I have been listening to a lot of The Doors lately. Hearing the keyboards of Ray Manzarek is a big motivation to me to get busy expanding my keyboard style.

If you watch the videos of the band, you’ll see he plays bass using a second keyboard that’s on top of the one he uses for his right-hand rhythm. I’ve seen some similarly amazing examples of left-hand bass keyboard playing in the Jazz Organ circles with guys like Joey DeFrancesco, who I luckily got to see three times at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase when I was at school up there.

So I ordered a copy of this Bass Line Encyclopedia (which fortunately has bass clef notation in addition to bass guitar tab) and I’m going to try to practice them on keyboard. Also I’m practicing out of my fake book with a B3 organ patch along with a drum loop–just backup organ, not concentrating on melody. We’ll see where this goes…