Melody for Left Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.

Today we're learning how to play a piece called "Melody for Left Hand" by a composer named Ludvig Schytte.

His last name kind of sounds like how you would say scooter if you were German.

Franz, stop riding your scooter! And come in for some sauerkraut!

Put away your scooter!

As you probably guessed from the title of the piece, it's the left hand that gets to play the melody this time.

Let's listen to the piece.

Let's check out the score for "Melody for Left Hand."

As with any new song, first we want to check out our clefs. No surprises there. Treble and bass clef.

Now let's check out our key signature.

One sharp.

And that sharp is an F-sharp, which puts us, looks like from this first chord,

we've got a G major chord. So that tells us we're in the key of G major.

What's our time signature?

That's right, we've got 2/4. That tells us we'll have 2 beats per measure.

And our tempo indication is moderato, telling us we'll be at a medium speed for this song.

Now, we've got something interesting going on with the dynamics. Wow, we're piano and mezzo forte at the same time.

Well, you'll see that the piano is kind of near these right hand notes

and that's telling us we're going to play these right hand chords piano.

The left hand we will be playing mezzo forte and that's because the left hand has the melody.

So let's check out that melody.

We've got a short phrase here. Notice this phrase mark, which tells us that these notes all belong together in one idea.

That's the first short phrase. Then we have:

Another short phrase, and then we have this long phrase:

Rest.

So short, phrase, short, phrase, followed by one long phrase.

Now let's analyze the rhythm.

We've got this dotted quarter note, and you'll recall that a dotted quarter note equals 1 1/2 beats.

So, how we would count that is we need to give it 1-&.

That is a full beat, and then it gets half of beat 2.

With this eighth note getting the other half of beat 2.

which is this & of 2.

So we have 1-& 2-&.

This eighth note comes right on the & of 2 and then we have 1-& 2-&

Now what I'd like you to do

is press pause and with your own sheet music which you can download and print from our website.

I'd like you to write in the counts.

For both of these lines, write in the 1-& 2-& and just use a plus sign for the &.

And make sure they line up. You can kind of use the right hand as a guide, because your right hand is giving you all the eighth notes,

which is the same as this 1-& 2-&.

So make sure it lines up nicely, and write in the counts

for both of the first two lines. Press pause and do that, and then press play when you're ready to go on.

Okay, here's what you should have gotten for your writing in the counts.

Now we're going to practice this rhythm.

Will you count the beat out loud, say 1-& 2-& with me while you tap the rhythm of the left hand here.

Okay, I'll point where we are and tap along with you.

Let's start right here. I'll count 1-& 2-& to get us started.

Here we go. 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&.

Nice job.

Okay, last thing I'd like to do before we try playing this is going through and finding all the F's

because our key signature shows us that all the F's have to be sharp.

Be nice to circle those like this F right here,

so we're ready for them they don't catch us off guard, because we're going to have to sharp this F.

Can you find any other F's on this first line and point to it?

If you point it right here, you're correct. So let's circle that one,

and you can do this in your music too so you don't forget to sharp those.

And how about on this line? Do you see any F's?

I might have given it away, but it's right here.

Great, now, we're ready to try playing it.

Looking at the first note that the left hand has to play. Can you tell me what note it starts on? Use the letter name.

If you said G, you're correct. And it's a little bit below middle C,

so this will be our G measuring from this middle C,

and you'll notice that it starts on a finger 1. So I'm going to place my finger 1 on G.

And I might want to have my finger 2 ...