The Easy Groove Piano Book: Keyboard/Piano Book & DVD

The breadth of groove vocabulary here is genuinely impressive. Rather than treating funk, soul, and Latin styles as separate worlds, Moehrke shows how the same harmonic and rhythmic principles shift across genres, giving students a transferable understanding of what makes each feel distinct. The DVD demonstration is the real win: watching hand position and feel applied to actual grooves beats any written explanation.

This book swings. From the first disco patterns through the simmering Latin and soul grooves, there's an infectious energy that makes repetition feel like exploration rather than drill work. The variety means no two practice sessions feel identical, which keeps the material fresh across weeks of study.

Pianists who want to move beyond classical repertoire and understand contemporary groove styles will find everything they need here. Self-learners benefit enormously from the DVD format, while teachers appreciate having a single resource covering disco, funk, house, and soul in cohesive progression.

• Study the DVD demonstrations for each groove family before diving into the sheet music. The rhythmic nuance of soul grooves versus house feels won't fully reveal itself on the page.
• Lock in the left hand patterns first. These grooves live or die by bass line consistency, so establish that foundation before layering right-hand embellishments.
• Adjust your touch and dynamic range based on the genre. Funk requires sharper articulation; soul grooves need legato connection. The same notes played with different intention become entirely different music.
• Use the simpler pieces like 'It's So Simple' as stepping stones into the more complex rhythmic vocabulary. They're not filler; they're scaffolding.

These pieces work beautifully as a unit in jazz or contemporary piano courses, but they're equally valuable as supplementary material for students in traditional classical tracks who need exposure to groove-based playing. Sprinkle individual pieces throughout the year to reinforce rhythmic concepts introduced in ensemble settings.

• Steady quarter-note and eighth-note pocket playing across multiple time signatures
• Left-hand bass line independence and rhythmic stability
• Reading and executing syncopated rhythms common to funk and soul idioms
• Genre-specific touch and articulation (funk sharpness versus soul legato)
• Chord-scale relationships within groove contexts
• Translating recorded feel into written notation and vice versa