Basic Accomapniment Patters

What can I do with my LH right away to sound good?

Without a pulse or a beat, music would be lifless.

Each measure of music is divided into beats, usually 2, 3, or 4 called duple, triple or quadruple meters.

The downbeat (first beat) of the measure is always strong or slightly accented and is followed by a weak beat.

A duple (2) or quadruple (4) meter willh ave a pattern of strong-weak or strong-weak moderately strong-weak, respectively, while a triple meter will sound: strong-weak-weak.

If we play our accompanying chords that strengthens this basic pulse, we go a long way towards making our music more attractive.


For eg. On top of Old smokey -- triple meter
--try breaking up the chords so that root note is played on the downbeat while the remaining 2 notes of the triads are played together on the weak 2nd and 3rd beats of each measure.
--root is on the lowst bass note of the accompaniment -- it auto sounds a bit stronger than the higher notes
--this hleps bring out the strong beat pattern.

OUr ears always pick out the lowest and highest notes most readily.


1. Oom Pah pah
Block chord accompaniment in a 3/4 meter is our most basic waltz-type LH pattern.
--boom chuck chuck
-- oom pah pah

For added emphasis:
--boom with a lower octave bass 1-8.


2. Broken chord arpegiatted

When arpeggiating a chord, don't have to always paly the notes in the same order.
Try playing the 5th of the triad on the 2nd beat and the 3rd of the triad on the last beat.


1 3 5 3
1 5 3 5
1 5 1 3
1 3 1 5
1 3 5 8
1 5 3 8
1 8 5 3
1 5 8 3


3. Alternate with the 5th.
One very common and effective accompaniment pattern in quadruple (4) meter is to have the bass alternate betweent eh R and 5th of the chord on the strong beats.

The rest of the chord is played on the 2 weak beats: 2 & 4.
By alternating bass notes, we avoid the annoying static quality of hitting the root of the chord continuously.