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Blues
Browse Blues piano sheets with calm, playable notation. Blues is a genre and a musical form that grew up among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s, drawing on spirituals, work songs, field hollers and narrative ballads. Its building blocks are call and response, the blues scale and a handful of chord progressions, above all the twelve-bar blues. Blue notes, usually a flattened third, fifth or seventh, give it its sound, and the form runs through jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll. ZenPiano's Blues shelf is small and practical. It starts with the blues scale itself, practised in all 12 keys. A blues scale is often a minor pentatonic scale with an added flattened fifth, the blue note that makes a phrase sound bluesy. Two boogie-woogie pieces follow, including an easy riff in C. Boogie-woogie is the piano's own branch of the blues: it developed in African-American communities from the 1870s, became popular in the late 1920s and is mainly dance music, driven by a repeating left-hand bass line. From there the shelf moves to repertoire. Professor Longhair, the New Orleans singer and pianist whose style mixes rumba, mambo and calypso into the blues, is here with Big Chief, and Chuck Berry's 1956 Roll Over Beethoven, here in Electric Light Orchestra's version, sits where rhythm and blues met rock and roll. A practical order is the scale first, then boogie-woogie, then songs. Get the left-hand pattern steady on its own before you add the right hand, and let the blue notes bend the melody rather than rushing past them.
About Blues
Browse Blues piano sheets with calm, playable notation.
Blues is a genre and a musical form that grew up among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s, drawing on spirituals, work songs, field hollers and narrative ballads. Its building blocks are call and response, the blues scale and a handful of chord progressions, above all the twelve-bar blues. Blue notes, usually a flattened third, fifth or seventh, give it its sound, and the form runs through jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
ZenPiano's Blues shelf is small and practical. It starts with the blues scale itself, practised in all 12 keys. A blues scale is often a minor pentatonic scale with an added flattened fifth, the blue note that makes a phrase sound bluesy. Two boogie-woogie pieces follow, including an easy riff in C. Boogie-woogie is the piano's own branch of the blues: it developed in African-American communities from the 1870s, became popular in the late 1920s and is mainly dance music, driven by a repeating left-hand bass line.
From there the shelf moves to repertoire. Professor Longhair, the New Orleans singer and pianist whose style mixes rumba, mambo and calypso into the blues, is here with Big Chief, and Chuck Berry's 1956 Roll Over Beethoven, here in Electric Light Orchestra's version, sits where rhythm and blues met rock and roll.
A practical order is the scale first, then boogie-woogie, then songs. Get the left-hand pattern steady on its own before you add the right hand, and let the blue notes bend the melody rather than rushing past them.
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Common questions
Questions and answers FAQ
What is the twelve-bar blues?
The most common blues chord progression, built over twelve bars. Together with call and response and the blues scale, it defines the form.
What is a blues scale?
Often a minor pentatonic scale with an added flattened fifth, the blue note. Other versions add the minor third to a major pentatonic scale.
What is boogie-woogie?
A piano-based branch of the blues that developed from the 1870s and became popular in the late 1920s. It is mainly dance music, built on a repeating left-hand bass line.
Who was Professor Longhair?
Henry Roeland Byrd, a New Orleans singer and pianist whose instantly recognisable style combined the blues with rumba, mambo and calypso.