The Song of Twilight: A Section: Left Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to work on learning the left hand part for Yoshinao Nakada's "The Song of Twilight." Let's check out the score to get started. Now, first a quick reminder that we are in treble staff for both the right and the left hand, and since we're working on this left hand part, remember that Nakada wants the left hand to begin up above middle C, so remember this is your treble G line just like it is up here. It's the same notes duplicated, so the left hand actually begins way up here on A above just one step above treble G, and this C-sharp to make this really beautiful sound. Both hands start up nice and high. Now, before we learn how to play this, let's analyze some chords. At the top of your music, will you write a I chord symbol, a IV chord symbol, and a V chord symbol, and then I'd like you to figure out how to spell each of these chords in A major. Let me give you a clue. Remember, the I chord starts on the first note of the scale, and we're using our A major diatonic chord, so the I chord, I'll give you the first one, is A C-sharp E. Now, pause the video and see if you can figure out how to spell the IV chord and the V chord, and then we'll look at it together. All right, the IV chord is built on the fourth note of the diatonic scale. One, two, three, four. So the IV chord is going to be D F-sharp A. I know it can't be an F because F isn't diatonic in the key of A major. F doesn't even exist. We can only use the notes of the A major scale, which means our IV chord has to be D, F-sharp, A, and what's the V chord? Well, we go up to the fifth note. One, two, three, four, five. It has to be E G-sharp B. Now I've mentioned before these are the three most common chords in all of music, and so these are the chords we're especially going to be watching out for. Now I'm going to draw some boxes. Now, wherever I've drawn a box, Mr. Nakada has chosen to use one of these three chords, and I'd like you to figure out which one, and go ahead and mark it down. Press pause to analyze all of these chords, and then press play and we'll look at it together. All right, here are the correct answers. He started off with this I chord, then goes to this V chord, then this is a I chord in second inversion, right? The notes don't have to be in this order right? If it's C-sharp E A, that's just the I chord in inversion, and we've got a IV chord here, we've got a I chord in first inversion here, and then these notes are kind of spread out right, but if you move this B up to here and get rid of this E because we already have one down here, you can see that's an E major chord, which is our V chord. I chord, V chord, I chord. Now one chord that we didn't analyze is this one here. Note that we jump into bass clef here, and this is really important, because it kind of looks like the notes go up here, but they actually are going down from treble staff into bass staff. So from this chord here, which is written in treble staff, we now go into bass, the notes are getting lower and lower, and so Nakada was like uh, I don't want to keep writing more and more ledger lines so let's just switch to base staff here, and that makes it easier to draw the notes because he's finally gone low enough that it makes more sense to use bass clef there. and that happens to be our VI chord. It's not quite as common as the I, IV, and V chord, but still a very I think very beautiful chord, and you can hear how that leads very nicely into the I chord there, right? The VI chord to the I chord. Isn't that a beautiful sound? VI chord to the I chord. I love doing this kind of chord analysis because when I'm playing, I like to know what I'm playing. What chords I'm using and why I'm doing them, and it will help you in your own composing if you get familiar with these chords and learn how to use them. Now let's try and play it. All right, so as we've discussed our left hand is starting up here in treble clef land, our right hand begins up here, and the left hand is going to be right here. And be sure you're watching out for all of our sharps. Remember these three keys are kind of like hot lava. F G and C. I pretend they're hot lava so I have to play these black keys instead. I'd like you to pause the video and see how much of the left hand you can learn on your own. Here's measure one. Now watch the finger numbers, watch where we we circled in a previous lesson where those sharps are if you never did that you can pause and circle all the F's and C's and G's so you know where to sharp as you play. Pause to work on measures one through four on your own, and then let's look at it together. Okay, here's the left hand part. We have 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a All right, now is that what it sounded like when you played? If so, congratulations. Good work. If there's anything that sounded different from what you played, pause to try and work it out so your notes are matching what I just played, and then let's work on adding pedal. You may have noticed underneath the music that we have these ...