We Covered Individual Techniques – Now: Combining Left Hand Piano Arranging Styles

Good afternoon. This is Duane, and today I’d like to take a look at combining left and piano arranging styles that we have developed over the last few sessions. We started out by saying that we could : Probably the easiest way to accompany a right-hand melody : Let’s say we were playing a song like this. The easiest way to just hold the chord. Oh we said we’d also repeat that chord, and so on that just is more interesting.

Then we said that we could strum the chord. By strumming the chord I mean like that; from the bottom up like you’re strumming a guitar. I like to put a sixth or a seventh in the chord to make it sound a little fuller. Listen. We use a lot of different more advanced styles : I mean not styles but songs examples. You see I’m strumming the chord there. You see that. That’s a viable style; just repeating the chord but you can strum it from the bottom and add a color tone or two. By color tones I mean a sixth or a major seventh or a ninth or a six/nine, something like that.

Then we said we can also play an Alberti bass that is play bottom top, middle top, bottom top or bottom top, middle top, middle top, middle top. A song like that. We said we could also play chords upside down; we’re not obligated to play them in root position. For example, I played the C chord in root position but when I moved to the G chord, I might move to that position instead of that position. Add the seventh.

Then we said there’s a swing bass where we hit a low note and then the chord itself. Low note chord, low note chord. We swing back and forth between a low note whether it’s here or the octave below and then the chord. Okay, and again we don’t have to play the chord in root position. We can play it first inversion or second inversion. That’s called a swing bass because your left hand is swinging back and forth. You should probably use your damper pedal to some degree, the pedal on the right, [so it goes 03:30] sounds together.

Then we said we can also use an alternating bass. Instead of always hitting the root, we get to hit the fifth every other time. Or we can hit the third of the chord. In other words get any of the chord notes as a low note occasionally just for variety.

Then we said we can also arpeggiate the chord. Instead of playing like that we can arpeggiate it in 10s. That’s called open voicing, so it opens the chord gives it a bigger sound. See that sound? This is a lot bigger, and so we can go like this. Or we can do it eighth notes so you can go one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three. That’s the G chord. One and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one and two and three, and one. Okay.

Then we also the last technique we talked about was the handover arpeggio where we play that open voice arpeggio in 10 but then come over and play some of the higher notes of the chord. It depends on how much time we have as to how high we go. We can also go back down, we can do this. You see that? Like so. That’s called a handover arpeggio.

Now that I’d like to do today is show you how to combine those styles. Any one of those styles alone gets kind of boring, so we have to mix it up. When you’re learning of course, when you’re just starting out learning a style you just use one style all the way through just so you can learn the style. As you get more and more advanced, you wanted to mix up those styles.

I’m going to play some standard song and I will use a variety of styles and see : Don’t bother with my right hand; we’ll cover my right hand in the next series because we’re going to do a series on right hand styles. We’re focusing on the left-hand styles right now so let’s :

You see by mixing it up it doesn’t get boring on the left hand because you’re using an arpeggio and you’re using a swing bass and you’re using a : You’re strumming, you’re strumming the chords. Then you’re using an Alberti bass as I did a couple of times. You mix and match, and of course that takes experience to : Excuse me. That takes experience to know how to do that. As you get more advanced you will start to mix those up. There is kind of an overview of the left-hand styles.

Now there’s combination styles. You can combine those in various ways like we just did and in other ways I don’t want to say. Those are the only styles for the left hand, but those are the basic ones. There’s some specialized like : and the boogie styles : and … Like the alpha walk and so on. Those are specialist styles. You would use those in a given song, but for the most part you wouldn’t use those specialist styles in a general kind of standard song.

That’s it for today and next time when we get together, I’m going to be gone for a week, but next time when we get together we will check out the right-hand styles, okay. There will be a whole bunch of those. Then when we get done then we’ll try to put two together and you can see that when you multiply styles in the left hand, times styles in the right hand and times all with individual combinations, you get to immense number of styles that you can use.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08auZref_dw&feature=youtu.be

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