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Honky Tonk Piano Licks


In this video I'm just going to show you a simple blues lick, I always called it the honky tonk lick, that's how I learned it and basically this is how it sounds and this is what you can do with it. To give you just a sample of what you could do with that and what we'll try and figure out it's something like this.

What we're we doing there? The main thing I was just doing the same type of lick but in three different keys. It consists of going like this with just the triads, if we're just talking about C, think about just the C triad but when you make it slide off this E flat. You can slide with going like that with your pointer finger, second finger or you can just actually slide off, and I actually like to do that. I don't know if technically that's how you are suppose to do it but it works for me.

Anyway, that is your first one and then you bring these two fingers, second and fourth finger just up, you've got F and A. Let's do that again and if you bring them up one more then you've got G and B Flat. Let's do that again and if you just put a C in the bass, and then if you walk the bass like I was just doing just on 1, 3, 5, you can get a cool sound. Now what I did in the example. Now we just do the exact same thing but with the 4 chord which is F in this case and you can do the same thing, root with your thumb, slide off that minor 3rd to make the triad and then just bring them up.

You are going to bring this up to here. A goes up to B Flat, C goes up to a D and then you are going to bring it up one more time, B Flat goes up to a C, D goes up to E Flat. If you want to think of the intervocalic relationships, you are basically each time you go up the first time you are going up with your second finger you are going up a half step and your fourth finger you are going up the whole step and then the next time you go up is just flip your second finger this time goes up a whole step while your 4th finger goes up a half step.

You can really just play it. You don't always have to do it so straight like. I would recommend doing it that way at first until you get use to it but then you can jump around with it and now we need to go to the G, same thing, start with that triad, slide off to third, bring it up, bring it up again and you notice you can slide off this third and you can also slide on the top one and you hear that a lot in blues. That's just doing that exact same thing.

I hope that's helpful. That is again just playing around in the blues using that honky tonk lick. Again just learn the basics and then mess around with it. Sky is kind of the limit on what you can do with it. Hopefully that was helpful.


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