Learn Piano With Simple Chords In Your Left Hand
Learn Piano With Simple Chords In Your Left Hand
Good morning. This is Duane. Today is almost Valentine’s Day. I was thinking about the love of my life, Bev. Couples often have songs. Our song was “My Funny Valentine.” As we approach Valentine’s Day, I always think about that song. I was thinking about left hand styles. I was thinking that sometimes the simplest thing is the best in certain instances.
I’d like to just demonstrate how you can learn piano with a very simple left hand style and make it very effective. All I’m doing is playing the A minor chord there, A, C E. Just playing it repetitively. Then I’m going to go to A minor with a major seventh. My little finger is on G sharp there. Then I’m going to go to G. I still have the A minor chord, but I have G on the bottom. Then I’m going to go to F sharp with my little finger, and I still have the A minor chord on the top. Now I’m going to move down my little finger to F. Now I’m playing the F major seventh chord. The A minor, when I put F on the bottom, becomes F major seventh. So it’s very simple, isn’t it? I’m just playing in 4/4 time: one, two, three, four. [Duane playing piano]Â I forgot how the melody went there for a second. [Duane playing piano]Â I did some other things other than the simple left hand, but I played most of the song just with that simple left hand. If you’re just getting started, that’s a good way to do it. Just play the melody with the right hand as simply as you can.
Notice sometimes I play the melody between the chords. I didn’t play [Duane playing piano] “My funny Valentine.” I didn’t all do that, but I played it sometimes like this. [Duane playing piano]Â Then I used some echoes up there. [Duane playing piano]Â That’s the first time I used more than a single note; I used thirds. [Duane playing piano]Â Here I used a run. I took that [Duane playing piano] D diminished seventh chord and broke it up. Then I went down half a step to B flat eleventh, thirteenth I guess. Then back to A minor. [Duane playing piano]Â Sometimes it echoed. This is where I lost the melody. [Duane playing piano]Â Then back to very simple. [Duane playing piano]Â Left hand style to end it.
At the ending what I did, and this could be an intro too, I just took two chords, F, and I played this melody [Duane playing piano]. That’s a G chord broken up over C. [Duane playing piano]Â Then I played the F chord, and still the G chord broken up over F this time. I think I ended on E major I think, and then I ended it with A major seventh. You don’t have to do that, but just an idea.
There’s some ideas on how to take a simple left hand and apply it to a beautiful song like that, particularly a love song because it’s effective. Thanks for being with me, and happy Valentine’s Day. You’re probably watching this some other month, but anyway, that’s an idea for you. If you like a lot more ideas, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our series of newsletters which almost always have a video attached, and you’ll learn a lot of ideas over the course of years. Thanks for being with me, and we’ll see you again soon. Bye-bye for now