Hey All,

I'm interested to know what you do when you play chord charts. For example, i have a book that only gives the chords of a song (ex: Cm | Cm | Fm | Fm etc.). Now when I practice those chords, I usually do single handed chord progressions which sound really flat. Another thing i do to get my other hand involved is play the 1 and 7 with the left hand and 3 and 5 with the right hand. For the more advanced players how do you usually approach that, how would you play the chords mentioned above for example?

It depends on the song. fast or slow? waltz or tango?

Also if you are doing a piano solo you would play the melody with your right hand.

Usually slower songs, blues and jazz. I don't do much soloing (still trying to get good at that). As of late, i've just been playing the same chords with both hands.

When learning a new song from a chord chart, I usually use very badic arpeggios for the left hand - so with your example my left hand would do this:

Cm: C - G - C - Eb - G
Fm: F - C - F - Ab - C

This is just one way..
Watch the left hand is doing in this video and you will get some more ideas:

That is the main reason I started taking piano lessons recently, although lord knows my basic piano playing technique can use the help as well. But I specifically said one of my long-term goals was to be able to play "Great American Songbook" type stuff from a lead sheet with just melody and chords.

Today I took my first, tiny baby step toward doing that. I took a Cape Breton fiddle tune that I know how to play on the mandolin and came up with a piano accompaniment for it. My fiddle-tune book has just

G D G C D...

and so forth written above the melody and I wanted to do something beyond just triads or block chords underneath. It took about 2-3 hours and my brain was hurting by the end but I came up with something satisfactory. Not really much to it but just try a lot of stuff and if something sounds good, remember it.