@Mentor Bob Kinney Bob, great work here, and that's a really good question. I'll share my approach to developing comping ideas. I don't have a tight, formal methodology for this. It's something I developed based on my own experience, watching how I play and how others play, and experimenting. What I do, in Brazilian music and in jazz too, is treat comping practice like improv practice. I take a rhythmic idea I have memorized, something like a Charleston figure, and just start playing with it over different tunes and harmonic situations, testing variations, seeing what sticks, kind of a noodling with purpose approach. Over time that builds a repertoire of ideas I can reach for without thinking. That said... In a real playing situation it becomes much more about listening to the soloist than running a system. If they are busy I pull back rhythmically, if they are leaving space I fill in more, if they are up high I might sit lower, that kind of interaction. It is less methodic, and more attention, but the vocabulary you build from experimenting the way you are describing is exactly what makes that listening possible in the first place.