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    Hand Indenpende Exercise

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    Leonardo Lima
    This document describes a hand independence exercise for pianists. [1] The exercise aims to develop hand independence by having the left hand play a bass line while the right hand improvises melodies. [2] It involves gradually reducing the note values used in the right hand part from whole notes down to eighth notes. [3] The bass line can then be varied by changing notes or rhythm.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Hand Indenpende Exercise

    Uploaded by

    Leonardo Lima
    546 views5 pages
    This document describes a hand independence exercise for pianists. [1] The exercise aims to develop hand independence by having the left hand play a bass line while the right hand improvises melodies. [2] It involves gradually reducing the note values used in the right hand part from whole notes down to eighth notes. [3] The bass line can then be varied by changing notes or rhythm.

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    Hand Indenpende Exercise

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    This document describes a hand independence exercise for pianists. [1] The exercise aims to develop hand independence by having the left hand play a bass line while the right hand improvises melodies. [2] It involves gradually reducing the note values used in the right hand part from whole notes down to eighth notes. [3] The bass line can then be varied by changing notes or rhythm.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    546 views5 pages

    Hand Indenpende Exercise

    Uploaded by

    Leonardo Lima
    This document describes a hand independence exercise for pianists. [1] The exercise aims to develop hand independence by having the left hand play a bass line while the right hand improvises melodies. [2] It involves gradually reducing the note values used in the right hand part from whole notes down to eighth notes. [3] The bass line can then be varied by changing notes or rhythm.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Hand Independence Exercise

    For pianists

    Edward Simon

    WWW.EDWARDSIMON.COM 1

    Hand Independence
    A systematic approach for improvising pianists

    The Exercise
    The idea behind this exercise is to develop hand independence in a systematic way.
    While this exercise is designed for pianists, the concept and principle on which it is
    based may be applied to other instruments. In piano music, notated or improvised,
    the left hand often serves the role of accompaniment. The accompaniment’s
    function is to outline the harmony and provide a foundation and context for the
    melodic material of the music. The harmony of the composition can be outlined in
    a couple of different ways, through a bass line (horizontal), chords (vertical) or both.
    A common device used by pianists is to maintain a bass obstinato while playing the
    melody or improvising with the right hand. This can be quite challenging
    depending on the complexity of the obstinato pattern. Developing the hand
    independence needed in order to feel free with our right hand is essential. Hand
    independence has a lot to do with coordination. The body needs to understand
    which movements are synchronized and which are not. The following exercise is a
    systematic way to developing the hand independence needed.

    Following are the steps of the exercise:

    1. Choose a bass obstinato and a harmonic progression. Initially, you may want to
    simplify and begin by playing over one chord.
    2. Using only whole notes, improvise a line on the right hand while maintaining
    the obstinato on the left hand.
    3. Repeat step 2 gradually reducing the note values, e.g. half notes, quarter.
    quarter triplets and eights. Gradually reduce the note values until you can freely
    improvise using any idea, making sure that you feel comfortable with each note
    value before moving to the smaller note values..

    WWW.EDWARDSIMON.COM 2

    4. Improvise over a harmonic progression using any note values while maintaining
    the bass obstinato.
    5. Begin to vary the bass obstinato by selecting different chord tones and a varying
    the rhythms.

    Following is an example over a simple 1 bar bass pattern.

    Step 2. Improvise a line using whole notes. Lets just say the chord is C minor.

    Step 2. Improvise a line using half notes.

    A right hand line using half notes may look like this:
    Step 3. Improvise a line using quarter notes.

    WWW.EDWARDSIMON.COM 3

    Example:

    Step 4. Improvise a line using quarter note triplets.

    Example:

    WWW.EDWARDSIMON.COM 4

    Step 5. Improvise a line using eight notes.

    Step 5. Improvise over a harmonic progression using any note values.

    Example:

    Step 6. Assuming you’ve gone through each step of the exercise, by this point you
    should feel comfortable improvising any ideas that come to you while maintaining
    the bass pattern in the left hand. In this step you can begin to vary the left hand
    obstinato either by changing the notes and/or varying the rhythms. If any one of
    those variations presents a challenge, take the speci c variation and apply the rst
    steps of the exercise.

    WWW.EDWARDSIMON.COM 5

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