Q: hi bill, i play the keys, and i'll eventually play with a band or other people, but i'm not sure how this accompaniment thing works. what i do right now is listen my favorite records and accompany them while listening. i play chord after chord after chord and that doesn't work for every song, sure it's fine for some but it doesn't sound good for some. you know a lot about music and i guess you've gone through this sometime. how do i make my accompaniments more exciting, like get some interesting melodic or rythmic stuff going instead of playing chords on the right and octave root notes at the left.
A: it's tricky because when you're playing along to a record, there is already accompaniment there. so actually there's probably already too much if you are playing too. also if there is already a bass player, you need to not play root notes in the bass, unless you are entirely sure that you and the bass player will play exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. it will be helpful if you can get some kind of play-along recording which has your instrument muted