Oranges and Lemons: Hands Together

Hello and welcome back I'm Joseph
Hoffman.
Today we are going to learn the left
hand of "Oranges and Lemons",
and then we'll check out how to play it hands together.
So first let's come over to the staff
and look at the notes we'll be playing.
Here we have the grand staff with the
first chord your left hand needs to play drawn on it.
You recall that when you read from the grand staff, your right hand will play all the notes on this top staff
and your left hand is in charge of any notes on this bottom staff which is usually a bass clef.
Now, can you help me figure out the names of these three
notes?
Look at the line right here.
What would you call this note in letter names?
If you said F you're correct.
Then a skip above F, since we go from a line to the
next line, we know that's a third
or a skip up. What would this letter be?
If you said A you're correct.
Now we need to skip up one more time and that lands us on the middle C line.
When you see notes stacked on top of each other like this, that means to play them at the same time
simultaneously in a blocked chord.
So you're going to play F and A and C together in a three note chord.
On the
piano those notes would be here, here, and here.
Assuming that this is middle C.
In "Oranges and Lemons" since we're in the F major pentascale,
F will be DO and so
using solfège we would call these notes:
DO MI and SO which together make
what's called a I chord.
Sometimes called a tonic chord.
Now there's another kind of chord in "Oranges and Lemons" that we'll also see.
And that's this chord. You'll notice that this MI which was on A
moved up a step to B, because of this
key signature and the pentascale were in,
this will actually be a B-flat.
So when we play that chord,
instead of MI we'll actually play a FA, which in the F major pentascale is on a B-flat.
When notes are just a step or a second apart in a chord there's not really room to put them in a
in a totally straight vertical line and so that's why
when we need a C and a B
in the same chord we kind of have to tuck
one of the notes, the one that's a
step below, a little bit off to the side.
But we'll still play them all simultaneously.
The name of this chord
is the Fsus4 chord.
It's a kind of suspended chord. So sus stands for suspension or suspended.
And a suspended chord just means a chord that's, you know, it's kind of in transition. It's an F chord,
but this B-flat is called a suspension because it kind of keeps us in a little bit of suspense
or suspension because our ears want to hear
that B-flat go back to the A.
Now let's come to the piano and find these two
chords in the music.
Okay, let's check out the bass staff for "Oranges and Lemons".
Here we've got the I chord with a DO MI and SO.
What I'd like you to do is take an orange pencil or crayon and let's circle all of the I chords.
We have one here.
Here
Is this a I chord?
No, that's our Fsus4 chord.
And then here's another I chord.
If you download this music from
our website you can try this yourself at home.
Let's find all the I chords on
the next line as well.
Good, and then with a different color, I'm
going to use blue, let's circle the Fsus4 chords.
Can you tell me how many
beats we will hold this chord?
If you said 3 beats you're correct. This is a
dotted half note chord,
and so each chord will be held for 3 beats: 1 2 3, 1 2 3
Now, let's try to play these chords on the piano.
Okay, our I chord will be played with fingers 5 3 and 1 in the F major pentascale,
and we're going to hold it for 3 beats and we'll do two of those in a row like this:
1 2 3
1 2 3
and then we will need an Fsus4 chord using fingers 5
2 and 1 this time since our finger 2
is on that B-flat
when we're in the F major pentascale for our left hand.
Gently lift fingers 3 and 4 to play the Fsus chord.
That's also 3
beats long, and then we go back to the I chord.
So now once again fingers 5 3 and 1.
2 3
Now let's try the whole line without stopping.
Here we
go, ready, start:
1 2 3
1 2 3
Fsus 1 2 3
1 2 3
Good, if that was going a
little fast for you,
just press pause and practice it several times on your own.
Then rewind and try it again with me.
Now let's go back to the music and check out
lines three and four.
Down here on line three you'll recall that the right hand
shifts down to the c major pentascale
Let's take a look at what the left hand
does.
Once again you can tell we have a blocked chord because the notes are all
stacked together.
However, now we're in a different position.
...