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Does anyone have advice on the best strategies for comping in a blues band? Here's some background - as well as playing piano I also play electric bass and have played bass in one blues band or another for many years, so I'm very familiar with the genre. On the piano I play various things including ragtime and I have a good head for chords and scales in different keys. I'm now started to play keyboard in a band where I was playing bass and I'm finding that comping in interesting ways which complement the rest of the band is the hardest part. The other instruments in the band are drums, bass, guitar and harmonica/vocals.

I've been reading a few books on playing blues piano and listening to recordings. My initial idea was to play seventh chords split across two hands, 1/5 or 5/1 in the left and 3/7 or 7/3 in the right and while that works OK it sounds repetetive. Step two was to move the top note on the right hand around a bit so it could be playing the 2, 6, or 7 and this is an improvement but I'm wondering if an approach other than two handed chords would work better, such as playing arpeggios and fills or playing higher up the keyboard while the guitar player handles the chords.

When I play blues with a band like that I usually become a one-handed player. I'm more likely to play trills, riffs or fills than straight chords, though.

Do some listening. Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters have good piano, and there's plenty on youtube. I reccommend listening to bands where the piano player is not the leader.

try this, a lot, with chromatic grace notes to the 3rd and 5th:

1 5 7 1 4 6 1 3 5



try trills with the 5 and 7 or the 1 and 7



try twinkling the blues scale fast in the high register, just the notes that lie under your fingers, especially when the vocalist pauses


Often, when the vocalist pauses the guitar, the harp, and the piano all do fills at once! It is contrary to my normal instinct for tasteful playing, but it sounds really cool.

That's just the sort of advice I was looking for! My first instinct is that two hands are better than one but I'm starting to think that a less dense sound can work better when playing in a band and I do notice on a lot of recordings that the piano is playing riffs or using two fingers to play intervals such as 6ths or octaves.