You play piano and left hand what?

[The Real MC]

I auditioned for a country singer looking to form a band.  I told them I played piano and left hand bass.

 

There was some initial disbelief until I showed them how it was done.  I didn't even know most of the songs, I set up my keyboard so I could watch the chords that the singer was playing on his guitar.  Country music is almost all I/II/IV/V so my LH was on autopilot, locked in with the drummer, and I was playing honky tonk and New Orleans piano licks at the same time.  They never heard a piano player do that.  I used a split bass/piano setup on my Kurzweil K1200 88 which has a very very good acoustic bass sample for the country music they were doing.

This happens every time I offer my LH for bass, in at least three different bands.  And every time there is the proverbial jaw drop from the band members.

Glad I practiced all those piano lessons and sales years ago.

[niacin]

A few years pre-COVID I had a guy I’d met only briefly swing by a late night pop gig I was doing, he’d cone from a gig with one of the top function bands in town and brought the bass player along cause he’d heard I played left hand bass (in this case a P-bass sample). He and the bass player stood at one corner of the stage in jaw drop pose for the best part of a set. It’s curious to me how jazz guys just take it for granted but in a pop or funk context you get wtf-pick my jaw off the floor reactions. I do a lot of the gigs I do because drummers seem happier with my left hand than many of the bass players around. But I’m no Neal Evans, his playing has me collecting my jaw from the floor, lol

[lightbg]

I’ve been foolin’ em for over 50 years with this act:

(It has gotten me tons of work, though….)

 

 

 

[UnderGroundGr]

Left hand maniacs!!!😁

[Joe Muscara]

How many bass players does it take to change a light bulb?

 

 

 

 

 

None, the piano player does it with his left hand.

[Outkaster]

I play rhythm with one hand and Reggae bass lines with another.  My piano teacher can play montuno lines with one hand and Latin bass parts with his left hand. It's very cool to see and sounds great.  He played Salsa for a long time and Latin jazz.

[BenWaB3]

The first time I saw a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass was 1966 when I went to school in NC for a couple years. The most popular band in the state was called The Embers and their keyboard player used one. A few times through the year I rented one when bands I was in were in need of a bass player. Then in the spring of `67 The Doors started to hit so I can't say I was playing one before Ray - I'm sure he beat me to it by a year or so but I was playing them before I heard of him. For the next 40+ years I was doing left hand bass for around 2/3 of the bands I was in. The occasion still crops up pretty frequently playing in jazz trios although it's usually a horn player, drums & keys. It feels like a "music minus one" in those situations when it comes time to solo though.

[Lou_NC]

Imagine if that country singer had seen me play bass with my left FOOT.........  🙂

[jazzpiano88]

One of the most effective piano bar setups is to have a small synth to play LHB.  Adds so much.

 

Here's a good example of the master at it, Larry Goldings.   If you've never checked out Michael Brecker's Timeline, his Larry's bass lines are just amazing.

 

 

[o0Ampy0o]

How many bass players does it take to change a lightbulb?

 

Who knows? The LHB keyboardists put them out of work so let them fight over lightbulbs.

[Baldwin Funster]

Uhhh...I can drink a lefthanded beer when I play. I do have to put it down to hit the wigglestick, otherwise it spills on the mostly unused low octave. 

[El Lobo]

I'm surprised to hear that other musicians are surprised to learn that some keyboard players can do LH bass. Some of my best keyboard player friends do that routinely. I thought any working musician would know this. Though good LH bass keyboard players are somewhat rare, they are hardly unheard of. Honestly, if musicians I met and played with didn't know about this, I'd have reservations about their musical abilities and experience. Maybe if they were young, I'd understand it. But then they'd probably program the bass parts in their computers. These kids today ... 

[timwat]

Seems out here in the Bay Area, most of the 1st callers are ace at this. It's a known quantity, so with a certain crowd of musos, on any gig you may be called to LH bass it for the evening.

 

I remember showing up for a Sinatra-crooner gig for a singer I'd never met - as I'm setting up, he rolls in and casually says, "Hey, I got in a big fight with the bass player on the phone on the ride down. So you can cover bass tonight?" Yup, dial up a split on the Privia and did the whole evening, including bass solos. And I don't consider myself very good at this, not like some of the 1st callers in the community.

