The left hand accompanies
Four patterns that turn chords into an accompaniment, and an orderly method for joining the two hands without falling apart along the way.
There is a moment when the piano stops sounding like a person practicing and starts sounding like a song, and that moment almost always happens in the left hand.
The reason is simple. The right hand on its own puts chords into the air with no ground underneath them. The instant the left hand gives every chord a deep bass note, the brain closes the picture and hears a full accompaniment. In this lesson we will learn four patterns that do precisely that, from the very simplest one to the one that already sounds like a recording.
Before the hands, two lines of understanding.
The left hand is not playing the song. It is playing the floor the song stands on: where the chord starts, when it changes, and what sense of motion runs underneath it. If it is too busy, it steals attention from the melody; if it is missing, the whole thing floats.
So the first rule is a rule of restraint: a simple pattern played in time beats an impressive pattern that stumbles.
And the second rule is a rule of place: the left hand plays below middle C, usually in the octave underneath it. Do not go too low — three octaves below the middle of the instrument everything blurs into mud, and that is just as true on a very expensive piano.
The four chords above are the material of this lesson. Your right hand will play them exactly as you learned them, and your left hand will do four different things with them.
The simplest, and genuinely the most useful one in your first week: the left hand plays the root only, with the little finger, an octave below the right hand.
C major in the right hand, and a lone C in the left. A minor in the right hand, and a lone A in the left. One note per chord, pressed the moment the chord changes.
It looks thin on paper and sounds full to the ear, and that is exactly the point. Play the sequence C, Am, F, G this way — four beats per chord — and you will hear a song.
Now we add depth without adding work. Instead of one note, play two: the root with the little finger, and the note five white keys above it with the thumb.
In C that is C and G. In A minor it is A and E. In F it is F and C. In G it is G and D.
The hand keeps exactly the same opening in every one of the chords — you simply move it to the new place. This is the pattern most rock and pop stands on, and it sounds solid without deciding whether the chord is happy or sad, because the note that decides that is simply not in it.
Metronome at 70 — one beat per note, then one chord every four beats
So far you have been pressing notes together. Now we take them apart and sound them one after another: root, fifth, third, and back again. This is called an arpeggio — the very same chord, only spread out in time.
In C major: C, G, E, G. Repeat. In A minor: A, E, C, E. In F: F, C, A, C. In G: G, D, B, D.
This pattern is the reason piano ballads sound like piano ballads. It keeps a constant motion running underneath the melody, and it gets in nobody's way.
Two things turn it from an exercise into music: play it legato, with every note held until the next one arrives, and play it more quietly than the right hand. A left hand playing at the same volume as the melody covers it completely, and that is the most common fault in this pattern.
And this one already has a character of its own. Three beats: on the first, the root on its own, low down; on the second and third, the full chord, higher up.
Bass, chord, chord. Bass, chord, chord.
That is a time signature of three — a waltz — and it sounds like a carousel from the very first bar. If everything you have played so far has been in four, this is the first time you will hear how much one change in the number of beats does to an entire song. The theory behind these time signatures is unpacked in the bar and time signature lesson, and it holds for the piano in exactly the same way.
Four patterns is already a choice, and beginners tend to choose the most impressive one. That is the wrong choice almost every time.
Here is how to decide in ten seconds. A slow, calm song gets the arpeggio — there is time in it for the movement, and the movement fills the silence. A mid-tempo song with lyrics gets root and fifth, or the single note, because the words need room and nobody wants the left hand competing with them. A song in three gets bass-chord-chord, and that one is close to dictated. A song where you are accompanying a singer gets the simplest pattern you can think of, and that stays true after ten years too.
And a rule that rescues songs: you are allowed to change pattern in the middle. A quiet verse on the single note, a chorus that opens up into the arpeggio, and an ending on root and fifth. That change on its own creates a sense of progress without your having added so much as one chord.
Until now every chord has had a whole bar to itself. In real life that happens about half the time, and in the other half a chord changes halfway through.
The answer in the left hand is simpler than it looks: the pattern gets shorter, it does not get different. If you had bass-chord-chord over a whole bar and now there are two chords in the bar, play bass-chord for each of them. If you had a four-note arpeggio, play two notes.
What you must not do is hurry. The temptation is to cram the whole pattern into half the time, and it sounds exactly like what it is: panicked. A left hand playing fewer notes in less time sounds deliberate; a left hand playing the same notes faster sounds frightened.
Now for the moment everybody waits for, and most people walk into it the wrong way.
Do not try to play both hands together before each of them works on its own. That is not cautious advice — it is the fast route. Here is the order that works:
This will take two days or two weeks, and it depends mostly on how slowly you are willing to go. Anyone who tries it at full tempo straight away spends a week on something that would have taken two days.
The looper — record the left hand and play the right hand over it
The looper is the best trick available here: record eight bars of the left hand on its own, then play the right hand over the top of it. You hear the finished result, the brain gets the whole picture, and when you do join the hands for real you already know where you are going.
| What happens | The likely cause | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| The left hand covers the melody | It is playing at the same volume | The left hand is always the quieter one |
| Everything sounds like mud | The bass is too low | Go up an octave; just below middle C is plenty |
| The hands do not land together | The tempo is too fast for joining up | Half tempo, and only then build it back |
| The left hand stops when the right gets tangled | The brain is running one hand only | Give the left a simpler pattern for now |
| The fingers get confused between the hands | The mirrored numbering is still new | Practice each hand separately for another day |
| The arpeggio sounds chopped up | The finger leaves the key too early | Legato: every note held until the next one |
You have chords, inversions and four accompaniment patterns. With those you can already accompany an entire song — and from here the road runs on to the foundations of theory, which explain why these particular chords go together.