Playing with both the left hand AND the right hand

[Llama's Rage]

Hey, I've been trying to work up my speed and something i've noticed is that my right hand and my left hand don't seem to work well together. I can do legato stuff pretty darn fast but actually trying to play both at the same time is awful. Similarly, I can pick really fast but I just can't seem to coordinate it with my left hand.

Are there some exericises to fix this?

[chrismmc]

practice,practice,practice.

[Llama's Rage]

practice what?

I've started using a metronome just playing the 7th position cmaj scale at like 150 (8th notes) and just moving it up and down chromatically......it seems to be helping a little bit, i guess. Are there any other things i could try?

[NJL]

transcribe jazz sax, trumpet and piano solos

[mrWr0ng]

practice is reallyt he only thing. there are a million ways to practice, so long as you're doing it. for me at this point i'm learning to get my fingers and hands to alternate, so i can slap down, hammer on with index, slap up, hammer on with middle finger, slap down, hammer on with ring finger, slap up and hammer on with pinky.

it's very hard but you basically have to teach your body to work in certain ways, and sometimes it takes your muscles a lot longer to catch on than your brain. i guess in a way you could think of practicing as like working out - even if you can bench 300 pounds, it's gonna take a while for the rest of your body to catch up

[lemur821]

You need to practice coordination, specifically. Just run up and down scales and arpeggios at slow speeds, making sure to get your plucking finger on the string before the actual pluck (good for definition at high speed), then get the fretting finger in place, then pluck. Speed up slowly, and make sure to keep the sequence of actions exactly the same.

[chrismmc]

it really dosent matter what you practice,as long as you start slow and work your way up gradually...it sounds like you are tying to jump right in to fast tempos.
I use the modes,that way not only your fingers get excercise,but you can work on changing positions smoothly as well.

[Llama's Rage]

that works. i've just been running up some scales starting from about 150 and now i'm up to 220 (8th notes) playing them up and back

thanks for your help

[Fliptrique]

and now start playing them at 40bpm (8th notes), and WATCH what your left and right hand do (I do it with a mirror - helps A LOT!), and eleminate unneccessary movement. try to play your band`s stuff like this, I`m pretty sure you will find out that some of the stuff that you were doing is not exacly reasonable

you may also do this:

http://www.subcontrabassist.com/Lessons/Ex3.htm

or find Michael Marning`s LH permutations (1234-1233-1232-1231 etc etc)

besides that, I find - even simplier (Fur Elise)- classical stuff, to be really demanding when it comes to LH/RH coordination.