Yancey and Barrelhouse left-hand patterns
Lesson time: (3min 2sec)
In this video, Tim shows you the Yancey bassline, named after the tune "Yancey Special" that was written by Meade Lux Lewis for his hero, Jimmy Yancey. He also shows you the Barrelhouse bassline, one of the most common left-hand patterns in blues
Course preview
This lesson is part of the course Blues Piano Foundations: Walking Bass & Triads
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Yancy Bassline
We'll try this in a sec.
With this new bass line I'm going to show you now, the first one, I'd call it a Yancy bassline after the tune Yancy Special, which was written by the famous boogie woogie player Mead Lux Lewis for his hero Jimmy Yancey.
Here it goes:
- C: top and bottom octave with the third and fifth in the middle.
- It's still very strongly rooted on a major triad.
So I'll play the blue third blues. Now, with this left hand:
You may have noticed that the melody I'm using in the right hand includes some grace notes.
You should play those with a little bit of arm weight.
- Play the blue third on the beat and follow it straight away with the major third in the same phrase in bar three.
- You've got an ordinary quaver, an ordinary eighth note. Actually, it's a triplet, isn't it?
So that phrase includes the blue third as a part of a triplet and also as a grace note.
You'll probably have to slow that right down to get the coordination sorted. So spend a bit of time sorting out those bars which have a little bit of a coordination difficulty.
Barrel House Bassline
The second bass line I'm going to show you I call Barrel House.
This is a double note style and it includes:
- the root and fifth
- the root and sixth
This is one of the most basic and popular left hand patterns in blues piano.
Let's play this with the same right hand as before.
Notice that with that style, we're not playing a turnaround. It's just two bars on C to finish.
About the instructor
Critically acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Tim Richards is one of Britain’s most experienced jazz educators, teaching piano privately for over 30 years, as well as at Morley College, Goldsmiths College, the University of Surrey, Premises Studios and other venues in the UK and abroad. He has produced numerous titles for Schott Music, including the best-selling two-volume Exploring Jazz Piano, Blues, Boogie & Gospel Collection and the acclaimed Improvising Blues Piano. He is also co-author, with John Crawford, of Exploring Latin Piano and Brazilian Piano Collection.More recently Schott have published Jazz, Latin & Modern Collection (15 pieces for solo piano), comprising Tim Richards originals alongside pieces by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, and the two volume set Beginning Jazz Piano (now a two-part MusicGurus course).“The real joy of Tim’s music… is that it is both hugely educational but also such great fun to play. Anyone with the slightest interest in learning to play or teach jazz piano should really acquire a set of Tim’s books.” PianoDaoAs a performer Tim has been a presence on the UK jazz scene since the 1980s, also playing the blues with UK and US legends such as Otis Grand, Earl Green, Dana Gillespie, Larry Garner, Joe Louis Walker and Mojo Buford. He has released over a dozen albums as a leader (featuring many of London’s best jazz musicians including Pete King, Gilad Atzmon, Tony Kofi, Jason Yarde, Seb Rochford, Ed Jones, Dick Pearce and many others), and toured all over Europe with line-ups ranging from duo to nine-piece. His latest recording, the album ‘Telegraph Hill’ by the six-piece Hextet, was described in The Observer as "A true joy from beginning to end". More info can be found on his website www.timrichards.ndo.co.uk read more