 

 

 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

1 hour ago, JazzPiano88 said:

One of the most effective piano bar setups is to have a small synth to play LHB.  Adds so much.

 

Here's a good example of the master at it, Larry Goldings.   If you've never checked out Michael Brecker's Timeline, his Larry's bass lines are just amazing.

 

 

Okay listen we all know Larry Goldings is amazing and this is such a cool duo, but I just wanted to comment that that is one of the most pleasant synth bass patches I've ever heard.

[Outkaster]

Problem with left hand bass is that you lose that other hand. I think it's a clever thing if people can do it. Except in rare cases the band always sounds empty to me when they keyboard player does this.

[Adan]

21 minutes ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

Okay listen we all know Larry Goldings is amazing and this is such a cool duo, but I just wanted to comment that that is one of the most pleasant synth bass patches I've ever heard.

 

Agreed.  I'll usually find a suitable rhodes patch because it gives me the rounded edges I want.  Most rompler bass patches are too annoying to use, for my ears.

 

Love playing LHB even though it limits what else you can do just as a matter of available bandwidth.  People are usually surprised at how little they're giving up between me doing that versus a dedicated bass player.

[Reezekeys]

I got my LH bass chops playing a gig in St. Croix USVI, five sets a night, six nights a week, for three weeks straight. This was a gig I put together around 40 years ago (damn I am old!) and the bread was terrible (more like a free vacation in the Caribbean), so LH bass was done strictly for budgetary reasons - one less mouth to feed, so we could break even instead of lose money. In my experience, that's the only reason for us having to do LH bass (unless it's an emergency or there are simply no qualified bass players in the area).

 

Other than organ trio or duo gigs, how often is LH bass called for for musically creative reasons? It's almost always only to shave a bit off the payroll. Having said this - of course it's a good skill to have in the toolbox.

 

Real MC, what was the motivation for you to suggest that you could cover bass for that band? Were they never planning to hire a bass player and thought they'd do gigs without bass?

[RABid]

Years and years ago I decided to give up small town life and working for a coal company, move to the big city of Louisville (well, big to me at the time), and become a full time keyboardist. A local state trooper whom I became friends with took me to Louisville, showed me around with a tour of the biggest clubs and music stores, and moved me in with his parents while I searched for a band. Got a tip at one of the music stores about a working band that was looking for a replacement keyboardist. Called the manager of the band who met me a couple hours later at a local studio. He talked up the band and his management while showing me around the studio. We ended in a room with a grand piano and he asked me to play something. (Ahhh, that is why I was getting a studio tour.) It was not the stack of synths that I was used to using in my last band, so I played Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by List and a Bach 3 part. He then took me to lunch and told me he would arrange a tryout with the band. Went back to the house and told the family that I had an audition the next day. The trooper's sister was ecstatic, telling me that the band I was auditioning for was one of the big 3 bands in Louisville and only played the top clubs. That was a bit intimating. I was used to playing with the best in my tri-county small towns area, but not with big city bands. The manager called and said he arranged a try out just a few blocks from where I was staying. It was in the basement of a house and it took me a bit to unload my Rhodes Chroma, MemoryMoog, 18" 3-way EV cabinet, Crown amp and Ashley mixer. They really didn't know what to make of a pickup truck driving, hillbilly accent talking young man with a rig like that. They handed me a song list. I was a nervous wreck and picked one of the simplest songs to start with, Talking In Your Sleep by The Romantics. We played it and the singer/guitarist and the female singer were staring at me. Finally one of them said "You play with both hands. ... ... ... Different parts!" The way they had been staring I thought they were shocked that I was so bad. Instead they were shocked at the idea that someone could play two different parts at one time, and on such a simple song. That is when I learned that guitarists and singers are easily impressed. We played a couple more songs but I could already tell that I was in. 

[Bill H.]

2 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Other than organ trio or duo gigs, how often is LH bass called for for musically creative reasons? It's almost always only to shave a bit off the payroll. Having said this - of course it's a good skill to have in the toolbox.

I can think of a time when playing LH bass was - maybe not more musically creative - but better than having a bass player. I was in a Praise band for a few years, and with me on both bass and keys I could easily steer the music in the direction of the Praise leader was headed. These situations can be *ahem* rather fluid at times, and it helped when the bass and keys were always on the same page. 

