Hey all,
I was wondering what kind of technique that everyone uses for their left hand while playing a song? Are there any certain patterns that you use? How do you play chords with your left hand while playing the melody with your right? How can I learn to play with a different technique. I have been praying about it and I know that the Lord wants me to learn as much as I can. Can someone please help me?
Thanks
tanyasparks
What you're talking about is voicing. Voicing makes your playing sound fuller. If you go to Sister T's site, there's an article there that talks about it, if you do a search on a good search engine, you'll find some informatio, and also there's lots of books on it.
I don't really know where you are in your playing to use voicings, it sounds like you're beginning, so what you might want to do, is just double the bass note (playing the root note of the chord you're playing in your right and then adding it's lower octave to it). You could also just stick with chords in your left while playing the medley line, try inversions in both hands to get a new sound, it's all up to you.
Once you have mastered that, then you can move on to voicing. There are countless ways for a chord to sound and different ways to voice them. The simplist way to voice is by playing whatever chord you're playing in your right, play that same chord in your left, you'll hear that you have a fuller sound. Two other simple ways are the playing the root and seventh or the root and the fifth of a chord in your left hand while playing the other notes of a chord in your right.
If you need some finger exercises that should give your fingers dexterity and help you playing with both hands check out this series called Hanon...great book...you can find this at any sheet music store and online.
This should give you a little help. I'll post some examples a little later of what I mean.