Promenade: Left Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we are learning the left hand part for "Promenade".
Let's come to the piano to get started.
All right first up today let's practice tapping the rhythm,
and today we're focusing on the left hand part, so look down here in the bass clef.
Our time signature is 4/4, so we'll count 4 beats per measure. I would like you to count out loud. Don't just rely on me.
Count out loud and let's tap the rhythm of the left hand part.
Ready, I'll count 4 beats, and then we begin.
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Great, if you need another shot, feel free to rewind and try again. Otherwise let's keep going.
Now, can you find where to place your left hand on the piano? Here's my middle C.
See if you can find where to place the hand on your piano.
The score tells us to place finger 1 on bass G just a little below middle C,
And our key signature tells us we'll need an F-sharp, so my finger 2 could go ahead and get ready on
this F-sharp, which we can see we're going to need almost right away.
Now let's try this. I'm going to let you try and figure out the first
entire line on your own.
We know that we start with finger 1 on G.
You know the rhythm because we just practiced it. You know we need an F-sharp.
Press pause and see if you can figure out the first line on your own by reading the notes
from the score, and then press play and we'll try it together.
Okay, let's see how you did.
You should have played G, then F-sharp, back to G, then F-sharp, D.
Okay, did you get that skip here from F-sharp down to D, and then steps up to E, F-sharp, G,
and then what interval do we go down here?
We go from G to a D, which is the interval of a fourth.
G down to D, back to G, and in solfège remember if we're going below DO, we have DO TI LA SO
So we're like going DO SO DO at the end there, okay?
Let's try it together now, ready go.
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Great now press pause, and this time I'd like you to practice that three or four more times with counting out loud.
Get comfortable counting the beat while you play those notes, then press play to try it again with me.
Good, so by now you should feel pretty comfortable with that first line.
What I'm going to do this time to challenge you, is I'm going to play the left hand with you. You're just, you will just play the left hand.
I'm going to play both hands so you can hear how the right hand will fit in with the left hand.
I'd like you to play and count the beat out loud.
Try not to let the right hand part distract you. Just focus on the left hand and the counting.
I'll give you 4 beats, and then we'll go.
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Good, now let's go on to line two. It's the same thing again, but piano this time.
Okay, ready go.
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Did you make any mistakes?
If you did that's perfectly fine. Mistakes are how we learn.
It's by struggling through the mistakes that we do our best learning.
So feel free to press pause and work on that some more, then rewind and try it again.
Once you feel like you have those two lines pretty confident in your left hand,
then let's go on and tackle lines three and four.
So looking at the score for line three here starting at measure nine,
tell me what you notice about the left hand part.
can you find any patterns going on here?
You probably see this pattern of alternating
these notes on one hand we've got these notes stepping down.
We've got this E, steps down to D, steps down to C, steps down to B,
and in between each of those we have this staccato G, so we have E, step down, G, step down, G, step down, G.
And when we get to this last one, we're actually going the interval of a sixth. I've got to slide my fingers over to reach that last B.
E G D G C G Now reach down a little bit. B G, and they're all staccato.
I'd like you to press pause and work on those two measures on your own, then press play to go on.
Now if you look at the rest of that line you'll see,
that it's just like the last two measures of the previous two lines.
So if we put all of line three together we get: E G D G C G B G, then E F-sharp G D G.
So, press pause and work all the way through line three this time, then press play to go on.
Now let's try this challenge again where I play both hands. You just play the left hand and count the beat out loud,
but I'd like you to hear how these hands sound together.
They work pretty nicely together, so again your job is just left hand, and let's go
on the slow side, I'll give you 4 beats to prepare and then we'll start.
I'll count 4. 1 2 3 4
Good, now again if you made some mistakes that's totally expected.
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