Hi Mike

The thing about what fingering and and hand position for the left hand is indeed important to sound good and make it an easy thing to do.

When playing left hand chords on your arranger keyboard, the MOST important thing to know is are you playing it in a piano style, or an organ/keyboard style.

If you are playing in a piano style where you are moving around a bit more, and/or using actual piano music, (with treble and bass clef), then yes you need to know and be able to play around in all the different inversions.

If you are playing from a "lead sheet", meaning music that only shows the melody and a chord symbol, and you are only playing and holding a chord in the left hand while the keyboard supplies the backround accompaniment, then the VERY BEST way to play your left hand is between the notes "F" to "F"! This would be playing "organ/keyboard style".

In a nutshell, if you are playing piano style/music you move around like you see piano players do. The organ/keyboard style between "F" to "F" you play all chords without hardly moving your hands, never going out of position.

I make my living showing hobbyists how to play organ (and keyboard). And while we now teach the fingering system "which ever finger gets there first wins", this is intended for senior citizens who want to learn to play, know they don't have a lot of time to learn, want to play for fun as a hobbyist, and sometimes have physical elements to deal with like arthritis.

Anything that works for fun as a hobbyist is ok. BUT, if you are serious and are just learning it is easiest in the long run to learn it the "right way".

Any fingering system that requires one to take their eyes from the music to see if their fingers are in the right place after a little practice means extra hard work, missed notes, loosing your place in the music, etc. This would include the pointer system.

I myself play from the "C" chord root postion, and then play the closest inversion, without moving out of position if possible. The problem with this position however is some chord in order to sound good requires you to jump out of postion like FM7, G13 just to name a couple of often used chords. If I had the time and desire now there is no question I would learn the "F" to "F" approach.

As to regarding what inversion to use on the first chord, if you are playing piano style, then first choice most often would be to play in root position.

If playing organ/keyboard style, regardless of key, you play your chords (almost always) in the same position all the time.

Here are a few examples of playing "F" to "F" with the bottom note shown first:

C chord: GCE,
F chord: ACF,
G chord: GBD,
G7 chord: GBDF,
Am chord: ACE,
Am7 chord: ACEG,
Dm chord: DFA,
Dm7 chord: DFAC

Hope this helps.

Best

Scott Langholff

[This message has been edited by Scott Langholff (edited 06-17-2003).]