First Measure Left Hand: Playing Jingle Bells on Piano

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Brian Gunnell. I'm a music teacher here in Orlando, Florida. I teach piano and guitar, and I'm here today on behalf of Expert Village, to teach you how to play Jingle Bells on your piano. To use our left hand, we want to stay in C position, so C position for your left hand is going to just mirror this; your right hand. You're going to put your pinkie on C, and then ring on D, middle; E, index; F, thumb on G, so you have that...that's your C position. For your left hand, the reason we're going to use our left hand is going to be pretty simple for this one, but it's just going to give us a fuller sound, so it doesn't sound like you're just thinking away. We're going to start on measure one; the Jingle Bells; where your right hand was going. Remember, for that we had two quarter notes, and the half note. So it's one, two, three, four. Your left hand is going to be pretty easy on this song, because we're dealing with all whole notes, which means you're going to be holding the note on your left hand for the count of four. To start on this one; for the entire first four measures we're going to alternate between C and G. So you're going to see my hand; in fact, don't play this way, but I'm going to pull these fingers back to make it easier for you to see how I'm alternating between C and G, but on my right hand I'm going to keep the same. So it's.... Notice how I'm playing three notes over here and only one note over here, but I'm holding it the entire time. That's because it's a whole note; we're getting our four beats. So let's try this again. See how I popped up to here to start the next measure. So it's one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. Every time I'm saying one in my head, that's when you're going to hit your new note on your left hand, so let's play through that entire first four measures; The jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way; on the right hand, and watch how I change this. We're going to make four notes; C, G, C, and then G. So here we go. Notice how I swapped back and forth.

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