What To Do with the Left Hand

(Written yesterday)

I recently ordered a book titled Playing Solo Jazz Piano by Jeremy Siskind. And then last night, I watched his video on playing solo jazz piano ... and I learned some things that I can do with my left hand! Better yet, none of the information, even in the "Advanced" section, was over my head! The rusty old key is starting to turn. I didn't have much of a chance to play after finishing the video, but I'm looking forward to playing some tonight. I should be getting the book in the mail soon, too, so ... I'm kind of excited!

(Written today)

I couldn't help myself. I had to do it. I had to sit down at the piano and see if I could put some of these ideas into action. I picked a song at random -- Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" and proceeded to try playing just the root in the bass and embellish the melody as much as I wanted to. Of course, I ended up falling into a few patterns:

1) Adding chords to the melody

2) Playing slow broken chords (at least the 1 and 5) in the bass

3) Making a usually-upbeat song slow and meditative

None of those patterns are bad, but I'd like to get to where those aren't my default. Particularly with items 2 and 3.

Anyway, here is my meditative version of "All the Things You Are." Sadly, I accidentally cut the end of the video off in order to make it fit in a YouTube reel, then deleted the full video from my phone, not realizing what I was doing.

My next goal with this song (and it will be this song throughout) will be to try improvising with some of the other methods Siskind covers in his video. I do want to see if I can make it more bouncy and upbeat.

Comments

old lady said…

Would love to hear the ending! Beautiful song.

1:56 PM

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