Did you know that Errol Garner, the jazz pianist, was left-handed? So, I got to thinking about the left hand parts on the piano and how much time I have invested in piano practice to improve and strengthen my bass lines in music.
I’ve always been comfortable playing a melody line with my right hand, but when it comes to playing Alberti bass or Waltz bass, it seemed like I needed extra practice, playing left-hand notes separately until polished, then adding. both hands to hear a more balanced sound.
To accomplish this, let’s take a look at music and see how a composer will write harmonic parts in many different ways.
1. Block chords look like all the notes are stacked together, like a snowman, and you play them together at the same time. He will also find many blocked chords for his left hand in rock and roll and hymns.
2. Broken chords are when the left hand plays the notes of a chord but one at a time. You can approach this by playing the oom-pah or some say, boom-chick rhythm as a repeating pattern of a single note followed by a chord. You’ll hear this in Ragtime on the music of Scott Joplin.
3. Arpeggiated chords form notes of a chord that are played one at a time, like an arpeggio. They are found in classical piano music and in pop music.
4. Alberti bass is when the notes of each chord are played starting with the bottom note, to the top note, the middle note, and then to the top note again.
5. The waltz bass is where the first note of the chord is on the downbeat, the first beat of the bar, and followed by the other notes on beats 2 and 3. It is played on a downbeat in 3/4 time signature . This ballad style allows your right hand the freedom to take the melody line out and just let it flow.
This is the basic introduction to the movement of the left hand. More advanced rhythmic patterns would include off-beat, swing, and slow jazz waltz, to name a few. Plus, there are Latin rhythms to learn, like Bossa Nova, Mambo Tango, Cha Cha, Rhumba, and Samba.
No matter what level you’re at, with many of the left hand parts listed above, you can incorporate them into your music for rhythm practice.
