Playin’ the Blues – Quick Practice Tip

Find more Quick Tips and lessons by Vi Wickam and other teachers at https://www.myTalentForge.com.

[The tune played at the beginning of this Quick Tip is called “Milk Cow Blues”. Listen to my version now on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/track/4ABaYAqRj0X3BRTf9oBw21]

Hi I’m Vi Wickam here for myTalentForge.com with your Quick Tip of the Week!

This Quick Tip of the Week is a tool for helping you learn to play in other keys. So as string players, it’s pretty common for us to get comfortable in a certain realm of keys.

Very often it’s G, D, and A. Or maybe C, G, D, and A that most violinists and fiddlers are really comfortable in those keys.

But when you start to stretch very far outside of those, and you get to keys such as Ab, Bb, Eb, or E, B, F#- it tends to get a lot less comfortable for most of us.

Playing the blues in those keys is a really great tool for getting comfortable with playing in those keys.

It’s something you can do on your own- you don’t have to let anybody listen to you playing the blues.

There’s a great tool available online for doing this. It’s called Blues in All Keys by Jamey Aebersold- it’s on Berkeley Press I believe (https://www.universitypressbooks.com/book/9781562242008).

And I thank Matthew Hartz for turning me on to this a few years back. I really enjoy having a practice session that’s an hour or so long, just playing through the blues in all of those keys along with those playalong tracks.

Blues in All Keys has either PDF download or a book. And it also has playalong tracks. For me, those playalongtracks are priceless.

I love playing along with them and it has really helped me get more comfortable playing in keys like Ab, Db, B, and F#.

I hope you give this a try! Try playing the blues!

If you don’t get Blues in All Keys, there are also some blues tracks available on YouTube that you can find and you can just play along with them on your own time, at your own speed, at your own schedule.

And get more comfortable playing in other keys!

I’m Vi Wickam- hope you have a great week! I’ll see you next time!