Gettin’ Ready to Rag Mastering Boogie-Woogie, Stride, and Ragtime Piano
by Jackie Saunders
Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, and all the great musicians who made the piano fun with their rollicking bass lines and snappy syncopation opened up a world of possibilities that are exciting to play, but challenging to master.
Boogie-woogie, while an early form of jazz piano, is not the same as ragtime and stride. Ragtime is structured
syncopation without improvisation, while stride is rapid, intense, and all about improvisation. Boogie-woogie is, at its heart, a solo style of piano playing is defined by its blues structure. African-American rural laborers in the south began accompanying blues singers on the piano in roughly-constructed shacks, called barrelhouses, during their free time at night in the early 1900s. The style expanded as the players experimented with a purely instrumental style of blues and quickened the tempo of the music.
In order to get a grip on this early innovation in jazz piano, as well as ragtime and stride, Dr. Ed Kaizer, a well-known recital pianist and professor of music and director of keyboard studies at Bradley University, offers some advice.
"Mastering classical technique is a way into playing ragtime and boogie-woogie,” says Kaizer. Even though you may think going back to the classics is taking you steps backwards to trying boogie-woogie and ragtime, Kaizer suggests
dusting off the Chopin and Beethoven books to develop the mechanics needed to accomplish the stride bass line. Check out the following tips to start experimenting with these styles.
For additional resources on boogie-woogie and ragtime, check out Boogie-Woogie for Beginners: A Piano Method byFrank Paparelli, Boogie-Woogie Piano, an instructional DVD featuring Mitch Woods,
and Ragtime Piano Solos: 44 Authentic Rags.
All three are published by Hal Leonard Corporation.
