Left Hand Bass Parts
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 melodic line with my right hand, but when it came to playing the Alberti Bass or the Waltz Bass, it seemed like I needed extra practice, playing the left hand notes separately until they were polished and then adding them together. 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 once. 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 on Ragtime to 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, up to the top note, the middle note, and then up to the top note again.
5. Waltz bass is where the first note of the chord is on the downbeat, the first beat of the measure, and followed by the other notes on beats 2 and 3. It is played with a downbeat in 3/4 time . This ballad style allows your right hand the freedom to pull out the melody line 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. Also, there are Latin rhythms to learn, such as 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.