How to play blues piano

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been playing the piano for years or if you’re a complete beginner – you can start to play blues piano today!

And sure, you may have read this many times and thought that it’s just not possible, but I’m here today to explain that it isn’t as hard as it looks or sounds. By reading the below basic guide on how to play blues piano, you can begin today with those rhythmic left hand boogies and those nice right hand blues licks!

Left hand boogie

To start you off with a great boogie pumping left hand, here’s what you do. First of all have a look for middle C on your piano or keyboard. If you are unsure of where that is, and if you’d also like a quick guide on how to read music and what each note is, then please click here. Once you’re more familiar with the keys, you’ll now find it much easier to navigate this tutorial.

Our left hand is going to revolve around just three notes. That’s right, you literally only need three notes to play this fantastic left hand boogie! What I want you to do is point a finger at the middle C, and even play that note if you wish. Go on! Take your laptop or mobile over to the keys for this bit.

So you should now be pointing or playing the middle C on your piano or keyboard. Now what I want you to do is move your hand to the left and find the next C down on the keyboard. This would be classed as the octave C below the middle C. You can of course play this left hand wherever you like and go even further down, but as long as you are now on a C to the left (lower) of the middle C – you’re good to go!

Now what I want you to do is place your little finger of your left hand onto the C, and then place your thumb on the G directly above the C. This G is four notes higher than the C, and your thumb should naturally sit on this G if you have your little finger on the C.

OK, so all good so far? Now what I want you to do is play both the C and G together at the same time, and do this a few times until you’re happy that both the notes go down equally at the same time. Don’t be frightened to hit them fairly hard as well, as you want it to be a nice strong sound.

The next step is to play these two notes C and G together four times, and to count out 1, 2, 3, 4 each time – and ensure you do this at a steady pace of approximately 100 times per minute. Keep going around and around counting four for each bar you play this. That’s right – you’re now playing a bar in the time of 4/4!

You can of course go much slower at first, and when you are ready you can then build up the speed gradually.

Now here comes the best part! Instead of playing just the C and G together for each bar, I now want you to also use the A with your thumb which is the next note up from G. This time I want you to try playing C and G, and then alternate to C and A. So your bar of four beats will looks like this –

C    C    C    C

G    A    G    A

Each time you keep moving your thumb from G to A, but always playing the C underneath. And that’s it! You are now playing a left hand boogie which has been used many times by famous blues and rock ‘n’ roll pianists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Jools Holland, Little Richard, and the list goes on and on.

And it really is that simple!

So now you’ve got the blues and boogie bug, why not see what else you could learn with me Martin Carline – your friendly and ever so obsessed about the blues resident video tutorial pianist.