Hey guys,

I've been watching the board for a while now and this is my first post. I have been taking lessons for a few months but then really couldn't afford to anymore so I decided to start doing it myself. I've had what I'll call pretty good success. Right now I am having trouble overcoming playing with both hands.

Now when I say this I mean I can indeed play with both hands as long as both hands are hitting the keys at the same time. If for example the right hand has a lot of notes to play in a short period of time and the left hand has a lot less I usually can't get them to work together. I can play either part correctly and in correct time but only if I do them seperately. Sorry for not using any piano type terms but I am not really a musical person I just LOVE playing... How did you guys overcome this probably simple feat?

Thanks,

Andrew

Practice makes perfect.

Andrew,

Try this -

using both hands, very slowly tap out the rhythms of the notes in your lap or on the piano bench. So if in a measure has the right hand has 4 quarter notes while the left hand has a whole note, you would tap both hands at the same time to represent the first quarter beat, then the right hand would tap three more times, while the left hand doesn't tap anymore. You can count aloud the beats as you do this.

Continue tapping out the music slowly with your hands, measure by measure. This way you can focus on the timing of the notes of each hand without having to focus on anything else, like which notes with which fingers to play.

When you can do this comfortably then you might try to move to the keyboard.

Hope that helps!

Meredith

Makes a lot of sense! Thanks Meredith.

Hi Andrew and welcome!

I'm happy to learn that you are starting piano, and fully understand the finances of private study. It ain't cheap.

It is possible to self-study piano. Afterall, someone had to learn it first. However, there are so many opportunities to "get it wrong" that I shudder a bit at the thought. Could you work out a deal for twice or once a month studies with a teacher? Have you thought about trading services?

Anyway, best of luck and keep us posted on your progress.

John

What Meredith Said

And practice the two hands separately until you have a good run-through of what each one is doing at-speed.

Then go back, slow it down as slowly as it takes, and run through the hands together.

Take one line or measure at a time, rather than the whole page, so it's not quite so intimidating. Some measures slap together pretty well while others take a little tickling to work out.

Eventually it gets more natural-feeling to do that, and suddenly you''re ready to take on some Scott Joplin where your hands fly in totally different directions!

What everybody else said.

Welcome to the forum, root!

Yes, the key is slow practice, first hands separate until you have the both down, then hands together. Practice one measure only, as glacially slowly as you have to in order to play it properly. Then speed it up a little, and when you have it reasonably down, add the next measure.

That probably sounds agonizingly slow, but it will work, and it will get you where you need to go.

Hi root. I feel your pain. I'm going through this myself. At first, it just seemed too hard and I would start a piece and then give up several bars in. Needless to say, I wasn't getting very far.

I then just did what everyone else is recommending. Practice hands separately. I fought this concept for quite a while as I thought it was a waste of time because when I put the hands together everything fell apart again, but you just have to stick at it.

Take a simple piece and pick just 1 bar. Count out the beats while you play ('1 and 2 and 3 and' etc). Just keep doing it very slowly and dont give up. It can take a while, and it can seem like you're going backwards once you try to put the hands together, but it eventually starts to click.

you need to try to play hand together (HT) even when you are a beginner. there's always such a hurdle for beginners on playing HT at the beginning. the key to overcome such a hurdle is to do it. nothing you can play HS (hand separate) well matters much if your goal is to play HT. so, focus on doing it from the begining is the key.

what you need to do first is get a small segment of a passage (1 or 2 bars), and then 'mark' (with pencil or in your mind) each beat for both LH and RH with a vertical bar, so that you'd know on each beat what your LH notes are and what your RH notes are. then get familar LH and RH part first by working out the fingerings and playing each part HS through. after that, where the hard part begins, you take on each beat's section, play LH & RH part for this beat only HT (as slowly as you need to). if you have no trouble playing just one beat HT, then move on next beat HT until you finish this section. do this for all the passages/sections in the piece, and you will accomplish your goal of playing the whole thing HT.

the point is trying HT as soon as possible without getting too comfortable playing HS. people tend to sit on HS practice for too long and then get frustrated on HT because they'd think, "if i could play HS well enough, why can i do it HT equally well?" you just can't unless you work on HT from the beginning!

