A question or problem that many gospel keyboardist have is knowing what to do with the left hand. This is my view on the issue. On both hands you have five fingers. Technically anything you can do with your right hand you should be able to do with your left and vise versa.

The way we practice will affect how comfortable we are with our left hand. You have to practice in such a way so that that both hands are getting equall attention. For example, when you are working on scales or something like that, then do it with both hands.

This is a good exercise for left hand development.

1) take a song that you know well and play what you normally play with your right hand with your left.

2) don’t play anything with your right hand and just concentrate on the left hand.

3) try to make it sound as good as it it does when your right hand is playing it.

This helps the left hand to be more independent. Which will eventually translate into your left and right hand working better together.

Here is a challenging exercise but it really helps.

1) play the chords and bass line of a song with your left hand only

2) It is similar to the stride piano or rag time style of playing where you play the bass note and quickly strike the chord above it with the left hand. It gives you the doo wop kind of sound.

3) Now you may have to leave out some notes when doing this but trying to make the song sound full with just using the left hand only will do wonders for using your left hand with your right.

If you continue doing exersices like this you will eventually start playing full sounding chords with your left hand and nice voicings that will compliment the right hand, and that is what you want.

Till next time.

Much Love,

Kenny Hollins