From Barrelhouse to Boogie Woogie. Continuing his assault on left hand techniques, Andy Honeybone fingers some of the more rhythmical tricks you can get up to with the westward digits.

LAST MONTH, I blasted off with contemporary left-hand ninths and thirteenths. All very well, but it did skip over countless decades of musical development.

So now these omissions will be rectified — bearing in mind, too, the huge influence that Western "art" music has had on the popular variety. Even last month's chords owed something to Ravel, for example, and innocuous chords like the major seventh have only become acceptable since the pioneering work of Debussy early on in the century.

Some BLUES styles have escaped influence and remain simple (or dull, depending on your viewpoint). BARRELHOUSE bass lines are referred to as "flat four beat" because four on-the-beat note-pairs to the bar are played, with none receiving any emphasis. The interval chosen is generally a fifth (G-D), with momentary light relief given by an occasional sixth (G-E). Living in a beer keg also adds authenticity.

BOOGIE WOOGIE piano style as practiced by Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons et al came into being around 1920. It exists in two distinct styles: the hard, percussive form as in "Honky Tonk Train Blues" and the almost Latin so-called Jimmy Yancey style. The first is built on the Barrelhouse style but introduces a rhythmic fifth to sixth pattern on each beat. The second style has a touch of the Eurythmics' "Right By Your Side" about it — a very syncopated, single-note bass. Somewhere between is the octave-skipping bass which plays 1,3,5,6,8,6,5,3 patterns (that is C,E,G,A,C¹,A,G,E) in a rhythmical version of the 'Hon-da' style nowadays associated with dated disco tracks.

WALKING basses, and I don't mean guitars that get nicked, have long held a fascination. Promoters were quick to realise that the piano could simultaneously play the bass line and cut the payroll. Roots and fifths generally fall on the even beats of the bar with practically anything fitting between. Rhythmic skips and chromatic anticipation add interest, but the most important aspect of the walking bass is its unrelenting presence. Play any note that comes into your head but never falter: despite anything a drummer might threaten, it is the bass that provides the pulse, so keep going at all costs. For an example of a walking bass in a rock context, listen to Donald Fagen's "Walk Between The Raindrops".

But let's not get too up-market while we're still exploring the roots. The STOMP is a musical texture reliant on a two-note bass line and accented third beat. Very popular, I'm assured — a real foot-banger.

GOSPEL feel comes in part from limiting harmonies to basic triads (sometimes chromatic) and making use of inversions such that the bass line is like a vocal, rarely making large interval jumps. A sprinkling of diminished chords helps, too.

It is widely acknowledged that STRIDE is less than easy. In this style left-hand chords are alternated with (sometimes) octave doubled bass notes at alarming speed. Complex harmonies are again at odds with the style — sevenths are about the limit. There are many ways of arranging the pattern of bass notes and chords. It may be simple root-chord-fifth-chord or perhaps root-chord-chord-note leading to fifth of dominant (as in "Maple Leaf Rag"). In general, stride chords are three-part, omit the root or fifth for dominant sevenths, and are to be found at a much lower register than the middle-C clusters recommended last month. Like any style, stride benefits from being contrasted with less energetic forms within a given piece,

Harp-like left hand accompaniments (ARPEGGIOS) can be very effective for ballads, and modern forms of this technique owe a great deal to the classical masters: Liszt, Chopin and Rachmaninoff. This is definitely sustain pedal stuff. First, a whacking great low bass note, and then the fifth. Packing tones too close together at low frequencies will sound muddy, so the next note in the arpeggio is the tenth. This gives an "open" major chord. Next comes an octave-elevated fifth, followed by the standard chord tones one after another but close-packed. Repetition of the sequence coupled with its reverse gives a gentle ebb and flow.

Very quickly you become fed up with doing a poor imitation of the cheapest auto-accompaniment organ imaginable and you long for something more fulfilling. How about a root 5,9,3,7 and back (A,E,B,C#,G,C#,B,E - A and E from lower octave)? Last month's chords can be arpeggiated by appending the root, 5,9 'foot' of the previous example. As we're talking about a twelve-note sequence, triplets are in order to fill each bar.

LOCKED-HANDS style developed as a piano reduction of the five-voice chord texture played by the saxophone sections of big bands like Glenn Miller's in the late 1930s. George Shearing got most of the credit for the piano style but it appears that sometime-organist Milt Buckner was the originator. Locked hands is easy to describe but in practice requires intuitive knowledge of some 432 model chord blocks. Of the five notes, the highest and lowest form an octave with the bottom note played by the left-hand. The remaining three notes are dictated by the harmony expected at any given time. The inner voices are quite close and can be harmonically rich. The style requires that the left-hand ghosting the melody adds appoggiatura (chromatic grace notes before the harmonised note) which add a zippy feeling.

Much as I disapprove of synthesisers doubling bass guitar lines, I concede that a real piano makes an exception where the layering can provide timbral interest rather than precipitate a power struggle.

So in RHYTHM AND BLUES, the piano and bass need to be very "together" to balance the breakneck triplet pounding of the right hand. Riffs are related to patterns, but more intensely and with much less going on around them. Pattern basses are characteristic of Motown — Bowie and Jagger's version of "Dancing In The Street" is a fine example, even if it does owe more than a little to "Jumping Jack Flash".

Sequencers, too, have made repetition and complexity easy, and new levels of stamina are required from human performers who wish to match some of those lines from Madonna and Frankie Goes To Hollywood records.

So there you have it. One hundred years of keyboard styles in one thousand words. The choice is yours.

YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE

G + 7 (9b ) — G7 augmented flat nine — resolves to C minor 7

BASS NOTE G