hi, always when i practice anything, be it licks, patterns, transcriptions, whatever, i always comp myself with left hand voicings. now, is this the right way to approach practice, because every material i work on progresses half as slow as it could be doing if i were to only play the material with my right hand. it goes without saying that you need to work on these things while comping with the other hand sometimes, but is it really necessary to do it all the time? what is your view on this?

i suppose another thing you could do would be to play the same lines with your left hand, but then it would really consume time.
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ah yes time consuption.  for every good pianist there becomes the issue of there not being enough time in one lifetime to practice everything we would like to practice.  if time were not an issue i think you know the answer to your own question.  practice with the chords in your left hand.  practice without the chords in your left hand.  practice the line in the left hand. practice the line hands together.  practice the line in the left hand and the chord in the right. practice the chord in the left while singing the line.  practice the chord in the right, the root in the left and sing the line.  and try to think of new ways to practice it every day.
oh but time is an issue you say?  well we just do the best we can then i guess and practice it as many different ways as we can with the time we have for it.
yes, but let's say i were to never practice any of these things with left hand comping, and only comp when i would play for real (or of course when i would be specifically working on left hand voicings) how much of a disadvantage do you think that would be?
"how much of a disadvantage do you think that would be?"
you would be at the mercy of all those piano players who are doing these things.  see mike's previous posting here on the very competitive world of piano playing.
i have the habit of always using left hand voicings while practing lines. it's become automatic which i guess is good. but i am one of those guys who can't play a goood solo without my left hand for support. sometimes if i leave my left hand out, i'll kind of get lost. so i'm going back and practing soloing with just the right hand. all the practice methods mike suggested are great. it takes time. maybe focus one on approach at a time.
of course playing voicings in the lh underneath rh single line soloing is great, but if that's how you play all the time it can get very predictable. it's almost become the 'default' way of playing jazz piano, especially when the lh plays rootless voicings all the time.  

have you tried 'shells', ie: root & 7th. they can sound great, and you can play them much lower down the keyboard than 3- or 4- note voicings, without them sounding muddy.

there are so many ways to improvise... sometimes i find it really liberating to play the same lines in both hands, either one or two octaves apart. it kind of forces you to simplify what you play, and can lead to greater clarity of ideas. oscar peterson, phineas newborn, benny green and  chick corea all do this a lot. sometimes it's a nice area to move into to give a change of texture at a given point in your solo.

also, improvising in block chords or two-handed voicings forces you to approach the rhythmic content of your solo completely differently!  

so, my suggestion is - keep up the lh voicings practice, but give some of these other textures a try from time to time!
i would say yes- keep the lh voicings with everything that you practice. this is the predominant style of playing and has been for a while and if you stop it you are going to lose your facility with those chords. also, as you play them more and more and they become second nature you will find that they will evolve and you will start to play new voicings. certainly, dr. jazz's advice is crucial too.

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believe it or not, it is pretty hard to keep the form without a lh, unless you practice without the lh. especially when you're doing it solo with no rhythm section. it is good to practice without the lh so you can focus on creating the melody on the rh. the rh can go slowly. then go back to lh comping again.  

using 1/7 shell voicings on the left hand can be good on grounding you on the chord and chord tones. you will then see the need to fill in with important chord tones on the rh. this then helps you internalize the tune further.

when doing just a rootless voicing on the lh, the lh goes on autopilot and you don't easily hear the wrong notes on the rh, or hear conflicts with the lh voicings.
"believe it or not, it is pretty hard to keep the form without a lh, unless you practice without the lh. especially when you're doing it solo with no rhythm section. it is good to practice without the lh so you can focus on creating the melody on the rh. the rh can go slowly. then go back to lh comping again."

in that situation (soloing with no lh chords or backing) tapping the foot is my way of keeping the form and time.

"using 1/7 shell voicings on the left hand can be good on grounding you on the chord and chord tones. you will then see the need to fill in with important chord tones on the rh. this then helps you internalize the tune further."

alternate between 7th and 3rds shells depending on the range so you don't have to jump around.

"when doing just a rootless voicing on the lh, the lh goes on autopilot and you don't easily hear the wrong notes on the rh, or hear conflicts with the lh voicings."

why is that?
i'll give an example. let's say you commonly use rootless voicings which always have 9ths and 13ths. you've memorized the rootless voicings and you're lh has gotten used to the shape. now you've stopped thinking about the actual tones it contains.

as you're soloing on the rh, you may have conflicts with the melody but you're so attached to the lh voicing you don't hear it, especially if the rh is separated by a register from the lh.

the "you" in this example is me. from a prior teacher, i learned memorized lh rootless voicings. my current teacher told me to erase these voicings from my lh. shocking actually (although they're still quite useful on the rh). by playing only 1/7's on the lh, i'm forced to fill in the other chord tones with my right hand. sort of like the 2+2 randy halberstadt voicings. but even while soloing. sometimes the inner voicings are delayed for a swing feel.

what i was forced to do here is to always be conscious of all notes in the harmony and not be on autopilot. conflicts within the confines of the rh will be obvious. lh 1/7 will rarely ever get into trouble as long as the rh is aware of the chord quality.

3/7 rootless voicings would be safe too imho for trio settings and is good for variety. the idea of shell voicings is more practical than the full 4 note rootless voicings for full rh control of the harmony and chord tones without having to worry about tone conflicts. but i'm finding that i have better range control by using the thumbs to fill in the chords and sticking with a root/7 or root/5 on the left hand so i tend not to do 3/7 voicings much.

for just comping, with a walking bass or latin bass, the full 4 note rootless voicings seem to be quite useful in the rh.
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