From ynottnaro@yahoo.com Wed Jan 22 04:54:48 2003
Subject:Re: Rolling Stones on HBO

> The Chester Thompson and Chuck Levell threads
> prompts me to ask, "Is incredible rhythmic hand
> independence a matter of dedicated practice or are
> there innate differences?

I believe the answer to that is their primary
instruction as children/young players, and their
obsession with jazz. There are no shortcuts in jazz
music, and even if you play with a bassist, your left
hand had better be doing something substantial.
Obviously some people have more of a left/right brain
independence, but you can train yourself to do it.
Its just easier to start younger as you have less
entrenched bad habits to overcome. In my own case,
being a rock lover/player, I hate to admit that I had
much more independence when I was 20 than I do now.
Rock music with elec bass has made my left hand pretty
lazy, so I try to at least build up some "strength" by
doing a lot of left-hand chording. My right hand is
pretty capable of a lot of things, but that is one of
my goals is to bring up the shortcomings in my
playing. I notice as well that my unaccompanied
playing is bit more involved than my ensemble playing,
but unless you play in a keyboard trio, I think that
is just the nature of the beast....at least in rock
music. A great way to fix that for rock players is to
learn some Nawlins style piano (something I've been
working on for a while now) ala Dr. John or Alan
Toussaint. Very complex left hand parts with even
more involved right hand things (octave runs, octave/5
runs and some excellent gospel chording). I always
entertain the idea of taking lessons again too to fix
those thing....if only there were about 9 more hours
in the day. *sigh*

tony

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