Left hand chord fingering advice

[glyde]

Hi,

I've just started learning Erik Satie Gnossienne No 5.

Its a wonderfully distinct sounding piece and I love the off-kilter timing of the melody in places, and the left chord sequences that seem to always lead forward to another chord - never quite resolving.

Starting to learn the left hand of this piece has brought up something I've noticed before on other pieces with a similar bass note + chord structure in the left hand (Gymnopedie No 1 / Chopin Minute Waltz Op 64 No 1).

In terms of fingering for the chords, I tend to swap about sometimes, or change it later on to improve speed which happened with the Chopin piece. This puts my playing completely off balance in places and interrupts my left hand flow.

I'll give a concrete example from the Gnossienne piece. In the first 4 bars for the left hand fingering I started with these standard fingerings for the chords, but the bass note interrupts these fingerings once I speed up a little.

5 - 5 3 1
5 - 5 2 1
5 - 5 3 1
5 - 5 3 1

After some practice I naturally tended to keep the pinky free for the bass note in most instances and had:

5 - 4 2 1
5 - 5 2 1
5 - 4 2 1
5 - 5 2 1

I'm still flapping around on this and don't like changing so much. Any advice would be much appreciated. Should I aim to 4 2 1 all of the chords or aim to try and use a full hand  with 5 3or2 1 for the chords.

Andrew

[cjp_piano]

I think you should do whatever is comfortable and easiest. Don't worry about having "consistent" fingering as far as playing all the chords with the same fingers. Just see what you gravitate towards. As long as it's easy, comfortable, and sounds the way you want it, do it!

[glyde]

Of course you're right!

I guess I'm just impatient to 'see what I gravitate towards', I have to say that I am starting to naturally settle on fingering now for the first dozen bars or so. It always unnerves me at first when I'm unsure what fingering I'll use and I do lose a bit of time to it, but I guess its just a case of letting the piece sink in and going with your natural instinct.

Thanks for the reply, it gives me a bit more confidence that I'm not doing things 'wrong'. On with learning this fantastic piece...