Sometimes you want to have some time away from technical exercises or trying to learn theory, so I made three short videos for you to help you do just that. Below, find each video with a brief overview and explanation of each video's content in order to encourage you to watch it and motivate you to try out what I provide. Nothing is overwhelming. Each video provides a new left hand idea and the right hand only focuses on the first five notes of the major scale so just five fingers in one position. That's not too overwhelming, is it?
Whatever repertoire you play, the left hand will 100% include one of the left hand patters/techniques provided in one of these three videos, so feel free to watch them in any order. This first video introduces two important ideas for the left hand: the bass note/chord 'stride' technique combined with playing a basic triad in root position and then first inversion.
Try this in different keys using major and minor triads, or any other chords you may know or wish to become familiar with. Try to aim for steadiness in execution, fluidity and precision. Begin slowly at your natural limit - do not rush. Whilst the left hand is doing its thing, the right hand plays 12345 from the same key as that which the chord is in. Note that you can choose to count to 3 or 4 and that this will be symmetrical with the right hand going 123454321 or put it out of sync, which makes for a great brain-breaking game!
The right hand is as part 1 above but the left hand here is playing a broken chord: 1 5 8 3 (in the next octave), causing your index finger to reach over to play that 3. This causes you to count to 6 because you'll descend after playing that 3: 1 5 8 3 8 5 ... repeat. This time, feel a bit freer to play the 12345 in the right hand no so metronomically and in sync with the left hand pattern, even if by one note's hesitation.
This final video gives you a nice, useful technique but also a good finger workout and a bit of a brain-breaking exercise when you introduce the right hand. It's called Alberti bass (after the guy who used it a lot) but is very common in a lot of modern music, not to mention a nice accompaniment for basic compositions. You play 1 5 3 5 and repeat. You can also play 1 3 5 1 3 5, etc. See which one is easier and practise the other one!
Oh, and you may find this video useful on dynamics to apply to either the videos above or your own repertoire or favourite exercises.
Enjoy!