Welcome Root....

What everyone else says....

One thing I do (because of my guitar background), I don't think (or I try not to think) about seperate hands. I think of each hand as a part of the whole. That is, these notes in this order for this long. So, on beat one, I play these notes (one unit of sound, even if the notes are not played at the same instant, on the half beat, these notes, on beat 2, etc.

Hope that is clear. My thought process treats the whole, with each hand adding its part in the proper time for the proper time, measure by measure.

I do practice HS, but when playing HT, I try and "see" the measures (or phrases) as a whole.

I think one of the reasons I was able to learn how to use both hands so naturally in the beginning is because I have played guitar so I know how to use the hands in conjunction with one another. Perhaps guitar and piano go together fairly well. I've noticed quite a few others on this board that play guitar as well as piano. Maybe we've stumbled onto something!

You may want to try playing scales hands-together. This will take quite awhile to master, but it will become second nature once you have done it enough. It will become so easy that you'll make it look like child's play.

But yes, playing hands together is always slower than hands-separate. You'll get it, just keep at it.

EDIT: You may be interested in my little technique primer I wrote in another post on here. If you follow what I say, you shouldn't run into too many bad pitfalls. I know because I taught myself in the beginning just like you, and there are a few bad habits that I think no one should learn. Check out my post here:

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/32/3676.html

Hi, I'm going through about the same thing you are. I love all the advice here, and if and may add my humble two cents...

I also took lessons for a time, but then moved and had to quit (due to lack of fundage at the new place.) I imagine you have a lesson book or two from when you were taking lessons and are trying to go through them on your own. I might suggest also getting some supplemental sheet music (you can find oodles of free stuff online to print out). The reason I say this is I found that my lesson books were great at teaching me techniques and such, but not at reinforcing it in my brain. What I mean is, there weren't enough pieces to practice on, and I found that I was memorizing the songs just to get through them and I quit THINKING about them. So when I went on to the next piece in the book, I would just memorize which keys to press and not too much care about what I had just learned.

So I downloaded and printed out a TON of easy (and I mean easy) pieces which I'm working through now. I've been doing this for a couple weeks and I can already see a slight difference in how fast I can sightread them hands together.

Anyway, I hope that also will help.

Getting timing is likely different for everyone. What I do is look at which notes fall on the beat for each hand and use these beats as timing "anchors" for either hand. I actually find this system is easier than HS at times since you can use beats in the left hand to time the right (and vice versa).

Also, usually music makes sense - in that you can tell what the composer is trying to do - once you have the pattern and the anchors, the timing becomes pretty intuitive.

Hope this makes sense.

I think this is really good advice. I do always try to play HT first and only break it down to HS if I am really not getting a certain part (I don't think I made that clear in my first post).

I tried repeating bars HT over and over but I find that separating it to HS makes me progress a lot faster. It's really hard when you first start out and there is so much to think about ... sightreading (and relating those notes to their position on the keybaord), tempo, dynamics, pedalling etc ....that removing some of those factors (such as 1 hand) can really help.

I guess you just have to see what works for you. You'll get there.

This is my biggest problem. Hand Independence seems impossible at times. If the chords or note are being pressured at the same time as the other hand, no problem, but if they don't, its a big problem.

Even doing the fingering on the b flat major scale is driving me nuts. And I can do hand separate at great speed and accuracy...

I'll try everyones advise...

Good question by the way...

Mark

If I could get past this I could actually eventually play...

i recommend strongly to play HT as soon as you can, before you're getting too comfortable with HS, because beginners who play well with HS usually have more trouble with HT.

:) a kindred spirit! haha.
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