a. LH Comping while Soloing
i. Solo
1. Tenth’s to chord – In a stride type style, instead of playing
a bass note down below you can add your tenth in as well
and then move to a chord. So you’re LH is playing a tenth
on beat 1 then moving to the chord on beat 3. I love this
method because you hear a nice harmony before jumping to
a full chord. It creates a very well blended sound for you to
solo over. (see figure 32.23)
Figure 32.23
2. 1 to 3+7 - Instead of play this voicing together all at once
we can hit the bass note first and then play the 3rd and 7th.
This adds a little more rhythm to your ballad and can keep
the time flowing steadily, as opposed to if you played all
three of these notes at the same time. (see figure 32.24)
Figure 32.24
ii. Group
1. Double time feel with Erroll Garner Feel – A very unique
style to use is a double time feel that creates a march-like
effect. Erroll Garner would use this feel a lot in his playing.
We are creating a steady quarter note pulse with our tenth
by playing eighth notes, but instead of playing them long,
we are playing them very short. Our RH is going to solo
using octaves while putting chord tones in the middle. We
can trill our octave between our thumb and pinky whenever
we want to add this texture. Also, instead of adding chord
tones in the middle we can add a cluster of any notes we
wish. This provides more of a dirty sound in the middle
what you want more of a raw sound then a clean one. (see
figure 32.25)
Figure 32.25