Left Hand Arranging – Swing Bass Piano Style

Good morning. This is Duane, and yesterday I began a series on arranging styles. I said we’re going to take up left hand arranging styles first and then right hand arranging styles, and then both hand arranging styles, two-hand arranging styles.

Yesterday I introduced the first arranging style. That was simply chords in the left hand played consecutively on every beat, or every other beat, or every fourth beat, or whatever it calls for. We used “Misty” to illustrate. We said that in addition to playing the chords like that we could also strum them. We illustrated the Garner style.

Today we’re going to take that a step further and we’re going to get into the swing bass piano style. It’s called a swing bass because your left hand swings between a chord and a low note. That low note, for now it will be the root of the chord. In others words, if you’re playing the C chord the low note will be the root and you’ll swing from the low root up to the chord. Now if you’re beginning, I strongly urge you to hit that C and then play a chord, the C chord, upside down so you’re a lot closer. You see, that’s a lot closer than going like that or like that.

If you prefer to do that, that’s fine, because that’s ultimately what you’ll do, but I you want to just start out easy, just hit the root there and then hit the chord upside down. Could be a second inversion or a first inversion of the C chord. Let’s just do that for a while. I’ll presume you’re a beginner. Push down your damper peddle, the peddle on the right, and just hit the low root and then the chord. The root, the chord, the root, chord.

Now if you’re in 3/4 time of course it will be one two three, one two three, one two three. If you’re in 4/4 time it could either be one two three four or just a root on the first beat: one two three four, one two three four, F two three four. It depends on the context of the song and you’ll sense that as you get into various songs.

That’s the swing bass. Now, you say “Well that’s really easy.” It is, but you need to learn it on all the keys. Let’s just do it on C, and on D flat, and on D, and on E, E flat, and on E, and on F, and on G flat or F sharp, and on G, on A flat, and on A, on B flat, and B, and back to C. You need to learn it on all the major chords and then you need to learn all minor chords. We won’t go through all the minor and diminished and augmented chords, but in due time you need to do that.

Now just to illustrate how you can use that as you get more advanced, let me just play a more advanced tune. I’ll do it in the key of E flat and you’ll see me play low note, chord, low note, chord, low note, chord, low note, chord, low note, chord, low note, chord. I’m playing E flat and then E flat 6th. I’m playing E and then E diminished. I’m playing F, F minor 7th, B flat 7th. See that? Now, speed up a little bit.

Now, you see the middle part I used the chord in every bit. Did you notice that? We haven’t taken up walk-ups yet but what I do is I walk up and then I played the A flat 7th chord. In other words, I stopped the swing bass and just went to chords like the first technique. As we get more advanced we’re going to mix it up so that you’ll have some of this and some of this and so on, because that’s what makes a song interesting.

In the right hand I just played chords under the melody, but later on I’m going to show you how to … you see that. I’m breaking up the chords, and we’ll take that up as the right hand arranging style later on. But today your job is to learn and master the left hand chording style of swing bass. I shouldn’t say master, but if you’re a beginner, get started on it. Because that’s one of the main techniques that you’ll be using in the left hand, of course, mixed with the lots of other things that we’re going to take up soon.

Thanks for being with me. We’ll see you tomorrow with the number three left hand arranging technique, so we’ll see you then. Bye bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axOuG9Em6Ug&feature=youtu.be