A friend asked me how I go about playing songs on piano just from their chords. Here are the preliminary notes on the subject which I sent her:
When I'm playing a piano, I switch between several different behaviors:
- playing a bassline with my left hand and chords with my right. This is my default behavior.
- Playing riffs (eg if I were playing Gronlandic Edit, most of my time would be spent playing the bassline).
- playing parts which are copied note-for-note from the original piece, because they’re intricate or important enough that I can’t replace them. Eg playing the intro for Sirens Of Your Toxic Spirit.