Clever play or Standard play?

[Rayblewit]

I just saw a band playing 60's pop and rock music. (The Beatles etc.) They were very good. Comprising a female vocalist, drummer, lead/rhythm guitarist and keyboardist.
What impressed me and to to his credit the keyboadist excelled! He played the bass to every song which sounded a dead ringer for a bass guitar. This was done with his left hand on the keys. But at the same time he played melody and lead with his right hand being a piano/synth sound. He used mainly the last two octaves for this giving high notes to compliment and accompany the guitarist.
Overall it was a sweet mix. Btw the KB was a Yamaha motiv XF7

I was wondering is this a common standard thing that the keyboardist play two rolls at the same time, lead and bass? Or is this guy just very clever and extra skilled? I have never seen it before on stage whereby the keys player makes two sounds. I hope I make sense with my description.
Ray.

 

[CowboyNQ]

This bloke is a namesake of yours. He's pretty good at left handed bass!

 

[CowboyNQ]

Another bloke you might have heard of! JPJ gets extra credit as my understanding is that he's also rocking bass pedals here. Some Zeppelin uber fan might correct me on that one though.

 

[Ted Nicoson]

Ray

Watch just about any of the professional demonstrators of keyboards (Roland: Scott Tibbs/Ed Diaz or Yamaha: Blake Angelos/Bert Smorenberg) on YouTube. When they demo the "split" mode, they usually play a complicated piano or EP part on the right with a quite fluent bass run on the left. I have to admit, that requires a little more left/right dichotomy than I've got. Kind of reminds me of the New Orleans (Prof. Longhair, Dr. John, etc.) style of play.

 

[Rayblewit]

Thanks for the responses Paul and Ted.

Paul,
Zep and Doors have regular bass players. The keys by Ray and JPJ are played in the conventional way bass and trebble. Admittedly the bass riffs are very special as Ray explains above.

Ted,
You nailed it. The split mode is the key to my OP.
The guy I saw was playing split and his left and right hands were working independently from each other. It was quite special to my ears. The rest of the audience had no idea. They just listened and bopped along. I listened differently and straight away right from the first song, I said to myself "where the hell is the bass coming from?" I thought it wad pre-recorded at first. But not. At interval I snuck up on stage and checked out the KB. The guy had the split point key pressed down in a permanent position. Very interesting. I wanted to speak with him but he was too elusive.
Ray

 

[CowboyNQ]

Yes Ray, I agree with you.

My point being that the "regular bass players" in Led Zep and The Doors ARE the keyboard players, JPJ and Ray M respectively!

 

[Rayblewit]

Oh I see. I was not aware of that. I appreciate the follow up.
Thanks man!

 

[soot29]

I think I can one-up that. Check out Jimmy Smith (among many others) on the Hammond B3. Melody in right hand, chordal comping in left and all bass lines with the feet. The Hammond bass pedals can sound a lot like a jazz bass. I just bought bass pedals and am trying to learn all this crap now. Daunting.

 

[CowboyNQ]

That's so true...organ players do some very cool bass.

 

[Eric Barker]

I used to handle the bass all the time in bands. The difficult problem I ran into is it creates acoustic problems playing on one instrument, even split. Ideally, its probably best to run whatever bass patch you use out a different channel, into a bass amp to be EQd and leveled independently (and much louder) than the rest of your keyboard sounds. Bass is the very foundation of the mix, and it takes a lot of power to move that much volume, so it should be pretty loud, higher end lead keys don't need nearly as much volume to cut through. This poses a real challenge to a FOH engineer if they only have one channel to work with, with two very different roles on it. Hammond helps because you have different manuals with different drawbar settings, if you're really good at self mixing (which I've always been terrible at), you can do a fine job. But even as a sworn "single 88 key" player, these days if I were handling bass parts, I would get a second board.

As for the technical side of playing bass parts at the same time... how can you not? lol. I'm always doubling the bass (or trying to, anyway) about an octave up, because it keeps me grounded. Not claiming I'm doing as complicated of stuff (I can, but that would get in the way), but I'm usually there dancing around the root and fifth. Splitting hands to do bass/leads is pretty much the easiest thing for me to do (and many others). Bass/chords is also about equally as simple. It's Chords/Melody that starts to get a little heady, you see it in jazz 100% of the time, but not as much in rock/pop.

 

[carolinakeys]

I've wondered about this. I notice you said you plat the 1-5 an octave up. I would think in lower registers if both were playing and it got a little off it would sound horrid. I'm lust learning the classical method but want to play rock and country as I did on guitar.

 

[Eric Barker]

Never at the same time, but many basslines consist of playing the 1 and 5 in some kind of arpeggiation or pattern. Bossanova is probably the most obvious, but many rock styles do as well. Bass playing is almost 99% a monophonic endeavor. That said, I often play octaves when playing piano bass. Octaves aren't a harmony (not in classical theory anyway) but a timbre, and sometimes the piano, not typically being as loud as the bass, it's nice to reenforce the octave.

I understand what I said is kind of counter-intuitive. The bass is a lot purer and less rich than the piano in the low-end. All of it's energy is contained in the fundamental, which is why it works so well. I've always been baffled, why myself and many pianists like playing bass octaves... wouldn't that make the bassline LESS bass-y? I dunno, I still do it anyway. There must be some reason.