Monday 12 April 2010

Looking behind the Door

I've always wanted to be one of those really cool people who can sit at a piano and improvise away for ages with lovely, bluesy stuff. I've been trying to do this for about thirty years, and as soon as anyone says anything remotely like, 'ad lib around E flat' my fingers seize up and I can't do anything at all. I even attended a jazz piano course that made a whooshing noise as it went right over my head - how was I supposed to know what an 'open sus 14' was? I had sadly considered blues style piano was something I really just wasn't capable of, until this weekend.

I was staying at a friend's house and having a go on her rather wonderful piano. She had said something (mildly stinging) about my limited repertoire, which made me decide to try and play different stuff for a change. I was just twiddling around and suddenly, there I was, doodling on the ivories in BLUESY style. Everything was starting to make sense, 'arpeggio with a diminished seventh' I found myself thinking, 'improvise around C, E flat, F sharp and G' I remembered the piano teacher saying (with the spiteful chaser that it was so easy anyone could do it), 'pentatonic scale - just keep to the black notes' my son once said.

And there they were, in front of me, my fingers skipping around and the noise that was coming out SOUNDED PRETTY GOOD. Even my friend came in and said how good it was. 'Me', I thought, 'Me, playing blues'.

It was as if a very large and creaky door (like the seriously huge ones in the British Museum) had finally opened and some sunlight was shining through the gap.

It was fun. It was very fun indeed.

2 comments:

DaveG said...

Glad to hear you cracked it at last!
Now you can start a band!

Hilsbils said...

Dear DaveG

It would be hard to start a band on the strength of three blues riffs. Mind you, Plastic Betrand made a lot of money out of B flat, so things might look up for me yet.

H