[Andy]

Thanks for all your help in the past guys, especially
keyboardfreak. I have learned stacks of chords now with their associated 7ths and suspended chords. I have been playing mainly octives on the bass, I had a crack at playing 5ths but didn't really like the sound of them. What I would now like to work on is some riffs (as we guitarists call them) which I can use between chords with my right hand, I am slowing experimenting but it seems to take ages do get and fancy sounding stuff, is there any standard type riffs I can use or could I tap someones big brain to help me out and onto the right path ?

Thanks

Andy

[jmlouie]

A super easy riff I've used was something like this:
Let's say you have a C chord for one measure, you could play on each eighth and play C D G C D G C D and repeat that over and over again.

I used that a bit. For Father of Lights I used this for the verse.
For the chord prog A D I would play D D B A D D B A G G E D G G E D. The timing would be 8th, 16th, dotted-8th, 8th. It sounds kind of funky, but I got used to it and started to like it after awhile.

[Nate]

Originally posted by Andy
Thanks for all your help in the past guys, especially
keyboardfreak.

You're quite welcome... glad I could help!

I have learned stacks of chords now with their associated 7ths and suspended chords. I have been playing mainly octives on the bass, I had a crack at playing 5ths but didn't really like the sound of them.

Good job with the 7th's and sus's..... keep at those 5th's... they really do thicken up the sound. It might have been the way that you were playing them that made you not like the sound. Try playing a fifth in between two octaves. For example: Play the lower octave and the fifth as two eighth notes, then play the higher octave and just let it ring out for awhile.

I am slowing experimenting but it seems to take ages do get and fancy sounding stuff, is there any standard type riffs I can use or could I tap someones big brain to help me out and onto the right path?

To tell you the truth, I usually just "experiment" myself!!!! I rarely ever know exactly what I'm playing. Anyway... I think I can give you a few good ideas though.....

Try playing a block chord, then doing a little turn-around thingy with the top note. For example: Play the chord C, C-E-G.... now, either in sixteenth notes or eighth notes (depending on the song), play these notes with your ring finger and little finger (while holding the C and E with your others)..... G-A-G-F. Then, you could progress to the next chord... let's say it's G.... play it as B-D-G... keeping G as the top note. Soooo...... looks something like this. C-E-G, A, G, F, B-D-G (Notes seperated by -'s are chords, notes seperated by ,'s are played individually)

Try playing just some nice arpeggios.... similar to what jmlouie suggested. Just keep the octaves in the left hand.... but then do some broken chords in the right. A really good way to use an arpeggio is to play a block chord on the first beat... then on the next beat do an arpeggio... on the next beat go back to a block chord... then do another arpeggio... etc.... etc.

For example: In "You Are My King", the progression is D-G-Asus-A.... you could do this.... F#-A-D, F#, A, D, G-B-D, G, B, D, A-D-E, A, D, E, A-C#-E, A, C#, E. (Again, the notes seperated by -'s are to be played as chords.... the notes seperated by ,'s are to be played individually.) Usually you'll want the top note to be longer than the other two. So play the first two as sixteenths and then the last one as an eighth.... or the first two as eighths and then the last one as a quarter.

Anyway... hope that helps somehow. Honestly though, the best advice I could give you is just to keep experimenting..... also, listen to lots of music that has keyboards in it.... try to pick up on what they're doing. Well... hope this helped!