Having Trouble Rolling with right hand and keeping bass rhythm in left hand

[tm21]

Hi, I'm new to jazzpianolessons.com, but I must say that I absolutely love the content. This is by far the best resource for piano on the internet.

I'm currently doing Blues and Boogie Disc 2 and I'm having a bit of trouble maintaining the 8th note rhythms in my left hand and rolling chords or diads in my right hand. As soon as I try to roll, my left hand either speeds up or stops completely. Can Willie or anyone offer some advice on this? Thanks guys!

[leadbird]

Hi

Had to smile when I read your post, because same thing happened to me when I started playing the blues. The first blues I learned included some roll and the last thing I was able to do was to roll and keep the left hand going.

Not sure I can give you much advice, but you will get it. Just keep practicing. I guess the old standard advice applies here as with all the other stuff, do both hands seperatly until they go on autopilot. The other advice to slow it down might help, but I guess it's a bit strange to slow it down since the point of the roll kinda disappears when you slow it down.

Another thing I found helped alot for me to build hand independance is to try and improvise over the left hand rythm your working on. Just do it simple using chord tones or the blues scale. I feel that when I improvise it's a 3 thing to keep track on in addition to the left and right hand, but it really builds hand independece.

Maybe roll over another left hand rythm you are more familiar with or find easier would help aswell?

Anyways don't worry about it to much, you will get it and when you do you I'm sure you gonna smile to yourself aswell.

Let us know when you get it :)

Cheers

[tm21]

Hey Leadbird,
Thank you so much for your help. The tip of playing the roll with a rhythm I am already familiar with really helped. I think with more practice I'll get the hang of it. Thanks for the encouragement!