Ok, I know pianos aren’t strummed. Well, they could be if you opened the lid and had a stiff plectrum.
The Boom-Chicka is Johnny Cash’s signature sound played by his first guitarist Luther Perkins.
It can be done two ways. Root note of the chord, a strum, repeat the pattern **or **Root note, a strum pattern, 5th Note of the chord, strum, repeat the pattern. Johnny Cash’s version sounded like a train chugging.
Hundreds and hundreds of country and even pop songs use that.
Is there an equivalent on the piano? Where the root note is played then the chord. or root note. chord, 5th (dominant) note, chord? What’s it called?
It’s just an alternating bass pattern. You can play it on a piano. Left hand for the root and the 5th, right hand for the chord. As these things go, it’s pretty boring for the pianist, though. Perkins played it on an undistorted Telecaster sort of set for “Ultra-Crisp”. Nothing sounds crisp like a Telecaster bridge pickup.
If you’re talking about the specific rhythm pattern, I’ve never heard it called anything but “boom-chicka.” But that requires two hits of each chord. I usually hear it done with a alternating bass-fifth pattern. It’s also not unusual to do it entirely in the left hand, then using the right hand to do more melodic stuff on top.
But if you go by the more general alternating bass pattern, I think what you are describing is “stride piano.” I’m pretty sure that term is just used jazz, though. It is a single note on 1 and 3, and the chord on 2 and 4. Like the boom-chicka pattern, it is often left-hand only. It’s also often done with a lot of jumps.
There’s also the traditional evangelical piano pattern, which is a stride-like left hand pattern. It is octaves followed by the chord and is always jumped, meaning you play the octaves and then move your hand up to play the chord.
There’s also a quicker pattern that I don’t know the name of, that does it on the eight note, meaning the chord is on an up beat. I hear it all the time in older songs, and it’s rather big in the Pentecostal piano tradition. You can hear a rather advanced version in this version of Victory in Jesus. I can’t seem to find the oodles of simple versions I used to always run into, but maybe someone else can.
There’s also a derogatory name for it when that’s all people can do, without being able to put anything on top of it, but I frustratingly can’t remember it. Anyone else remember? It’s something about how you are just alternating hands back and forth.
As others have said, it absolutely is doable on a piano. I’ve only ever heard it called “boom-chick” (without the a), but in my experience it’s usually played like Ranger Jeff described; the root and 5th on the downbeats and the chord on the upbeats.
If you want to see a good example in print and can’t find the sheet music for those country tunes, check out any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Not to denigrate them, because they’re awesome, but their scores are full of that stuff all around, and yes, can be fairly boring for the pianist. But hey, it gets the job done!
I’ve been practicing the boom-chicka a lot lately. Getting the pick on the correct string for each note for various takes practice. It got me curious about the piano equivalent. thanks you for the information.
Somewhere along the line, I began doing what I call a “pick brush”. I play the bass note with the flat pick, and then brush the higher strings with the back of the nails of my middle and ring fingers. The same sort of motion as if you were brushing a ladybug off your shirt. I think it first came about as I was fine tuning “Sweet Baby James”.
Well, they could be if you opened the lid and had a stiff plectrum.