Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum The Alfred chord approach and LH independence

I'm nearing the end of the Alfred Adult Course Book 1. From what I've covered in the book so far, it seems that the Alfred series has a very chord-centered approach, where LH always plays chords, chords, and more chords.

Recently, my teacher made my play the first couple of pieces from the Frances Clark Book of Contemporary Piano Literature, Bk 1. These short pieces should technically be at or below my level, but I had a hard time coordinating both hands, especially the LH.The LH plays only one or 2 notes at most, but the lack of a distinctive pattern threw me off kilter. No endless repeating chords for the LH unlike with Alfred.

Is this a weakness of a chord-centered approach? I think chords are great especially for playing pop songs, but my ultimate goal is to play classical and contemporary classical. But I get the feeling that reliance on chord patterns might make my LH less independent as well as hamper my reading of the bass cleff. I was thinking that the next book in the Alfred's series might address this issue but I skimmed over Book 2 last night and it was more LH chords.

I'd like to hear your opinions especially those further along in the Alfred series. Are all these chords good foundation for playing classical? Is LH independence something that I shouldn't be overly concerned about this early in my piano lessons?

Chords are an excellent foundation for playing classical because they exist as "patterns" in each of the key signatures. If you know the chords, you'll really "see" them when you start tackling classical music, so you'll realize, "Oh, that's just a repetition of a C, Dm, and E."

LH independence is just a matter of practice. In fact, I'm working on Czerny's 24 for the Left Hand, and the right hand has chords and the left hand the melody and I have a difficult time coordinating the right hand chords to the melody! Learning the piano really has a lot of depth -- just when you think you've got a good grasp, you look at the next piece and say, "Yikes! What the heck is that?!?" Then, practice, practice, practice.

Also, there's no shame in playing "below" level. For years, I stretched beyond my technical abilities to play "harder" pieces and met utter frustration. Now, I've dropped several levels just so I can improve on technique, dynamics, and interpretation. It's a much more joyful approach to playing and the "easy" pieces are sounding spectacular.

In piano there is no going "backwards." Eventually, you'll need to do it all.

What Alfred is doing is easing you into playing and reading for both hands by giving you almost nothing to do for your LH other than learn rhythm and recognize notes of the chord positions. Consider the endless repetition of chords a kind of exercise.

In book 2, Alfred put you through more complicated rhythm involving both hands and begin to make you play broken chords instead of chords together, but having played chords together makes it easy to see the LH notes are actually chords broken out into notes. Book 1's Scarborough Fair LH is all broken chords. Lots of music use broken chords.

If you learn your chords well, later on when you learn arpegios and Alberti bass common in classical music of Mozart, Beethoven, etc, you'll instantly recognize them to be based on specific chords you know, making sight reading them a piece of cake. If you don't know your chords, then you'll struggle to read both LH bass and RH melody at the same time.

Susan K. &4evrBeginR : Thanks a lot! You explained it nicely. It seems there's nothing I should worry about. So I'm gladly sticking with the book Glad to know it's a good foundation for classical.