel. Rock music is all about being gritty and kicking down doors and whatnot. It's a different mentality, and more than technicality, it takes a psychological shift to play it.

Don't be afraid of big, loud noises. Hit the keyboard with your elbow if you feel it. Become a barbarian at the keys. That's what your bandmates are doing.

Don't be like a guitar player- bred to shred. Too many amateur rock musicians try too hard to have technically difficult stuff, especially guitar players. But keyboard players can do this as well... Remember, no one cares how fast your fingers move, they care how much you move their soul. If I want to see stupid human tricks, I go to the Cirque Du Soleil, not music... Music is about expression. What does rock music express??

Anyway, depending on your level of training, it may not be that you need to learn more. If you're like me, it may just be that you need a shift in your thinking. Just feel and make loud mistakes. Don't worry if what you're doing is simple and easy to do. Does it sound good??

This may sound strange, but the moment I feel that I "arrived" in rock keys was the moment I first jumped on my keyboard. Get LOOSE and barbaric!!!!

And one piece of technicality, I see way too many keyboard players in rock bands playing in the same frequency range as the guitar player. Don't do that because it muddies up the sound. You have the distinct advantage of frequency range that no one else in your band has. You can play as low as the bass, in the middle with the guitar, or up high where no one else can. Use that to your advantage... As a rule of thumb, I usually play C4 or above (i.e. more than one octave above middle C).

Another thing a keyboard player has an advantage over the other members of a rock band is in the breadth of timbre (i.e. the ease of switching sounds). If I were you, I'd add another keyboard to your rig, in addition to your Electro, in order to get some pads and things to help thicken up the sound- things that sound fantastic and full up in high frequencies. Leads and synths, you know? Use your pianos, electric pianos, and hammond sounds, but add more to it. Rick Wakeman says that a keyboard player can change the timbre of a band more than any other instrument. I agree...

Out of curiosity: Those in this Forum that learned techniques specific for rock/pop/blues (mind you, not musical theory, I mean physical technique like organ smears, objective use of a Control pedal, appoggiaturas, etc.) did so on their own or with the aid of someone else? In case you guys used books, do any of them actually manage to convey what you must know to replicate the technique?

As observed in some posts before this, guitar players have a vast arsenal of sources for learning technique, whereas keyboard players seem to have nothing comparable. Furthermore I believe guitar players tend to trade tips more frequently than keys players. Perhaps keyboard players are way too self conscious, shy or something else and it prevents them from trading info as easily as guitar players all over the world do.

After you get the mentality down, when trying to come up with something to play, I typically hum something in my head. Then I figure it out on the keyboard. Then I find the sound/range that works best with what I'm playing... I use theory only when I'm stuck.

I started as a classically trained pianist -- did recitals, solo performances, considered majoring in Piano Performance in college (man I'm glad I didn't do that), the whole nine yards. The problem for me is that classical music never was it for me. I was pleased to get better and play more difficult pieces, but I didn't really like the music. I grew up in a house where my parents only listened to classical music or old gospel. Nothing with electric guitars or electric keyboards and no organs unless it was "church music". Then, fortunately for me I became a gymnast beginning in the second grade. At the gym, they played pop and rock music that I had never heard before. Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Deep Purple, YES, Cream. I was hooked -- on the gymnastics and the music. When I was 9 I got the Kiss Alive album (my first non K-tel album). My parents weren't too happy with "Hotter Than Hell", so I played that one quietly in my room with my ear to the speaker.

When I started college, I put the piano on the back burner and just played the ones in the music building on ocassion -- never daily practice anymore; too much time with school and running track and cross country and dating my now wife to spend on playing the piano. After college one of my co-workers was a blues guitarist in a blues band and we started talking about music. I bought a keyboard and brought it in to the office. We played music together at lunch time, and he taught me 1-4-5 and pentatonic scales (I was 23). Soon I was playing keyboards in his band and learning all I could from those very good blues musicians. I eventually moved to Michigan and took blues piano lessons from Detroit bluesman Rico Cooper, honed my skills a bit and then started playing in bands in Maryland and then Ohio.

If it weren't for some guidance from a blues guitarist, I might not be playing piano at all today as my interest in classical music had disappeared entirely by the time I was in college. Now I play every single day for as much as I can get away with, and I'm looking forward to the day when I can convince myself to spend money on a Nord.

Sorry to be so long. I do realize it's not all that interesting -- it's just my path to here.

In my case, I was lucky enough to have teachers who taught me the skills needed to teach myself.

They made sure the mechanics were correct (hand position, fingering, etc) and that I had a grounding in solfeggio (ear training) and music theory.

I can't emphasize enough how important ear training is. To be able to recognize intervals, chord qualities, etc is the most important tool for connecting theory to action at the keyboard. As we train muscle memory with our hands when we practice, we also train our minds to instantly recognize what we hear in our heads and apply that to the instrument.

Much of what I learned came from the simple physical and mental act of just sitting down at the keyboard and figuring out something that I heard and liked but didn't understand. Having developed the tools to make that process more efficient helped but you can't discount sweat equity.

You have to put the time in at the keyboard with just you, your brain and your ears. No book will help you as much as figuring out how to teach yourself will help you. And, the more you do it, the faster and easier it will come.

It's the same with playing styles and techniques. There is no shortcut to just doing it until you can do it well.

If you want to learn to play organ smears, find a black Baptist gospel church near you and get seat near the organist next Sunday morning. You can get a complete Hammond education there. Talk to him, ask him questions about the music and how to play it. Then go home and figure out how to play it yourself.

I have never been shy about asking another musician a question about what they were playing and I have never been rejected for doing so. Musicians love to talk music with other musicians.

My point is: you don't always need a buffer between you and the source of what you want to learn. A book might reveal the information sooner but the in-person experience will reveal what the information means and how to use to make your own music.

I don't know why guitar players hunt in packs and keyboard players are lone wolves - but it seems to be true. Maybe it's the mobility of the guitar as opposed to the logistics of moving keyboards. Maybe we just have to be more self-reliant because, historically, there are almost always just one of us in each musical group.

I think this is precisely the reason why. Guitar players frequently play in bands with multiple guitars, which adds opportunity for sharing/learning from one another. Heck, even bass players are usually former guitar players, so a typical rock band with a 2-guitar attack has three guys that actually (or basically) play the same instrument. Not so with keyboardists, who are usually by themselves in a band.

Noah

the single keyboard player thing is a shame. my new band has two keyboardists, and i LOVE it. berlin had four keyboard players and a guitarist. not that i'm advocating sounding like berlin, but why not have multiple keyboards??

Mike,
One thing that I don't think was mentioned regarding "comping" is using arpeggios. A simple example would be playing the triad arpeggio in the left hand for beats 1, 2, & 3, and playing the chord in the right on beat four. You can reverse it or mix it up any way you want. It adds motion and you can accent individual notes if you want. Give it a try and find out what patterns work for you.
Regards,
Joe