Stride Piano For Beginners
In the last lesson we explored some basic voicings for the A Section of the tune “Georgia On My Mind”, and now we are going to apply a simple stride left hand style.
If you are new to stride piano, then this lesson is a perfect fit for you. Step-by-step we will create a stride left hand style for the A Section of “Georgia On My Mind” and we will explore some useful beginner stride piano drills using the harmony of the tune.
Beginner Stride Piano Technique
In the first demonstration I show how to construct a simple left hand stride style which outlines the core components of the stride style:
The left hand plays the root in the lower registers of the piano. We can also play root and 5th for a stronger sound. We then move our left hand up one octave to play a rootless voicing around the middle registers of the piano.
The simplest left hand voicing is to play just the 3rd and 7th of the chord which can be played in any inversion. We can also add the 5th for a thicker sound.
Stride Piano Exercises For Beginners
If you are new to the stride piano style it can be challenging to move between the chords whilst keeping a steady pulse. The exercises outlined in the lesson will help you to gain confidence in switching chord types in an even and fluid manner.
First just practice the stride over a single chord. Using the first chord of the tune Fmaj7 is a good place to start:
Alternate the inversion of the 3rd of 7th whilst keeping the F bass consistent. Focus on accuracy and play as slowly as needed. Next we add the A7 chord and cycle around just these 2 measures
Stride 3625 Practice Exercises
A more advanced exercise is to take the 3625 chords and cycle around this progression in a stride piano style. We outline the following drills in the video:
Start with a stride style using the regular chord changes A-7 D7 G-7 C7. Next turn all of the chords into dominant chords. Finally, introduce dominant chord colours and try to apply these in a spontaneous manner to develop a sense of harmonic freedom when playing stride.
Enjoy practicing these stride piano drills, and in the next lesson we are going to add some simple blues licks and ornamentation to get that soulful bluesy sound.
Lesson Downloads
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Stride Voicings & Drills File Type: pdf
Related Lessons
In this lesson we will create the major 251 progression with a left hand stride and rootless voicings exercise and drill.
We will work on our recognition of major 9th, minor 9th, & dominant 13th rootless voicings using a left hand stride drill.
We build upon what we have covered in the previous tutorials by introducing upper structure triads, sus chords and a stride style.
Practice Tips
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If you are just starting out with the stride style, the key is to revisit these exercises on a daily basis.
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Each time that you come back to the piano the stride voicings will be more comfortable and more fluid under your fingers.
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This might take a few days or it might take a few weeks; the key is consistent daily practice.
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Follow the guidance in this lesson and what seems difficult to start with will feel very smooth natural in a short space of time.
Hi Hayden,
Just wanted to tell you I’m loving this course! As a beginner with a particular interest in blues its perfect for me. Great timing too as I’m just finishing up the jazz piano foundations course.
At some point in the future I’ll want to tackle the full-on blues courses – is there a recommended sequence to these courses?
Also, if you’re taking requests for future tutorials/seminars/whatever, can i suggest Blueberry Hill and Watermelon Man? These are some of the tunes that inspired me to start learning piano, so even if they are beyond me for the moment thats fine – it would be great knowing they were there to work towards.
Thanks!
Hi Doug,
Thanks for the comment and I’m glad to hear you are enjoying the course.
This course starts simple but I gradually layer in some more advanced voicings to help new students ‘get their toes wet’ in more advanced theory. There are many more lessons to come in the course too on chord substitutions and a whole module on improvisation.
In terms of difficulty, I would suggest starting with this course by Jon:
https://www.pianogroove.com/blues-piano-lessons/12-bar-masterclass-jon-cleary/
The Chicago Blues course by Steve is also more on the beginner end of the spectrum:
https://www.pianogroove.com/blues-piano-lessons/chicago-blues-hand-independence/
I would suggest taking both of these courses together as it’s always nice to get 2 different perspectives on the same topic. It does take time to build the hand strength and hand independence to play these styles, the most important thing is consistent daily practice and you will see rapid improvement by revisiting the left hand patterns each day.
Thanks for the great suggestions, I have added these to our upcoming lesson schedule and we can certainly cover both tunes.
Enjoy studying this course. For the blues lessons it is certainly advantageous to understand 7th chords, chord extensions (particularly 9s and 13s) and this will help you to understand what is being demonstrated in those lessons.
Cheers Doug and let me know if I can help further.
Hayden
The speed and difficulty level of this particular course is SO much better for us jazz beginners IMHO. Thank you for creating this with a little bit less steep of a learning curve – it’s very encouraging and helpful!
Hi Ashton 👋
Thanks for the feedback – I’m glad to hear you are enjoying the lessons.
I tried to make this course as accessible as possible, whilst showing some interesting arranging techniques at the same time. I am adding more lessons into this course and also created the same style of course on a couple of other tunes.
Lesson 7 on “passing chords” is being uploaded to this course right now and more to come.
Cheers,
Hayden
Hi Hayden!
I still don’t figure out the best use of the pedal during striding. I feel that keeping the pedal down to stride scramble the melody notes. Any advices on that?
Thanks!
Hi Alex,
Yes when playing ballads we can be liberal with the pedal, but as you say it’s important not to blur the notes together.
As a rule of thumb, we can release and re-press the pedal right before the chord changes and this prevents the previous chord being blurred into the next chord.
Also be aware of the melody, if we have a busy melodic section, often it’s best to release the pedal completely so that we don’t blur all of the melody notes together.
I spoke about pedal technique in my recent seminar, see around 49m30s into the seminar: https://www.pianogroove.com/live-seminars/chord-progressions-for-beginners/
Also check out chapters 3 and 4 of this lesson: https://www.pianogroove.com/blues-piano-lessons/new-orleans-blues-style-technique/ – and you will see that sometimes we can use the pedal very heavily to achieve a ‘sleepy’ and ‘dreamy’ stylistic effect.
One tip is to record yourself playing and listen back afterwards so that you can really analyse your use of the sustain pedal. Then you can decide whether you want to add more, or less.
Let me know if I can help further here.