What Is the Pianist Doing While Somebody Else Solos? Everything That Matters
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
Accompanying a soloist in jazz means supplying harmony and rhythm in irregular fragments rather than a steady pattern, which is a harder job than it sounds and a more creative one.
What the accompanist supplies
A pianist or guitarist behind a soloist plays chords in short irregular bursts, leaving silence between them rather than maintaining a continuous texture. The chords establish the harmony the soloist is improvising over, the rhythm of their placement drives the music forward, and the gaps leave room for the soloist to be heard. The pattern is never fixed in advance. It responds continuously to what the soloist plays, filling space when they rest and thinning out when they become busy.
The decisions being made continuously
Every burst involves several simultaneous choices:
- •Which notes of the chord to include and which to leave out
- •Whether to add notes beyond the basic chord
- •Exactly when to place it relative to the beat
- •How long to hold it
- •Whether to respond to what the soloist just played
- •Whether to leave the space empty instead
Why leaving notes out matters
The most counterintuitive part of the job is what gets omitted. A seventh chord contains four notes and an accompanist usually plays two or three, dropping the root because the bass player has it and frequently dropping the fifth because it adds nothing. What remains are the notes that define the chord's quality, and playing only those leaves the harmony clear while creating space. Adding the root doubles what the bass is already doing and thickens the texture for no gain, which is the commonest fault in inexperienced accompaniment.
The rest of the rhythm section
Accompaniment is a group task rather than one player's job and the division of labour is well established. The bass supplies the harmonic foundation and the walking pulse, which is why the pianist can leave the root out. The drummer keeps time largely on a ride cymbal and answers the soloist with accents on the snare and bass drum, which is a conversational role rather than a metronomic one. A guitarist and a pianist together must divide the same register or they collide, so one usually thins out drastically or drops out. Listening for who is leaving space is the fastest way to hear how a group works.
How the style developed
The approach replaced an older one and the change is audible in recordings. Early jazz pianists maintained a steady pattern with the left hand striking a bass note and the right answering with a chord on the offbeat, which was rhythmically reliable and left little room. As bass players took over the walking line in the 1940s, the pianist's left hand was freed and players including Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk began placing chords irregularly instead. Count Basie took the idea furthest in the opposite direction, becoming famous for accompaniment consisting of a handful of perfectly placed notes.
The takeaway
Accompanying a soloist means placing chords in irregular bursts that state the harmony, push the rhythm and leave space, responding continuously to what the soloist does. Notes are deliberately omitted, particularly the root that the bass already supplies, which keeps the texture open. The style replaced a steady left hand pattern once bass players took over the walking line.