Broken finger, what to do the next 3 weeks?

General Discussion
1

A silly accident at home and I have a broken middle finger in my right hand. A real bummer for piano practice. I would like to do something the next 3 weeks and I was wondering if you had any advice on what to do with the left hand only and if there was any material, course, pdf at PianoGroove or anywhere else on this matter.

Thanks in advance for your help and keep up the excellent courses at OS!!!

Cheers,

T

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Sorry to hear that, hope you recover soon.

Could always work on left hand patterns. Stride in particular would be a great use of time. If you’re like me there is permanent work to do there! Getting the shapes & intervals in your left hand fingers will really help when the right hand is ready.

Other than that plenty of listening & study of course. Good luck :slight_smile:

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3

Hi @tomaspallas :wave:

Sorry to hear on your injury and here are a few ideas for isolated left hand practice:

Stride Piano Drills

For jazz piano related drills, I’d agree with @Rob’s recommendation to work on stride drills. For this you could pick any jazz standard and play through with roots and left hand voicings just using your left hand.

I’d recommend play through tunes with the following:

  • Roots and just 3rds and 7ths
  • Then introduce extended rootless voicings (9/11/13)
  • Then introduce altered rootless voicings (b9/#9/#11/b13)

You could also drill these around the circle of 5ths, or in a whole step 251 pattern with a metronome. I’m an advocate of doing these drills using the harmony of jazz standards, so perhaps pick 5 or so ballads to work on over the coming weeks.

10th Interval Drills

A left hand device that is very useful in jazz, blues, and gospel piano, is left hand 10th intervals. Here are 2 lessons on that topic:

For the 2nd lesson, you will see that it’s possible to play 251s entirely in the left hand with 10th intervals slash chord voicings. For example, E- triad voiced as a 10th moving to A7/E and taking that around all 12 keys would be a great exercise.

Blues Left Hand

There are many blues styles that are driven by a solid left hand.

Here are some lesson links:

If you’re interested in playing solo blues piano with left hand shuffle patterns and/or walking bass lines, those would be the lessons that I’d recommend.

I hope that helps Tomas and wishing you a swift recovery!

Hayden

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