[So] I bought a keyboard

Time to learn a new instrument :boogie:

Now, can someone tell me how the fuck to play with my left hand? I know it's going to take practice to play with both hands in sync, but what are some exercises I could do? Aside from masturbating, of course. Also, I should get in the habit of not letting my fingers rest too long on the keys, right?

edit: i got a casio wk 500. 76 keys.
http://www.soundtechnology.com.a u/product_img/wk500.jpg

Just play what you like...when I first learned piano I just played all the songs I liked by Radiohead and other artists...eventually you will be able to coordinate. First song that I learned that got me over the plateau of coordination was:

__k-XzRVVK4

So easy, but back then it felt good.

The left hand in solo playing usually does the part of both bass and chord, though sometimes this gets inverted and the left can even take the melody. Piano is musical juggling: 3 parts for 2 hands (bass, melody, chord). If you're playing with a typical band, the left hand only has to handle the chord since you've got a bass player already, and these chords can usually even be scaled down in such a way that they don't conflict with the chords the guitarist is playing.

There are different ways to do bass and chord. It doesn't have to be "oom pa pa" stuff. Sometimes the whole thing gets linearized via Alberti-style bass lines (C-G-E-G, C-G-E-G, etc, in a typical old Mozart/Haydn style), sometimes it's just runs and the right hand takes both chord and melody. Some players do nothing but octaves and forget about the chord altogether, or play the chord in such a way that it incorporates the bass note, or any number of other things. The juggling part is made easier by all sorts of little tricks.

And actually, leaving your hand in contact with the keys is the way to go, depending on context. If you were to play 'C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C' over and over, you'd want your hand in a static position so that your 5 fingers all touch the keys and press down one by one. Try to minimize hand/finger movement unless you're doing a leap or something, and for scalar passages especially try to keep your fingers close to the keys with a slightly curved finger position instead of flat-fingered.

If you're going to sit there doing exercises, make sure you don't try to force velocity or you'll end up playing stiff and tense. Play it controlled but very relaxed, and slow, slow, slow - slower than dirt - until you can naturally speed up in a relaxed way. It takes a long time to get good at this stuff.

I agree with clockwork that playing tunes that you like is better than exercises, but some people have a temperament for it and I don't think exercises are a bad thing at all.

If you have no intention of learning how to read music, skip the rest of this whole post:

If you must do exercises, try scales with the correct fingerings, 4 octaves up, 4 down, with the eventual goal of doing them both hands at once. This is the equivalent of musical vegetables, and I would recommend that all serious musicians eventually learn them in all keys no matter how tedious they are, as they are the magical key to theory. Note that on each hand, thumb is numbered 1, pinky 5, all the in-between fingers 2-4. These scales are grouped by common fingerings in the links below. The fingering you use for C major is not the same as that for C#, for instance, but C and G major do use the same fingering.

Proper fingering for piano scales (http://www.audiblefaith.com/artists/rharrell/music/pianoscales.html)

If you're dead-set on the traditional Hanon and Czerny exercises that teachers usually use to drive their students completely nuts, here are links to a bunch of them:

Hanon:
The Virtuoso Pianist (Hanon, Charles-Louis - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_(Han on%2C_Charles-Louis))

Czerny:
The School of Velocity, Op.299 (Czerny, Carl - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/The_School_of_Velocity%2C _Op.299_(Czerny%2C_Carl))

110 Progressive Excercises, Op.453 (Czerny, Carl - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/110_Progressive_Excercise s%2C_Op.453_(Czerny%2C_Ca rl))

The Art of Finger Dexterity, Op.740 (Czerny, Carl - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Finger_Dexteri ty%2C_Op.740_(Czerny%2C_C arl))

Schule des Virtuosen, Op.365 (Czerny, Carl - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/Schule_des_Virtuosen%2C_O p.365_(Czerny%2C_Carl))

Cramer:

60 Studies selected by Bülow (Cramer, Johann Baptist - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music (http://imslp.org/wiki/60_Studies_selected_by_B% C3%BClow_(Cramer%2C_Johan n_Baptist))

I don't use these with my students, but they do have definite value for someone with the right temperament. I'd recommend playing them through headphones though, or your neighbors may end up hating you. They are musically worthless in terms of something you'd actually want to listen to.

wow, there's plenty for me to check out, thanks!
i have no idea about any pre-existing exercises or any of that. i may end up taking some local lessons but we'll see.

one thing i really like is that i'm already better at placing the notes on the keyboard than i am on guitar.

No problem Steve. And ya, piano is nicely laid out chromatically, but that of course leads to all sorts of other problems of the weird fingering variety.

I've done a ton of those exercises and they really do help with technique. If I can dig it out, I'll try to find my old teacher's "Five fingers of death ninja piano technique" exercises that he wrote out for me back in 1991 on a single sheet of music paper and post the pic of them, but they are kind of murderous.

Just make sure that when you do exercises, if you do, that you don't just do them by rote, with your mind on something else or your fingers just going through the motions. They may have no real musicality to them, but it requires definite concentration to achieve what you want from them.

Finally, a very good old book for piano mechanics:

Amazon.com: On Piano Playing: Motion, Sound, and Expression: Gyorgy Sandor: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Playing-Motion-Sound-Expression/dp/0028722809)