Trail and Bail Technique

[JazzerEU]

Here’s a video lesson of how I comp/chord solos doing something that stride pianists inspired me to do. I like to call the technique “trail and bail”. It can be useful for variety in accompaniment and even chord soloing and using bass notes isolated from chords in a tasteful manner.

[MiniMerckx.22]

The concept of your ears/mind continuing to hear bass notes while melodic or harmonic content immediately follow them has no better demonstration than in Bach's solo suites for violoncello. I've been working on implementing this into my comping recently. Thanks for the inspiration to work more on it.

[DawgBone]

Great video, and I like the name you gave the technique! It's a solid concept especially since root notes aren't usually needed in a band setting since those are the bassists bread and butter anyways.

I usually find myself doing light comping on the top three strings in the blues setting for a few reasons. I have a 2nd guitarist who often comps in sync with the snare drum ala Freddie Green that locks everything in place rhythmically. For some gigs I also have a keys player who does a lot of the heavy chordal lifting. For chording I like sliding 9ths and can just use the top three strings and slide it around as I please and worry mostly about lead licks and singing instead, which has been a dream of mine after suffering many years in trio settings (yuck, lol).

Thanks for sharing JazzerEU.