I absolutely love teaching students how to play “Lost Boy” by Ruth B on piano. Nothing gets me excited like a popular song that features a piano in the forefront! Sometimes a song without much piano needs to be finessed in the arrangement to makes sense and sound good when played on the piano. But this one is just piano and voice, which means the piano arrangement sounds very similar to the recorded version of the song itself.
So I decided to teach this one on YouTube, and I chose the Advanced level arrangement over the intermediate for one main reason…
“Solo-Piano-Style” left hand part
The left hand plays chords through this section, but it does it in a way that features the left hand a bit more than usual. We typically see only a few main kinds of comping in the left hand: octaves, chords, or arpeggios. This section has both chords and octaves, so we get the sense that we’re covering more ground.
Since there isn’t a bass/drum part in the recorded version, the left hand is free to move around in a wider range, hence the double-duty. Instead of playing a normal C major chord (m1) or E minor chord (m3) for the duration of a measure, this arrangement has us first playing the normal triad, but playing it again without the bass note.
The G chord (m2) has a different treatment altogether! We start playing a wide octave position and then jump up an octave to play the second half of the measure with a high G and B. A ton of variety in the left hand comping style for this section! That’s why I call this ‘solo-piano-style’ playing: with no other instruments playing along, our hands can cover more ground to fill out the arrangement.
Now it’s your turn to play “Lost Boy” by Ruth B on piano
If you love using your favorite songs to learn the piano, check out “Lost Boy” by Ruth B at the Playground Sessions YouTube channel.
If you like what you see you can download our app to learn the rest of this song with our interactive sheet music.
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