Minuet in G Major: A Section: Left Hand

Hello and welcome back I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and in this lesson we'll be learning how to play the left hand part for the A section of "Minuet in G Major" by Petzold.
Let's come to the piano to get started.
All right, taking a look at this first chord of the left hand part,
you'll notice there are no finger numbers!
Well, sometimes in sheet music
they just expect you to figure it out.
If you look at what three notes we have, what do we have? What's the bottom note of this chord or triad?
If you said G, you're correct. And then you can see it just skips up, skips up,
well what finger should we use?
It makes sense to use 5 3 1 since that's just your basic G major triad. So let's
find that position 5 3 1, and then I'd like you to pause the video and figure out the rest of line 1 by yourself,
and let's count the beat. Let's count 1 2 3,
because there are no eighth notes in the left hand part you can just count the quarter note beat.
Pause to figure out line one by yourself, then press play and we'll try it together.
Okay, let's try to play this together. I'll count 3 beats and then let's play line one.
Here we go. 1 2 3
1 2 3, 1 2 3,
1 2 3, 1 2 3
Now if that matched what you played great, otherwise pause the video to work it out until you can play it just the way I did.
And let's hear what this would sound like hands together now.
Now, I'm going to give you an option right now. If you'd like to try a little bit of line one hands together,
pause the video to try that out. Otherwise we can keep going and you can come back later on your own in your own practicing this week and try the hands together.
Up to you.
Now let's look at line two in measure five
the left hand's going to be starting on a finger four,
and then we step down for 3 beats,
and then what?
We have these three notes skipping down in the G major triad. D B G
D, and then the left hand finally gets to have some fun.
We drop down an octave to this low D
and then what interval do you see from this D
to middle C. Can you tell me the name of this interval?
From D to C is a seventh, one note short of an octave,
and that's an easy way to find a seventh. Just think an octave minus a note
is a seventh. So we go down an octave then up a seventh.
So listen to all of measure eight left-hand part: TA TI-TI TI-TI
Now that's a little tricky, and in fact I don't want to stop on this A because
they're eighth notes I want to keep going
into the first note of measure nine.
So I'd like you to pause the video and practice measure eight,
and stop on the first note of measure nine.
So you get that octave and that seventh,
and the rhythms. TA TI-TI TI-TI TA
Pause to practice that section, then press play to go on.
Now let's connect that with measure seven. So we have TA TA TA TA TI-TI TI-TI TWO-OO.
Okay, pause the video and now work on measure seven, eight, going into the first note of measure nine, then press play to go on.
Now let's look at line two hands together.
And I'm going to stop on the first note of measure nine.
When you have moving notes it's really good to
go on into the next measure so you don't train a pause there because there shouldn't be a pause
at a bar line. A bar line never means to pause we always play through the bar lines.
Now because measures seven and eight are tricky to do hands together, I'd like to try some of this together.
How do you tackle something hands together especially when it's tricky.
Well, I really recommend that you do small sections.
Like let's take just measure seven right now.
And then I like to remind my hands what they're doing. So I'll take just the right hand part.
And sometimes my students say, oh Mr. Hoffman I hate starting in the middle of a piece though.
Well I say sorry Charlie, that's tough luck. You
have to learn to start in the middle of a piece otherwise you're going to really limit yourself.
It's important to be able to take just a little section to practice just that section.
That means sometimes starting in the middle of a piece.
so whether you like it or not,
let's start here in measure seven.
TA TI-TI TI-TI
Now your turn. Just the right hand, go.
Good, and then your left hand, keep your right hand there, your left hand's going TA TA TA, now your turn.
Now when you put it together, take a look in the score and see when the notes line up we have TA, that plays together,
and then the right hand plays TI-TI
so it plays two notes while the left hand just plays one note.
Watch that again from the start.
TA TI-TI TI-TI
Now pause the video and practice just measure seven.
You might do it twenty times.
Keep doing it until it feels comfortable and you can do super slow motion.
and gradually if you do it again and again and ...