Blues Riffs for Piano - Book/Online Audio

Blues Riffs for Piano by Ed Baker is an Educational Piano book devoted to the riffs, licks, fills, embellishments, turnarounds, and tags that give blues piano its distinctive character. Written for piano and keyboard, this collection combines musical examples with performance notes and online audio, making it a focused resource for pianists exploring the vocabulary and expressive details of blues playing.

The book includes chord names, fingerings, instructional text, introductory text, and notated musical material supported by accompanying online audio examples. Rather than presenting a conventional collection of complete songs, it concentrates on practical blues phrases and musical devices for practice, interpretation, and performance. The examples draw stylistic inspiration from Ray Charles, Dr. John, Professor Longhair, and Johnny Johnson, offering a close look at characteristic sounds associated with influential blues and New Orleans piano traditions.

Working with individual riffs and related phrases provides a useful way to study how blues piano lines are shaped and connected. Fills and embellishments add movement around the harmony, while turnarounds and tags highlight musical ideas commonly heard at transitions and endings. Performance notes and audio examples provide additional context for hearing these details as musical gestures rather than notation alone. The result is a compact reference that can support focused learning, repeated practice, and the development of a more varied blues vocabulary at the keyboard.

Song List

Blues Riffs * Fills and Embellishments * Turnarounds * Tags * Licks

This piano and keyboard book brings notation, explanatory material, fingerings, chord names, and online audio together in one practical resource.