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- Feb 12, 2017
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If I'm playing solo, I tend to play bass lines with my left hand, and then melody/chords with the right. Typically the melody outlines the chords, anyway, and then you can kind of add some harmony notes in between to fill it out. The problem that A) the bass is the most important part and it needs to be covered, and B) chords don't sound very good (for acoustic reasons) very low.
The times you'll need to play chords in the left hand and melody in the right are situation like small combos where you've got a bass player covering the bass but where the piano is playing the chords and melody. Not very common in pop and rock, but all the time in jazz.
For starting off, I would concentrate on learning bass and chords, and then bass and melody. Chords and melody is a little more advanced to do and is not as common, as I mentioned.
As for which chords to learn, I wouldn't concern yourself with "how many chords on the piano are possible", it's not particularly relevant for what you need. Concentrate on learning the "chords of the key" you are playing in. So start with the key of C Major, and learn the I, ii, IV, V, and vi chords (C, Dm, F, G, Am). Very little music uses the iii or the vii, so you can ignore those. Go through easy tunes and you'll find that they often use same combinations of chords (progressions). Once you learn a few tunes, you'll start to pick up on those patterns and you can translate them to other songs.
The times you'll need to play chords in the left hand and melody in the right are situation like small combos where you've got a bass player covering the bass but where the piano is playing the chords and melody. Not very common in pop and rock, but all the time in jazz.
For starting off, I would concentrate on learning bass and chords, and then bass and melody. Chords and melody is a little more advanced to do and is not as common, as I mentioned.
As for which chords to learn, I wouldn't concern yourself with "how many chords on the piano are possible", it's not particularly relevant for what you need. Concentrate on learning the "chords of the key" you are playing in. So start with the key of C Major, and learn the I, ii, IV, V, and vi chords (C, Dm, F, G, Am). Very little music uses the iii or the vii, so you can ignore those. Go through easy tunes and you'll find that they often use same combinations of chords (progressions). Once you learn a few tunes, you'll start to pick up on those patterns and you can translate them to other songs.