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Typically keeping rhythm is a low-end job: bassists in a guitar band, and the left hand in playing the piano. Admittedly I know nearly nothing about playing the piano. But I thought I would ask:

Are there pianists who keep time with their right hand, and play the melody with the left, bass hand? Are there famous piano pieces which follow this pattern?

Richard
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Jason P Sallinger
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    Professional pianists are expected to be able to keep time with either hand, whatever they're playing. – Divide1918 May 07 '21 at 15:46
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    By "keep time," do you mean "keep the tempo," or "play something other than the melody"? – Richard May 07 '21 at 15:49
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    Surely the question is if there are any _pieces_ that do this, not if there are any _performers_ do this? The musical role of the left hand and the right hand is mostly determined by the piece, not the performer. It seems a bit like asking "are there any bus drivers who drive out to Five Mile Road?" instead of "are there any bus routes that go out to Five Mile Road?"—the former question doesn't make a lot of sense, because the driver doesn't decide whether to go to Five Mile Road or not; that's determined by the route. – Tanner Swett May 08 '21 at 02:13
  • It's common for pianists to use their left hand rhythmically and the right hand melodically, but this has nothing to do with handedness — it's musical convention. Left-handed pianists also use their left and right hands as above, and any pianist with enough experience can reverse the relationship. – Aaron May 08 '21 at 03:30
  • You may be interested in [this left-handed piano ad](https://linkshaenderklavier.de/Shop/product_info.php?language=en&info=p16_bluethner-modell-4-grosser-salonfluegel-fuer-linkshaender.html&=) or [this performance by a left-handed musician on a left-handed custom-built piano](https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/lefthand-piano-christopher-seed/). The video contains a few minutes of explanations by the pianist. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 08 '21 at 10:39

2 Answers2

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By "keep time in the right hand," I'm assuming you mean "play something other than the melody in the right hand." And quite a lot of composers have done this over the years! There are countless examples, so ultimately I'll just point to one: Chopin's Op. 28 B-minor Prelude.

And as an interesting aside: another type of composition, one that only uses one arm/hand, is also an important tradition. It became much more commonplace, I'm sorry to say, following World War I. Many pianists returned from the war with injured or missing arms, which led to an uptick in pieces written for just one arm. My own favorite from this time period is Ravel's "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand," but other similar works are listed on that Wikipedia page. You can watch a performance here.

Richard
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    Thank you, great answer. To answer your question, I meant play something along the lines of quarter notes, something basic and rhythmic, while the left hand plays something intricate, which I assume in this case would be considered the melody. – Jason P Sallinger May 07 '21 at 16:56
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    ermm… but no half decent musician thinks that way. The 'time' is in their head. They don't need to plonk along 4-to-the-bar to know that. Also, there is a far higher than average percentage of left-handed musicians compared to 'other jobs', so you'd think someone would have noticed by now if that's what they're doing. – Tetsujin May 07 '21 at 18:33
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    @Tetsujin Agreed. I don't know of many, if any, compositions where the performer is playing strict quarter notes and nothing else on one hand. What I meant is to be providing a voice similar to what a drummer might provide, or what a bassist might provide, while the other hand does the accompaniment, like a guitarist playing something heavily involved. – Jason P Sallinger May 07 '21 at 19:11
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    @JasonPSallinger: My prototypical model of music is something like a Bach fugue, where there are 3 or 4 melodies going on at once and nothing is accompanying something else (but Bach took great care to make sure it still all fits together harmonically). I realize your model might differ but it's important to realize there are other ways of thinking about how music is put together. – Alexander Woo May 07 '21 at 20:45
  • @AlexanderWoo - Bizarrely enough, even though Bach fugues are quintessential polyphony, I've *always* still listened to them as if they had only one melody line and multiple accompaniment lines (one of the first Bach fugue recordings I listened to was by a student who relentlessly emphasized the topmost line at all times; I still have a soft spot for Bach fugue recordings that emphasize the subject whenever it reappears). – Dekkadeci May 08 '21 at 12:44
  • @Dekkadeci, if you look at a partimento fugue, it's basically what your describe, subject entries only on a single staff with changing clefs, the other two or three voices to be filled in ad lib like thorough bass. – Michael Curtis May 10 '21 at 12:34
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In any kind of music with regular beats, the most important factor for a performance to be perceived to be 'keeping time', is the performer's ability to play in time to their own internal sense of time, and the ability of all of the musicians within any ensemble to be able to synchronize their internal metronomes with each other.

Some styles of music, for example, boogie-woogie piano are clearly driven by the left hand patterns, but the performance is still guided by the performer's own internal sense of time. A listener, or even the performer, will perceive the left hand to be 'keeping time'.

It is possible to play a melody on the piano, unaccompanied, with either hand and still be perceived as 'keeping time'.

Greg Kaighin
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