Good post, this answer exactly what I’ve always wondered about (and accurately describes my playing style). Sometimes I’ll learn the intro note-for-note if I feel it is an important part of the song (examples that come to mind: Let It Be, Your Song, Bridge Over Troubled Water), but in general, I’ll just ad lib as described.
Other songs seem to require a vocal for the melody (which I cannot provide :D). For example, I can play the piano part for ‘Imagine’, but I really haven’t tried to fit any of the melody in there.
Right now I’m working on learning the theme from The Office. Next up, the piano solo from Layla.
Also, when you play with the melody, or if you play as an accompaniment, your piano parts will change. So don’t frustrate yourself by trying to jam the melody line over the exact piano part you learned. Just keep the general feel there.
I’ve only been playing solo piano in public for money recently – I always had at least another musician with me with whom I could collaborate. The key (I’m not saying I’m as great a solo player as Bill Evans or Hampton Hawes or Barry Harris or Bud Powell or Sonny Clark or Frank Hewitt or anybody else who made solo records) is to make the melody stand out, without it being a formulaic thing. Listen to Bill Evans make something like … the name of the song … Lonnie Smith did it … Newsome … fuck it, googling, can’t find it, the one by Anthony Newley in Eb, still can’t remember the name.
Or listen to guitarists playing chorded melodies – Wes Montgomery’s “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” is one of my favorite statements of a melody of all time, and even without Tommy Flanagan’s remarkable piano work on the album, would be a key tune to study for melodic phrasing and chordal accompaniment.
That’s pretty much the way all modern church pianists and most pop pianists play. It more mimics closely how full bands actually play. I’m surprised so many of you guys think it’s so weird. It’s pretty standard.
As for how you do it, if you need to actually play the melody, you invert the chord so that the melody note is on top. The left hand almost exclusively plays octaves and maybe the fifth between them. Heck, when I’m playing rhythm in the bass, I may not even play octaves, but just a single bass note.
Finally, since a note is usually necessary in the lower half of the keyboard to get a full sound, chording entirely in the left hand either is muddy-sounding due to being so low, or tinny sounding because it’s played higher and lacks a bass note. (You can get away with it on organ or if you are playing in a band with a bass, though.)
The book is probably trying to get you to avoid the above until you are experience enough to know when it is appropriate of handling it. It’s how I was originally taught, and how I plan to teach it.
If I had still had my computer set up where I could record you a sample, I would. But, since I don’t, just search for the title of any non-classical song plus “on piano” on YouTube, and you will find that using right-handed chords is the norm (if they are not using sheet music). For example, while I would prefer (and play) the left hand more ballad style, this "Let it Be" video is pretty typical.
It depends on what style you’re playing For me, doing more cocktail or jazz stuff, usually you’re splitting the chords between left and right hand, or putting it all in the left hand, as in stride piano. You’re rarely doing all the chording in the right unless you’re walking the bass or doing root-fifth stuff where you’re rhythmically filling in with right handed chords (like for a bossa nova or meringue) or things like that.
Of course, when you’re accompanying someone, then you’re more likely to be chording in the right, and playing bass in the left.
Even the pop styles I’m familiar with, the left hand does stuff like this (with broken chords) or this. (Forgive the choice of songs, but that style is the one I’m most used to hearing from pop cocktail piano.) The left hand is playing arpeggios, and not octaves or roots.
Of course, you mix it up, even within the same song. I might go from open harmony voicings (root-fifth-seventh in left, third-extended/altered tones-melody in the right) to closed harmony (left and right hand play melody notes, one octave apart, then you fill in the notes in between, usually with your right hand) to stride or a walking bass, etc.
Oh, I agree. I very rarely play triads below the C below middle C. But that’s where root-fifth-tenth voicings come in, arpeggios, or (most commonly in my case), root-fifth-seventh, with the third filled in by the right hand.