I have troubles with playing something fast in one hand and something slow in another hand. I have this one piece I would like to learn, but the rhythm keeps throwing me off. It is in waltztime, and the LH plays quarter notes the whole time, while the right hand has, dotted quarter notes, eighth, and quite a few eight note triplets in different measures. My hands get really confused when I try to play it.

Does anyone have any book suggestions or just advice to help me practice this kind of technique. I'd really appreciate it.

My advice would be to take one or two measures at a time and play VERY slowly. When you feel a comfortable, try it with a metronome - again VERY slowly, and gradually add a measusre. When I do this, at first I set my metronome to click at the smallest note and after a little while, change to count the proper time signature, mentally counting in between.

My teacher keeps reminding me :rolleyes: , for practice (for all sorts of technical problems, rhythm, rotation, hand coordination (i.e., one hand staccato while legato in the other) expression), to play so PAINFULLY slow that you are certain you are really annoying anyone who might be in earshot....

I haven't tried this but I heard or read somewhere that it helps to have one hand train the other! In other words try the quarter notes with the right hand and the dotted and eights with the left.

does the left hand always play similar chords or arpeggio? I usually play left hand repeatedly until my hand "remembers" the LH pattern. Then play RH until you remember that too. Then combine the hands.

When practice HT...I usually follow the RH part and rely on hand-memory for the LH part. I usually play the first note of LH/RH together, then several notes on the LH until you hit the next note on the RH, play LH/RH note together, and then repeat what you've play. That usually covers 1 measure only When you can play that measure comfortably, move on to the next.

The rhythm problem can be overcome I think by knowing when to play LH/RH notes together. That's why I practice by starting from and ending at these notes.

Hi:

I have a suggestion here: play the first page of Brahms "51 exercises" veryyyyyy sssssllllloooowwwlllyyyy. This will help you get the rythm (tam-pause-tam-pam-tam-pause-tam-pause) of trioles right. This is a difficult exercise, the point is not to get it played fast, but rather get the rythm right. Remember: Veryyyy sloooowwwwlly.

don't try to play one hand fast, rather to play everything in tempo, slower first. put your metronome on and then play everything on beat. once you can play everything in tempo, then gradually increase the tempo and you'd get to your goal.

For this type of piece you can generally
simpify things a lot by counting in terms of
the smallest-value notes (these are typically
16th notes) "upward," rather from
the largest value notes (these are
typically quarter notes) "downward."
By doing this you turn counting into
an additive process where you "sum" the smaller
notes up, rather than a divisive process
where you divide the larger notes into
the smaller ones--addition is vastly easier
for most people than division.

For example, the smallest-valued figure
that you'd generally run into in this
type of piece is the 4-16th note figure,
which equals one quarter note in time value.
Thus, take this as your basic counting
unit rather than the quarter note--
that is, think "four" as your basic count
rather than "one" (it is helpful when doing
this to count is terms of some catchy
4-syllable word, like "Mississippi"--
thus, a measure would be counted:
mississippi mississippi mississippi
mississippi, rather than: one two three).
Then, by this method, two eighth notes
are just the 4-16th note figure with only
the first and third "beats" played.
A dotted eighth is just playing and holding
the first note for 3 "beats" and then playing
the last note on the 4th "beat." And
so forth. (An eighth note triplet is
played in the same time as 4 "beats.")