Left hand piano styles

[oscarr111111]

I do a lot of jamming and improvising, I'm self taught at piano so my playing is little unorthodox but I don't really have any classical aspirations other to enjoy the music.. piano is only my secondary instrument.  Anyway, I'm basically looking for people to suggest some  styles of left hand accompaniment, I play bass primarily so when I play piano I pretty much always have to pick up the bass too, usually I just play octaves or fifths with my left hand but I'd like some more variety, I plan to work on walking bass as I'm pretty decent at it on bass but not so much at piano yet.  Has anyone got any suggestions?  Any style is welcome.

Thanks.

[Petter]

What most jazz pianists after ~1955 did was to play left hand voicings which often omits the root of the chord, since the bass player would play it. If you have a Cmaj7 chord, the most basic way to play it with an imaginary bass would be the third and the seventh (E and B). There´s alot of ways to vary this but the basic is to play the 3rd and 7th in every chord.
 If you would play this voicing and add a C in the bass on the first beat, the chord with E and B on the 2nd, then G in the bass on the 3rd beat and E and B on the 4th , you´d have a basic idea of stride piano (Art Tatum, Willie the Lion Smith, Fats Walleretc ). Like in ragtime. . Pianists like Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk often played some crude souding left hand voicings, mostly for rhytmic accents. Over a G dominant seven chord Bud Powell sometimes plays a G and Ab seperated by a minor ninth which is really dissonant but works in the context. Then the walking bassline like you mentioned.
 Then you have all the forms of arpeggios and broken chords for left hand accompaniments which are common in classical music, like alberti bass (C,G,E,G in a C major chord) that you hear alot in Mozart.
 You kind find charts of arpeggios over basic major and minor chords here. I hope this helps some.

[oscarr111111]

Cheers, I know the essentials about jazz upper/lower voicing and the like (not that I can actually play it fluently, but I know it ) but the stride piano suggestion is really helpful, going to practice that.  Also the arpeggio thing is useful, I generally play quite low down on the piano (partly because I'm a bassist and thats the space I need to fill, but mostly because of this: )
so I find that arpeggiated chords sound quite muddy, especially if I'm using the sustain pedal, I'm going to try some more open voicings though.

I'm mainly looking for some less dissonant ideas for jamming and more 'poppy' songwriting, as blues and jazz generally have pretty prerequisite bass styles, also any suggestions of songs you've heard with interesting left hand technique are welcome, I pretty much got all the styles I've learned so far from looking at Beatles, The Stranglers (well, Golden Brown) and select Stevie Wonder tracks.

[Petter]

Playing pop music or music from fake books often involve adding notes in the right hand with the melody. Basic concept would be just to play the bass note and add rest of the notes in the right hand. Eventually you might want to arpeggiate a left hand pattern and the extra notes in the right hand. A great tune to practice that and which is pleasant to the ears is the theme from The Piano by Michael Nyman. (Pianostreet natives probably regard this as trash) You can apply the ideas (melody accented with arpeggios in right and left hand) from that piece to most pop songs and make it sound decent. Spot the chords and derive the fingerings from the chart as much as you can. 

[oscarr111111]

I'll take a look at that piece, seems a little like Ludivico Einaudi style piano, I got a lot of my current style from learning songs by him such as this one https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/es-ES/se/ID_No/29602/Product.aspx

I mainly stick to rhythmic chords and counter melody licks on the right hand (theres usually lead guitar, rhythm guitar/lead vox and me singing backing) so I really want to do a bit more with my left hand as thats the most 'unused' frequency range.  I've got quite a strong left hand from bass playing and just from how I've practiced so my stylistic aim is really an interesting rhythmic base with my left hand and the right hand free to add any 'icing' suitable.  I rarely play solo piano and when I do its almost always a piece I've just learned from sheet music so I don't really have to worry too much about melody, just rhythm and harmony.

[slobone]

It sounds like you're the only one playing the bass line, so that should be your priority. The bass line is the most important one because it holds everything else together. It anchors the harmony and also the rhythm.

But it all really depends on what style of music you're playing. Each one has its own characteristic rhythmic patterns and accompaniment styles. Listen to a lot of records of the music you like and try and pick out what the piano is doing.

As for the right hand, sometimes it's a good idea to play very high on the keyboard so the piano part can be heard a little bit more over the other instruments. They did this a lot in blues and early rock and roll (listen to Chuck Berry records and you can hear his piano player playing way up above everybody else).

[syncope]

Ideas for the left hand bass line:

blues: c-g-a-g (fingers: 5-2-1-2) c-g-a-g c-g-a-g c-g-a-g (=4x, but 2x also possible) and the same pattern on the f and g, and then alternate according to this typical chord pattern: C F C C / F F C C / G F C C

or walking base (on C): c d d-sharp e f f-sharp g g(octave lower)
and alternate that beginning on C, or F, of G

I've seen a lot of books just with blues bass (left hand) patterns written out, going from easy to play to more adventurous!