St Louis Blues

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing a song called "St. Louis Blues." Composed by W. C. Handy in 1914, this was one of the first blues songs to succeed in the realm of popular music. That makes it a bit different from the blues I posted last week. I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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Dance (Juba)

Welcome to another week of social distancing! Here on Tea with Liya, I'm playing a song that will hopefully brighten your day. "Juba Dance", composed by R. Nathaniel Dett, was based on an African American dance from the 1800s. Even while these slaves were in forced working conditions, they were still able to keep up the joy by singing and dancing. Hopefully you'll take some inspiration during the times of COVID!


Listen to the song here
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Pineapple Rag

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! On this cold February morning, I took a little time to think about the coming summer. A great song that references this hot and bright season would be Scott Joplin's "Pineapple Rag." I hope you enjoy listening to this bouncy song. Can sound waves make you feel warmer?

Listen to the song here
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Happy Rag

This post was literally a last-minute one. See? It came out a minute before it would be emailed to my subscribers. Now I just have to hope there weren't any time inconsistencies, because if there were, those of you subscribed to my email list would have to wait till tomorrow to receive my post.

Speaking of timing, that is extremely important when playing a song like this one where you have to coordinate the two hands, which are playing completely different things. While the right hand tackles the melody, the left hand is playing notes that align with the main beat of the song (and jumping across the piano while doing it), giving the song its bouncy feeling.

Today, I'm going to ask you to listen to this song in a certain way. No, you don't have to blast it out your radio, you don't have to walk around getting people to come and listen, and you don't have to stand upside down. It's very simple:

DO NOT sit in a chair while listening to this song.

Rialto Ripples

Most of you reading this post probably don't have exactly the same interests and views on a topic as the next person who is going to come here. Everyone is different, and that's really a good thing in many ways. If every blog you ever found was exactly the same as this one and every post on every one of them was exactly the same, then you could just read the post and then forget about all blogs because nothing would be new. And if everyone was George Gershwin, the composer of this song (I know some of you are starting to say things because I talk about him - and play his songs - a lot), then no one would bother listening to his songs, and no one would think that he was a good composer.

Mixed-Up Rag

Yeah, I know. I haven't published a song like this in a while. I've been busy with jazz and my 5-month-old YouTube channel (I gave you a button redirecting to it, right?) and have forgotten a little bit about variety on my blog. You might be looking for something different and you're getting a bit tired of the tags saying "Jazz" for weeks on end, so I've decided that I'll give you something different.

(I didn't actually decide that today - I wrote down my posting dates for these songs a few months in advance. It's difficult to run a blog without a schedule.)

So, you're wondering why this song is supposed to be so mixed up, right?

Rock Zone

Woo-hoo!

Today's a great day - because it's the day when I've posted my 35th song. This post has a song that you might consider "new and different", but I need to put something here other than just classical and jazz music. If you've looked at the archives on the bottom of this page, you might say that I have 41 posts, but 6 of those were Heads Up posts which are just talking, pretty much. They don't have any music to go with them, although they often tell you to listen to music.

But we'd better get back to the topic of the song itself. You think it will be about a place that's filled with rocks, right? You'll see piles of them wherever you walk, from pebbles to mountains. You'll always be running around so you don't get caught under an avalanche of rocks. And it'll really hurt under your shoes, right? When you finally smash your way through the stone door (while this song is playing), you'll remember to never come to Rock Zone again.

Well, I'm talking about a different type of rock.

Old Adam

Hmmm... if you've heard this song before, you might think that the title doesn't fit the song. Although the composer of this song, William Bolcom, seemed to know a thing or two about jazz. I can see a lot of ii-V-I's and triplet sixteenth notes....oh, yeah. You might not know what those are. But you'd think that if this Adam is so old, he wouldn't be bouncing around so much, right? But if you haven't heard the song, I'll need to tell you a little about it first.

Maple Leaf Rag

When Scott Joplin wrote this famous rag, he said, "This song will make me the king of ragtime." He was right, because now he is known among the best composers of all time. However, ragtime music is often difficult to play if you have small hands(like me!), because as you can hear, the left hand has to play big chords and bounce around the piano for the whole song.

I managed to get away with it, though - probably because I like this song a lot. Anything can be accomplished with enough practice.... right? They always say that if you're passionate enough about something, you can accomplish it with enough time.

2018 recording:


2022 Update! Did 2018 Liya know that this page was still going to exist in 4 years? I don't know about her, but I've made a new recording of the song. (This is one of the many results of going through a binder filled with sheet music, looking back on songs I played years ago.) Hopefully this will be a quality improvement from the 2018 one... but the only way for you to know for sure is to listen to it.

Can't believe I made the original post before I even set up my YouTube channel. Time sure does move faster than you think.

Golliwogg's Cakewalk

This is a nice, bouncy song that I learned last year. In fact, when I listened to it, I imagined these six-legged "Golliwoggs" dancing and playing outside. This is one of my favorite songs I've added so far.
Creativity is an important thing to consider when writing a song that will be enjoyable. (Although this would not be considered an appropriate song in the Classical period!) You can really see a picture when you hear this one. Listen to it, below.

Boogie Woogie Stomp

Listening to songs is a good way to inspire yourself to learn them on your own. That's what happened to me when I heard this song on YouTube.

I then decided to learn this bouncy song on my own piano. However, this wasn't the first of my jazzy songs, which you can hear more of soon. I also made some modifications to the original track, which appear especially after 1:50.

Boogie Woogie Stomp - composed by Albert Ammons