Chops aren’t gained overnight; exercise daily to build the endurance to play as strongly as Billy Joel does. Let’s look at the left-hand octaves featured in “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” portions of which are transcribed on pages 54–55. Here we have alternating octaves that pulse with Billy’s boogie-woogie-influenced playing. When working on these types of octaves, keep your wrists from collapsing, while still keeping them loose. Whenever I want to extract something like this from a piece, I try to get the most out of it by working it with both hands — play through the examples to the right for more.
Play Audio and MIDI
The audio and MIDI files to the right correspond to the lessons and full song transcription beginning on page 50 of the October 2007 issue of Keyboard. All files performed by Scott Healy.