The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Part 4:
Accompanying
172
You can even break up the rhythm slightly by playing your left hand (the bass) on
beats one and three, and your right hand (the chords) on two and four, like this:
Rhythmic accompaniment with a syncopated rhythm.
Rhythmic accompaniment with a syncopated dotted quarter note rhythm—kind of a Latin feel.
Playing the chords on the backbeat.
Or, if you want a more lively sound, play the bass on each beat and the chords
as eighth notes on each upbeat (plus the downbeat of one), like this:
Playing the chords on the upbeat.

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Chapter 13:
Accompanying Melodies
173
The benefit of this approach is that it provides a driving pulse for the song. The
drawback is that you have to pick the right kind of pulse, which requires you to
have some sense of rhythm.
If you don’t have any natural rhythm, you might want to stick to block chords.
Arpeggiated Accompaniment
If you’re playing a slower song, you might want to break up the chords and play
the individual notes in a sequence, like an arpeggio. You can create a simple
arpeggiated accompaniment
by playing straight eighth notes over two beats, with
the root of the chord on beat one, the third of the chord on the first upbeat, the
fifth on beat two, and the third (again) on the second upbeat.
Written out, it looks something like this:
An
arpeggiated
accompaniment
also is
often called a 
broken
chord
accompaniment
because you break the
chord apart and play
each note separately.
Definition
Playing an arpeggiated accompaniment.
You can vary this accompaniment by changing up the order of the chord tones,
varying the rhythm, or even adding passing notes, like this:
An arpeggiated accompaniment with passing tones in addition to the main chord tones.
If you make sure you play the root of the chord in the bass, you have a quick
and easy accompaniment for all types of music.

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