Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Left Hand Monotony

Hi Folks,

I have been noticing lately, that despite being able to pickup basic versions of pieces by ear with little trouble, my left hand is always very monotonous and doing the same thing over and over.

I have queried my teacher about this, while we have tried different approaches, I can never find something which feels and sounds like it "fits"... is there anywhere I can go to look up common/not so common left hand accompaniments to spice things up a bit?

Jazzy/Blues/Waltzy anything really, to get away from the monotonous octaves with 5th or 3rd added and triads?

I just need something to inspire me and get the ball rolling really.

Hey UK, listen/watch what another UK guy's left hand is doing to comp the RH, he's given my ears some good ideas on rhythm possibilities ... I had to simplify and slow down to get my LH to do what's a walk in the park for him:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi0cLdJCgTA

Your best teacher in this will be your ears. Listen to a lot of music in the style you want to play, and perhaps even explore some music outside of that style for ideas. Listen specifically for what other musicians have done - no need to try and reinvent the wheel.

Here are some LH accompaniments that are commonly used (but not necessarily in a jazz style):
-arpeggios (root-5th-root, or root-5th-3rd or any other combination)
-block chords
-octaves
-Alberti bass
-stride bass (low root followed by higher 3rd-5th or root-3rd, or root-3rd-5th chord, or opposite with chord on the bottom and single note on top)
-counter-melody (basically harmony moving in parallel or contrary motion to the melody)
-an arpeggio broken up between the hands (so LH helps the RH in completing the arpeggio figure - lots of variations in this)
-open 5ths/4ths
-walking bass
-boogie bass
-ostinato (any repeated melodic or harmonic pattern)

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see there are many, many options out there. Explore and be creative. Your LH can do anything your RH can do.

Great!

I'll have a look into these tonight and give them a whirl, it's nice to have a little inspiration to get things going thank you both.

Good find Rerun! Thanks!
Excellent view of his hands.

Great video! Thank you for sharing

Hi Rerun, this is fantastic.
I am a totally classical piano gal but loves Jazz and Swing (did i spell correctly?). Love the syncopation, rhythm and color. Is there any book by this guy and other talk about how to learn this sort of stuff? Thank you.

Hey, neighbor, I don't know how the heck I missed you. I usually use iPhone and cannot see all the posts in one shot. I am using computer this morning for a change.

Please forgive me if I already welcomed you and forgot about it ( ), anyway, welcome to the ABF forum:)

You could begin playing this N. O. style in a heartbeat FarmGirl, much faster than me ... your ears will have fun with it too!

Let me see what I can dig up out there ... in the meantime, Allen Toussaint chats and plays similar to the Cleary tape. He has a number of really good vids scattered here and there that have helped me with some of the tougher Latin beats, etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q62qTlHfyWI&feature=related

Thanks neighbor! Glad to be here...and to be seen! =) From what I've seen so far the forums are quite a valuable resource

Hehe, look what I stumbled upon via Google... http://www.learnandmaster.com/piano/resources/ this is supposed to be a course you pay for but Google crawled the members resources section some people have no idea -.-

Anyways that aside, are there any more patterns for left hand I can look up? I have managed to find about 16-20 different styles and some with audio/video examples too, now that I know what to look for it's not too difficult to find.

Here's a British 4 part series on just boogie. There are scattered blips of hand work like this one at 04:23 on the tape, see how his hands get in a kind of a dance doing some of this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DgGtDGIpg