 

They tried out a few bass players during my tenure with these guys, but the job always fell back to me. And I wasn't always on LH bass. A lot of the service consisted of two hand piano, so it was just a few uptempo songs. 

 

Playing LH bass when needed really saved my ass when I was struggling to make ends meet. I did it in a number of bands in Seattle, then occasionally when I played the piano bar circuit - often in conjunction with a Yamaha RX11 drum machine. OMG the old days... 😮 Once I got into sequencing the bass lines went straight into the backing tracks. 

[timwat]

Having a great bass player is ALWAYS better musically than LH bass. 

 

But a left hand is OFTEN better than having a less-than-great bass player. Or an unprepared bass player. Or a drunk bass player. Or a high bass player. Or...

[KuruPrionz]

Just now, timwat said:

Having a great bass player is ALWAYS better musically than LH bass. 

 

But a left hand is OFTEN better than having a less-than-great bass player. Or an unprepared bass player. Or a drunk bass player. Or a high bass player. Or...

The worst is a bassist with poor timing. I've played with a few of those, I've also played with some amazing bassists.

The flip side of that coin (and I've been there too) is a keyboard player who continues to play left handed bass when they are in a band with a competent bassist. 

I was in a Motown band and the bassist was fantastic. The keyboard player played organ and piano with his right hand and horns and strings on another board with his left. That was fantastic and that's how it's done. 😇

[ksoper]

My first day of rehearsals with Joe Diffie's band I warmed up on the clonewheel, a shuffle groove with left-hand bass.  The bass player came over to me and said, "You can knock that shit off right now."  

[timwat]

1 minute ago, KuruPrionz said:

The worst is a bassist with poor timing. I've played with a few of those, I've also played with some amazing bassists.

 

Oh that is the WORST!!!

 

There's a straight jazz battery I play with occasionally that regularly speeds up...on every tune. For a long time I thought it was both the drummer and bass player.

 

Nope. Same drummer with a stellar bass player on another gig - every tempo is rock solid (and the internal conversations between me and bass player - just wonderful). 

 

That first bass player? He's pulling the drummer forward the whole stinking gig.

[jazzpiano88]

Adjacent topic (Pedal Bass):  Proper foot positioning when the orchestra has an electric bass:

[Reezekeys]

But of course my left hand is a better alternative than a bad bass player! 🙂 

 

That kind of ties into my previous comment about LH bass being a justifiable alternative to "no qualified bass players."

 

The other deal with my LH is that I can substitute chords until the cows come home and never have to worry about a bass player being able to follow me! And Bill's mention of his praise band's specific requirements of being able to quickly shift gears is certainly another good example. It's not all black & white.

 

Three years ago, on an AWB swing through Denver and the west coast, our leader and bass player Alan Gorrie suffered a detached retina. I was glad to have played LH bass on those sets in St Croix as a kid because I was pressed into service - literally with two hours' notice - to play the show without him. We made it work, and I guess I did an OK job because we had four more gigs in the next three weeks that Alan could not make, and I did them playing his bass parts with my left hand!

[Adan]

Maybe I missed it but i don't think anyone in this thread suggested a general rule that keyboard players should displace bassists.  It's just making the best of circumstances.  In some cases, like the Doors or Soullive, it was part of the original concept/chemistry and they wisely chose not to mess with that chemistry.

[Reezekeys]

Yea, I had a more limited take on this, thinking the context was keyboard players displacing bassists on a gig, playing covers or other tunes originally done or meant for real bass players. Of course LH bass playing is done for a myriad of reasons - some artistic, some monetary, some in emergencies or to make the "best of" a circumstance. I'm grateful to have this ability in my toolbox!

[RABid]

40 minutes ago, Adan said:

Maybe I missed it but i don't think anyone in this thread suggested a general rule that keyboard players should displace bassists.

I would never consider displacing a bassist, but wow I've displaced a lot of rhythm guitarists.

[Shamanzarek]

Ray Manzarek was 27 when he came up with the keyboard and left-hand bass part for "Light My Fire" in 1966. I could play it with left-hand bass in 1967 at age 15. I think that says quite a lot.

[Michael Wright]

We had a bass player quit after the first set once, so I played lhb for the rest of the gig (which I am not particularly proficient at).  The  bar owner,  who knew what happened,  came up and said we sounded much better.  I felt kind of bad about that.