Blues musicians use many embellishments and decorations on notes. Rarely do they play a phrase without at least one embellishment. The best way to understand this is through the music itself. FIGURE 10-7 contains four quarter notes in each measure. The first measure is unadorned, but the second measure is doctored up with half-step intervals on beats two and four. These intervals give the notes a grittier, even uglier, sound; this dissonance is popular in the blues.

FIGURE 10-6: Dynamic Contrasts

FIGURE 10-7: Half-Step Embellishment

You can decorate any note you choose. This is common in jazz blues.

FIGURE 10-8 shows you five standard options for ornamenting the note G. The last two examples displace the G rhythmically, but the resolution and focus remain. Keep your ears open for these decorations when you hear bebop pianists play the blues. Also, make sure you transpose these ornaments so that you have them under your fingertips in all keys. By using simple ornaments like these, you can spice up your playing without breaking a sweat.

FIGURE 10-8: Decorating a Note

Grace Notes

Grace notes are a pianist's best friend, and those who play blues, pop, rock, jazz, and other improvised musical styles use them constantly. In Chapter 9, you learned about slides. Since the piano has a fixed keyboard, the pitches cannot be altered. However, you can simulate the pitch bends and whoops that other instrumentalists employ by using grace notes and glissandos. Grace notes allow you to make small “slides” of usually a half or a whole step, and ultimately, they permit you greater expression on the piano.

The technical word for a grace note is an appoggiatura. Grace notes are written in small type, and they are always paired with a main note. Grace notes are never counted; they simply augment or beef up the sound of a main note. Main notes are counted notes such as quarter notes, eighth notes, and triplets.

Grace notes are played a split second before the main note. The best way to understand them is to use the language of percussionists. Drummers play a rudiment called a flam. Flam is onomatopoeia. To understand what a grace note/main note should sound like say the word flam out loud, being sure to say this word using two separate syllables. The f is the grace note and the lam is the main note. FIGURE 10-9 shows you what a grace note and a main note look like paired. In this case, the main note is a quarter note.

FIGURE 10-9: Grace Note and Main Note

Now try playing grace notes. The following four measures use grace notes generously. In the last example, two consecutive grace notes have been used. You can use up to seven grace notes before a main note, although this is rarely done. Be sure to play the correct fingerings. If you're moving in half steps from a black key to a white key, you will use the same finger. In this case, place your fingertip on the edge of the black key and slide into the desired white key. If you're moving from a white key to a black key or from a white key to another white key, you will need to use two different fingers. In this situation, the second and third fingers work best.

FIGURE 10-10: Using Grace Notes

Glissandos (gliss.)

Try singing two notes with your voice. Start on a low-pitched note and slide into a higher-pitched note. Think about Ed McMahon's introduction on the Tonight Show. He used to say, “Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny!” Or perhaps you've recently been to a baseball game and heard the umpires yell, “Yerrrrrrrrrrr out!” These are glissandos.

Many standard-pitched instruments can create glissandos or pitch slides. For instance, glissandos are popular on the clarinet. Listen to the opening passage of George Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue” for a fantastic, and classic, example.

There are many ways to play a glissando on the piano. Since this book focuses on rock and blues, you will be taught a less academic approach to the glissando. The following applies to the right hand only:

• When playing an ascending glissando, use the back side of your fingers and scrape them across the white keys.

• When playing a descending glissando, use the back side of your thumb to slide down the white keys.

In rock and blues, glissandos are usually played on the white keys and with the right hand. However, you can also use the technique described on the black keys. Reverse these techniques to play glissandos in the left hand. For example, when playing a descending glissando, use the back side of your fingers to slide down the keyboard.

As you will learn in Chapter 13, rock-n-roll pianist Jerry Lee Lewis played a lot of glissandos to add bravura to his music. His technique was also rather homespun. In the right hand, Lewis would use the back side of his hand to ascend the keyboard and the back side of his thumb to descend the keyboard. These approaches to glissandos are fairly easy to learn. Try them and use what works best for you. You might also want to watch some live footage of blues pianists so that you can actually see the various techniques that players use; see Appendix B for recommendations.

FIGURE 10-11: Glissandos

FIGURE 10-11 shows two glissandos in notation. In this example, you will find an ascending glissando and a descending glissando. Be sure to keep the glissandos in time. In this instance, each glissando is worth two beats (half notes). Both of these glissandos are performed with the right hand.