Volume IV · Piano, voice and tunesStage 11 of 15
11
The piano: two hands, the left hand, comping, touch
Barry’s physical and textural approach to the keyboard.
- 11.1 Two hands together Small chords blended between the hands Barry wanted the two hands to share small chords: no chord played by the left hand alone and no one-note melodies in the right hand. The most important small chord to learn, he said, is the sixth chord for a major chord.
- 11.2 Keep the left hand low and make it interesting Barry wanted the left hand down in its low register, as Tatum, Bud and Monk played it, not parked near middle C holding chords; no bass player he worked with ever said he played too low. And it should not hold chords.
- 11.3 Mirror image and contrary motion between the hands Barry treated the hands as mirror images: anything one hand plays, the other, the left included, should play reflected. He had pianists play the sixth diminished scales in contrary motion from middle C, then fill in the chords between the hands.
- 11.4 Play from the body and the arm, not the fingers Barry taught that the piano is played from the arm and the body, not the fingers. What matters is sideways movement across the keyboard: one move for many notes, chord shapes held in the hand, the body going with the run, no fussing over fingering.
- 11.5 Touch Legato first, space, a singing tone Barry held that legato comes first, even on the piano, a percussive instrument: find the point where the key sounds and float on it rather than pushing to the key bed. Real technique, he said, is knowing how to use space, not speed.
- 11.6 Comping Small chords, simple sounds, rhythmic upbeats Barry wanted accompaniment built from small chords whose sound is chosen on purpose, such as a plain D minor instead of the habitual added colour, played lightly and with a feel for the ‘ands’, which he said most pianists cannot come in on.
- 11.7 Stride, tenths and the scale of chords in the left hand Barry said everybody should know the sixth diminished scales of chords in tenths too, and could practise them as stride; he also told a pianist to let the left hand do the moving. His bebop generation, he said, were not striders.