Start Arranging On The Piano by Learning to Strum a Chord in Your Left Hand

Good morning this is Duane and today I’m going to start a series on arranging. I’m going to do a series of videos on left hand arranging styles and right hand arranging styles, and then put it together for two hand arranging styles. A lot of people have requested that over the years, and I just never had gotten around to it fully. We’re going to do that starting today and we’re going to take up the first left hand arranging style.

Let me talk about what I mean by arranging. Some people are scared off by that word and they visualize a composer writing copious notes on paper and so on. That’s arranging too, that’s complicated arranging. This is on the spot arranging, it’s learning to play a song any way that it’s not as written. In other words, it’s not off the printed sheet. You’re making it up by reading chords symbols, or you’re playing it by ear, or any combination thereof, but you’re not playing it as written.

There are numerous, numerous arranging techniques as you will learn over the years. Everything from simple chords strumming to really complicated stuff and on and on, arranging encompasses all of that. We’re going to start out very, very simply. The first left hand chord, left hand arranging style I’d like to take up is chord strumming – how to strum a chord on the piano. Chord strumming means that; it’s just like you’re strumming a guitar, except on a piano you probably hit the notes all at once. There is a different kind of chord strumming where you break it up like a guitar. You can probably let the pedal, push down the pedal, the right pedal, the sustain pedal as you do that.

Let me just take it very simply and then I’ll show you how it can be applied in a little more advanced way. Let’s say that I’m playing. I was playing the melody in the right hand and my left hand was just playing on every beat. Now does it have to play on every beat; certainly not. You might start out like that with one chord every measure, or two chords a measure. Or four chords a measure; one on every beat, or how about eighth notes, and there’s a place for each one of those. If you’re just staring out playing piano that’s where I would start.

Take a simple song, like maybe When The Saints Go Marching In, and play that on your left hand. Just take simple chords and get started, you can switch between the chords. Now there are a lot of varieties to that; for example, you could do this. What am I doing here? I’m kind of echoing the rhythm of the melody. The melody goes one, two, three, four; one, two, three four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, one, one, one, one. You see that, kind of echoing the rhythm of the melody and that’s a possibility too.

For those of you that think this wouldn’t apply to advanced piano playing, let me show you how Erroll Garner used it; see that. He strummed the chords from the bottom like that. Then he’d punctuate it by, with the low note now and then, but we’ll take that up on a subsequent style. For now you can just play. See this; I’m strumming from the bottom, whatever the chord is. If you’re a beginner, just play the basic chord, the “C” chord. I’m playing a major 7^th, C-major 7^th there and with 9^th in too. Makes it real cluttered. You may not like that; if you don’t just simplify it by playing the basic chord, in other words:

I want you to see how similar simple and advanced is. It’s really the same thing. It’s just a matter of getting enough technique under your fingers and knowing enough about chords that you can play the more complex chords in a more, maybe a more advanced ways. That’s where to start, by strumming a chord. Either on every beat or every other beat, or once a measure, or eight times a measure; just some combination, but try that.

That’s arranging technique in the left hand, number one. Thanks for being with me and if you enjoy these tips come on over and sign up for them. Tomorrow we’ll do arranging technique number two in the left hand. We’ll see you then. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the video on  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDmgpm2VlHY&feature=youtu.be

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