Hi Rick, sorry to hear you're having so much trouble with getting the hands together. I have a few suggestions that may be helpful... First, yes, you can take a private lesson at any point. No need to get to a certain level before coming in. However, unless you can come to me physically in NYC then it may be difficult to help you with this over skype. In person there can be a lot more interaction (such as one person plays one had while the other plays the other, or we both play simultaneously). On skype we have to take turns and cannot both play at the same time.

Here is what I suggest you try first...

Play your desired bass pattern with the left hand while challenging yourself to do other cognitively demanding tasks simultaneously. (i.e. read a book out loud, carry on a conversation, write words with pencil and paper, curl a weight with your right arm, send a text message, etc... get creative).

You said you are doing the hand independence exercise from the video... how far can you get? Can you play whole notes with the right hand while continuing the bass pattern uninterrupted?

Take a short video of yourself trying the exercise and upload it here via the "add a video" button at the bottom of the reply box. Then I can see and maybe give a few suggestions. Chances are, other students are having the same problem. We can all learn at the same time.

I had this hand independence problem in the worst way. I slowed the metronome down to an embarrassingly slow tempo of 40 bpm to start. After 2 weeks of dedicating 2 hrs a day to hand independence training I can now get the triplets on the right hand against the C/G shuffle left hand at 140 bpm.

Start super slow.

Here is how I am working on hand independence, maybe it'll help others. I'll take an MP3 file of a tune that I like and upload it to a program on my PC that will slow down a tune without changing its pitch. Then I can play along with it. For example, I'm using Arthur's tune from his "Laying It Down" CD (highly recommended by the way!) called Boogie Woogie Stomp in the key of C. I find I can keep up by using some left hand bass patterns with the tune at 70% of its original speed. Once I'm comfortable, I'll add some right hand chords, and then later work towards melody improvisation notes. Right now, I'm at the chords level. I find the advantage of doing this is it's not as boring as doing exercises to a metronome, and it gives you the feeling of playing with a band. I know my progress is moving forward faster by doing this method. As I get more comfortable, I can increase the tempo. I'm using a program called the "Amazing Slow Downer" (a reasonable one time purchase price) though I'm sure there are others out there. You can set the file to keep repeating, so I'll sit there and play the song over and over. I discovered this cool method when I played acoustic blues guitar, and now that I've taken up piano, it works well here too!

Arthur has a recent video about this on YouTube, Boogie Woogie Left Hand - from ZERO to INDEPENDENT in 15 exercises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfvCrwHWmkU It is very inspiring and gives ideas on how to occupy the right hand while practicing the left hand. It gave me a 16th idea for an exercise. I have a bowl of coins for my right hand to play with. There are endless things you could do with the coins; stack them, count them, pick them up one or two or three at a time, separate them by type as in pennies, nickles, dimes, etc. I have been using this exercise and some of Arthur's from the video for three days and I am making progress in training my brain towards hand independence.

I have a technique for achieving hand independence that seems to be working wonders for me. Just last Saturday I started to dedicate about 20 minutes of time twice a day to practicing 10 different left hand bass patterns. About 7 hrs practice time everyday on just this task besides another 3 hrs on scales and just doing licks #1 through #6 with the two left hand patterns I already feel comfortable with.

After 5 days of this I felt very comfortable playing all of these left hand patterns without missing a beat within a simple 12 bar blues. But just the left hand by itself. I know that because I’m learning so many different bass lines within the same time frame that there would be some confusion (particularly in the left hand but also in the right hand to a lesser degree) once I attempted to test the various left hand patterns with the C6 chord tests. That confusion would be in the form of mixing up fingerings between 2 or more different left hand patterns while trying to play chords in the right hand and sometimes not making a smooth transition between the I , IV and V chord in the right hand.

Now I’ll tell you what solved that problem and made quarter notes and triplets very easy on the first try with each of my “new” bass lines. I will break up the swing eighth notes of the left hand into groups of two and simultaneously but very slowly play the three triplet notes in my right hand but take a 5 second pause before playing the next triplets with the right hand along with the next beat in the left hand. I hit the “pause button”( simply stop my hands) in between beats but I pause for a lesser duration of time as I keep playing until I feel so comfortable that there is no need to pause anymore between beats and/or measures and I’m up to the fastest tempo human hands could possibly play within 2 minutes max time even with triplets. Quite accurate as well.

There is no way around getting a left hand bass pattern into your muscle memory except for about a half hour or so of playing it for at least a few days in a row. But there’s no reason to spend more than that amount of time achieving independence between the right and left (up to the point of the C6 chord test and licks #1 through #6 within the context of a 12 bar blues if you have already achieved this with the simple swing shuffle left hand pattern) to the point where it takes days or even weeks. Think about this. If you already achieved hand independence with the simple shuffle pattern (the one Arthur uses in all his Part 1 example videos) why is it so hard to mix what you already know with your right hand and left hand albeit when played separately? Because this new right and left hand combination is a separate and very real hurdle in the way of achieving your goal. This “hurdle” creates confusion and resulting errors. The confusion is eliminated by pausing before playing the next beat or measure. This way the brain is first accustomed to the new combination of right and left hand fingerings while almost simultaneously clearing the next hurdle which is the desired smooth tempo. If I told you how fast you will achieve the 2 chord tests that Arthur provided in the beginners portal (by using this practice method of pausing between beats and/or measures) you won’t believe me.

I have not made even 1 fingering error on the last 5 bass patterns when I applied the triplets in the right hand. Think about it. How could you mess up if you are pausing as soon as you feel that lack of confidence in the next finger movement? Because of this method of pausing between beats or measures when testing a newly acquired bass line you completely eliminate errors in fingering. This saves your brain the time that it takes to delete the muscle memory associated with timing and fingering errors.

I found that it’s not enough to practice slowly when you’re a beginner. Sometimes you gotta use the ”pause button”.

Hi Thomas. To answer your question about pausing between triplets...

If you were to use the ”Hand Independence Drills” page that’s available from this website you will see that it is a C6 chord in the right hand with the CG-CA shuffle in the left hand. By the time you get to the 17th measure of the drill there are triplets in the right hand over the shuffle left hand ( it’s not necessary to do the shuffle in the left hand, you can do any left hand bass pattern with this drill of course) and it’s at this point where the triplet rhythm in the right hand coinciding with the 8/8 timing of the left hand that you are now doing a not so simple polyrhythmic coordination between the right and left hand.

At this point in the drill (at the 17th measure as denoted on the print out of the Hand Independence Drills page) you simply go so slow that it’s embarrassing. While going so slow , and literally stopping for seconds if necessary, you aim to get that C6 chord in the right hand that falls in between each 1/8th note of the left hand. By going super slow motion, you avoid pressing your left hand down on the piano keys for that triplet note that falls in the middle of the 2-1/8th notes of the right hand. Make sure to look at that 17th measure of the “Drills” page to see what I’m describing. Keep at it. Boogie Woogie is only difficult if you don’t go super slow in the beginning.