Hi folks.

I want to start playing more boogie woogie, but am a little bit stuck as to what scale this music is based on.

My ear playing is very good generally, and I could maybe listen to the notes played on the JLL CD I have, but I want my improvs to be much looser than they would be if I was playing the pieces note for note.

Any help would be gratefully received

David

This may be far more basic than you are looking for, but my guess is that

a) most of the tunes will be based on 12 bar blues, of which the simplest form is (in F, each letter standing for a bar):

FFFF BbBb CBbFC or the same pattern (I-IV-V) for any other key

b) And use dom 7ths for the chords - you can get a reasonably convincing boogie-woogie feel by just running up and down a dom 7th ...

Try listening to some of the classic New Orleans players - Professor Longhair, for instance?

I teach boogie piano - the scale used are the country blues scale - minor blues and variations
I have a booklist available - contact me on my website www.tonymusicteach.co.uk for details

I suggest learning some baselines first, you can learn a lot from youtube, and other boogie woogie stuff.

I'd also recommend Colin Davey's book.

And yes, it is mainly in the twelve bar blues.

Here is some good boogie other than Jerry Lee:

1
2
3

There is some variation in "boogie woogie", but not that much. You get some very fast "standing" bass lines that go with fast boogies like pete fountain, but then the slower kind of boogie, like Professor Longhair's "Boogie Woogie". I think the walking basslines are more modern but weren't used by the founding boogie woogie pianists liek Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis much.

If you want any more suggestions or anything just ask.

Love boogie woogie