How to play piano blues – left hand variations Part II

This left hand is similar to Part 1 however we are now going to introduce some new notes. Here’s how it looks –

So you will now see that we have a D sharp and an E in the middle of those previous two notes we played, which were C and G.

Here’s how it sounds:

You’ll notice again that you don’t play this as equal quavers, and you need to make the rhythm swing. Also don’t forget that the second D is kept as a sharp throughout the whole bar, and so doesn’t need to have the sharp sign again.

In regards to the fingering, you will notice that the D sharp and the E use the same finger, which is the third (middle finger). This is the way I play it, and I find it really comfortable. If you try to use your second finger for the E, you will find that your fingers feel too close together. It’s a much more natural and effective way of playing this by using the middle finger for both notes, and all you need to do is slide and skip at the same time with your middle finger to play this correctly. So you would slide your middle finger down the D sharp ever so slightly, and then skip off onto the E at the last moment. This method also keeps your hand nice and flat, and straight.

The notes are then transposed to the F and G chord to make up the full 12-bar blues. Here are the F and G bars:

So when we put this altogether for the full 12-bar blues, this is what it looks like:

Other articles in this series: How to play piano blues part 1 – How to play piano blues part 2 – Left hand variations part 1