Lesson 242

Sonatina in C: First Movement: A Section: Left Hand

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Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to continue working on the A section of "Sonatina" in C by Clementi, first movement. Today it's time to tackle the left-hand part. Let's come to the sheet music to get started. Now looking at the first line left hand part, tell me what you notice. This is actually going to be pretty easy, right? Our finger 2 is on bass C. Then we just play, I'm going to pretend we're in 4/4. Just remember we're learning this so we're going to ignore the cut time and just think 4/4 for now. So we have 1 2, and then here's our half rest. Remember, it looks like a hat. So a hat is a half rest, and that gets 2 beats. So 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4. Try that with me on your piano. Ready, go: 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, and then what note do we get here? This is a guide note. It's the bottom line of bass clef, so it's ground G. Finger 5 plays that ground G, and then let's do some more analysis. Can you pause the video and figure out what's happening right here? Then press play and we'll figure it out together. What did these five notes form? We start on bass G, step down, step down, step down, step down. That is our C major pentascale. So C, p.s. for pentascale. Capital C for C major. Then we have some other stuff that we'll look at in a second. Let's come down and do a little bit more analysis before we try playing any more. I'd like you to pause the video and on your own see if you can figure out what chord we have here and here. These are broken chords, but together if you put all those notes together, you should be able to figure out what chord is happening and then press play and we'll look at the answer together. What did you get for this chord? Let's see, we have an F-sharp and then we're just a step above middle C, so that's a D. And then this next note is an A. Now is this root position? It's not. You can always tell you're not in root position because of this fourth. So, what can we do? We can take this D and put it on the bottom. Now do we have a root position chord? We do. Now that shows us we were really a D major chord first inversion. We have a D, F-sharp, A, it just happens to be in this order: F-sharp, A, D. The order doesn't matter. It's still a D major chord. And then what chord did you get down here? We have a ground G, skip up to B, skip up to D, and then another G on top. What chord is that? Well I'm going to ignore this G on top because we already have one down here. Together that makes a G major chord. Let's try to play the left hand part on the piano. Okay, we've already looked at this first line, but let's just do it one more time. Remember, we're going to pretend we're in 4/4. Place your finger 2 on bass C, and let's count the beat out loud as if we're in 4/4. I'll give you 4 beats and then we'll start. 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, 1, and then if we go on to measure four we see we come down to ground G, 1 2, then what? Finger 1 has to come up where? Can you name this next note for me? If you said G, you're correct. So finger 1 comes to this G. We've basically come up an octave and then what do the next four notes do? We're just stepping down in our C major pentascale TI-TI TI-TI TA, and they also decrescendo. So try doing this descending scale as you decrescendo, and one thing that will help with the decrescendo is to let your wrist kind of float up as you decrescendo. So you're taking your arm weight off the keys basically. Now you try. Good, and then measure six what's the next note? If you said middle C, you're correct. So we'll come up here with finger 1 rest, rest, then finger 2 comes down to F-sharp. Step up to G, then what's this next note? If you said bass C, you're correct. Finger 3 is going to kind of reach down here this C, and then what's the next note? It's just a step up, but it says finger 1. Why is that? It's because next we've got to go down a full octave down to this low D. So let's look at this whole little section starting on that F-sharp. F-sharp steps up to G, then finger 3 on C steps up to D, down an octave to low D, and then let's look at the first note of measure eight. What do we get there? Can you name it? It's a ground G. So finger 2 lands very nicely there. So all together we get: Pause the video and work on that little section of for the left hand, and then press play to go on. Now let's take a look at measure nine. First note is what? Tell me it's name. If you said F-sharp, you're correct. Finger 5 is on F-sharp, finger 1 will take the D, and finger 3 will take the A, and I'd like you to notice this pattern. We have three notes. Can you play this as a blocked chord? It's basically a D major chord first inversion as we discovered. All right, so play this as a blocked chord, and now think of this pattern. I want you to say with me bottom, top, middle, top, and then that pattern repeats. Bottom, top, middle, top. That's called an Alberti bass pattern. Whenever you see this pattern in a broken chord where it's bottom, top, middle, top. Okay, pause the video and I'd like you to just get comfortable with that pattern. Bottom, top, middle, top, bottom, top, middle, top. Pause and work on measure nine, then press play to go on Okay, now we're going ...