muchan
Marc wrote:
>
> I have come to think music has four major components: melody, harmony,
> pulse, and bass. When playing solo piano, you have to try to provide all
> of them with only two hands. Walking bass lines in the left hand are nice
> because they provide bass, pulse, and harmony all at once, although the
> pulse is kind of monochromatic and the harmony a bit thin. Just using your
> basic rootless lefthand voicings gives you harmony, but not much in the way
> of bass or pulse. A "skeleton" or "shell" voicing - root & third or root &
> seventh, that sort of thing - can help with the bass, but you've still got
> to find a way to keep the pulse going/ I personally find a "stride" sort
> of approach is the most natural for me - alternating bass notes with other
> voicings. It doesn't *sound* like stride when I do it, because I am not
> playing on every beat, and not just going back and forth. Instead, I might
> a bass note on the downbeat, then some voicings scattered through the rest
> of the measure, or perhaps over the next two measures, before coming back
> to nail a bass note.