The Complete Blues Keyboard Method: Intermediate Blues Keyboard: Keyboard/Piano Book & CD

Purposeful and grounded. This book doesn't lecture about blues theory in the abstract; instead, it builds your skills through licks, songs, and forms you can hear and play immediately. The pacing feels deliberate, moving from concept review into progressively more sophisticated harmonic territory while keeping the focus on actual keyboard technique.

Keyboard and piano players who already understand blues basics and are ready to deepen their improvisational vocabulary and harmonic knowledge. You're comfortable with standard twelve-bar blues and want to move into more sophisticated techniques like extensions and substitutions.

• Record yourself playing the provided licks over the included accompaniment tracks. Listen back to catch which phrases sit naturally in your hands and which ones need rhythmic adjustment or smoother voice leading.
• When working through the bass line exercises, play them in your left hand while comping chord voicings in your right. This transfers the written technique directly into solo performance.
• Start with the eight-bar blues forms before returning to twelve-bar blues. The shorter form forces tighter phrase construction and helps you internalize the harmonic rhythm more quickly.
• Use the slow blues section to develop touch and phrasing rather than speed. Pay attention to how dynamics and note duration interact with the underlying groove.

Assign this as a semester-long independent study for jazz piano students who have completed beginner work or as part of a blues ensemble coaching sequence. The included CD tracks make it suitable for self-paced progress outside of lessons while still giving you concrete material to address in studio time.

• Comping with chord extensions (9ths, 13ths, alterations)
• ii-V substitutions and their voice leading
• Building blues bass lines with harmonic awareness
• Improvising in both twelve-bar and eight-bar blues forms
• Playing in slow blues contexts with control and phrasing
• Blues keyboard techniques specific to touch and articulation