"The Blues" is a certain style of music which has inspired many other musical styles, from Rock 'n' Roll, to Country, to Jazz, to Rock Music, so if you want to learn these others styles, learning to play blues piano forms a great foundation for doing so.

To give you an idea of the Blues style, some of the most famous blues music which has crossed over into the mainstream include Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Hound Dog", Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues", and even Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" (OK it is a Rock 'n' Roll classic, but it is very heavily blues-influenced - read on to find out why (clue - it's all in the structure)).

By the way, did you know that in 1977 "Johnny B. Goode" was sent aboard the deep space probe "Voyager" as part of a package of the Earth's culture - that's how influential Blues music is!

So onto the blues piano lessons . . .

It would be beneficial to have a good grounding in music before trying to learn to play blues piano, but hopefully here I can give you a good basic grounding in it, and at least help you understand it and get started.

Here goes with the 6 tips:

1. Essentially the most popular blues chord progression is the 12-bar blues chord structure - what I'm going to do here is teach you the basics of this, and you can then transpose it into whatever other key you need. Learn this properly, become comfortable with it, and you'll find you will be able to improvise around it before too long - there aren't too many "rules".

2. It's standard practice in blues music to make every chord a "7th" chord (the 7th note is called the "blues" note). In the key of C, the blues chords would consist of the following notes:

Chord of C7 = C - E - G - B Flat

Chord of F7 = F - A - C - E Flat

Chord of G7 = G - B - D - F

3. Using the above chords, the 12-bar blues progression in the key of C would be:

C7 C7 C7 C7

F7 F7 C7 C7

G7 F7 C7 C7

4. Just learn the above progression, get comfortable with playing it in the key of C, and you can transpose on the piano to any key you need to play it in.

5. If you want to get really adventurous, the left hand should play the following melody (note by note), with the above chords played by the right hand:

C - E - G - A - Bb - A - G - E (then transpose this pattern to F and G as required, following the 12-bar pattern above)

6. Just try what you do with any other piano lesson piece you try to play - master each hand separately, then bring them together and slowly practice until you've got it.

Hope that helps - once you learn to play this on the piano, you'll have a great foundation for learning many other music styles too

Good luck!

Check out my Beginner Piano Lessons blog (below) for more advice and tips like this