Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum best method to gain hand independance?

Not sure of the correct term but basically the one problem I have is getting my left hand to not copy the right hand! Now if Im playing organ its not such a problem as the left is simply playing chords, but on a piano voiced instrument its a different matter. I have struggled with this for years but previously I never had the time or determination to stick at practicing for long periods. Hopefully that will change now but I still have this problem.

I am coming from e-organ myself and think I know what you are speaking about.

I recommended a method book in a different thread, recently, and it actually is also the answer I would like to give you:

The Classic Piano Course, by Carol Barratt
(I recommend the Omnibus Edition, comprising books 1-3, subtitled 'The Complete Piano Course for Older Beginners', because it costs almost the same than buying only one single book out of the series)

Instead of biasing you to largely end up in the left hand with chords only playing, this method nicely trains hand independence and as well a nonconstrained left hand use.

Bach: It will either kill your desire forever or help amazingly

Seriously (well, Bach is serious but ...) slow practice. Lots of hand separate practice so you feel the rhythms. Try to "hear" the separate melodies as you are playing. Rhythmic variations and contrary motions are often hardest so practice those - scales in contrary motion, etc..

I don't know if this is a good or bad thing to say but the problem never really goes away; you just solve it for each piece in an easier and easier fashion. If sight reading I still have huge problems if it's a pop tune and the bass has syncopated rhythms. Blurgh.

There's no substitute for this advice IMO

Thanks guys. I cant afford to buy any books at the moment but I will see whats in our lending library.
Years ago I did manage to partially play Chopin's prelude Raindrop. Its a lovely piece and that showed me the importance of playing something you enjoy!

Its me once more, the e-organ background guy:
What´s about selecting a much liked, but simple melody, which is usually played by the right hand, and just practice to play it now with the left hand? I did so with many beginner pieces, in order to get my left hand strengthened. It´s not only easy to do because you can use whatever sheets you already have, but especially because you can listen how your right and left hand playing compares for the same piece. If it sounds the same, then your left hand isn´t behind anymore.

Oh I see what you mean- basically play a melody with the left hand. But what do you then do with the right hand?

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Not sure of the correct term but basically the one problem I have is getting my left hand to not copy the right hand! Now if Im playing organ its not such a problem as the left is simply playing chords, but on a piano voiced instrument its a different matter. I have struggled with this for years but previously I never had the time or determination to stick at practicing for long periods. Hopefully that will change now but I still have this problem.

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If the piano is the King of instruments then I am its loyal servant.
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If you go to a music store or the library they have beginner books that are cheap and when you open a beginner piano book it has a few measures with notes of the teble clef and then next it will have a few measures of bass clef so you are only ever reading and playing one clef and then the other clef. After a few pages you will have hands together and it can be difficult to get you brain to play the notes at the same time, so when you get to a measure with notes together you have to very, very, very, slowly look at the measure, look at the notes and then let your brain play the treble clef note and the bass clef note at the same time very slowly and accurately. After you do that slowly, very showly, you do it measure by measure and you do that everyday you practice slowly, your brain will slowly learn to ready the measure and will play the left hand note and the right hand note together, and if you practice it slowly everyday without mistakes, for many weeks, your brain will get used to playing both hands together. You just have to practice it until your brain gets used to making your hand play the notes together. But you have to practice it everday slowly and accurately.

Larry, understand I have had a stroke and I have had a brain infection and I have learning difficulties, dyslexic, and I am 63, so if I can go it with all my problems, you can do it. You have to very patient and you have practice everyday even if it is only 15 minutes before breakfast, you have practice slowly and accurately.

Thanks Michael. I do realise that practice is important but with two very demanding children to get ready for school, pick up from school, dress feed and keep an eye on its not easy. But they are growing and it is getting easier. I just wanted people's opinions on a good method.

Hmm, I see, my answer did not help you here. My thought was only about getting the left hand better, assuming that it then would automatically be easier to get the now stronger left hand better fit in with an anyway strong right hand. For practicing both together best follow the recommendations from the others, they point out clearly what to do there: slow, slow, slow, practice, practice, practice, slow, slow, slow...

Yes its less to do with strength, more to do with unsynching the hands. Funny how I manage that fine on guitar...time to give it another go on the keyboard- its been a while since I laid hands on it.

Have you tried tapping the rhythms with each hand (LH rhythm with LH and RH rhythm with RH)? You might also try tapping finger numbers with each hand on the piano lid or on a tabletop. I find this helpful for my students that have trouble playing two different melody lines at the same time.

I also second the idea of trying some Bach, or really any polyphonic style music where each hand is playing its own melody. And slow practice!

Bach, eeh, do I have to? Lol. Apart from toccata and fugue for organ and a few other pieces I dont really enjoy Bach, I prefer his contemporary Telemann.

Ha ha! I actually prefer Scarlatti over Bach myself! Anything Baroqueish should help.

Baroque is fabulous-what an era to live in if you were well off. Not so good if you were poor of course...

hi larry,
i dont have a teacher nor musical background before learning the piano. but i learned hand independence mostly due to a song i really reallly like which is canon in d. it has this repetetive arpegio that help me through the rough first timer month and going and it slowly but surely.

after learning that song, suddenly its much easier to learn my 2nd 3rd and so forth. my hand is mostly independent now. i think what helps me most are practicing arpeggios to gain hand independence. hope that helps. eventhough i have no credibility to speak of and just a 6 short months of self teaching.i'm sure you could do better. good luck and have fun

Thanks! Would that be Pachelbel's Canon? I do like that piece and can play the melody.

I sometimes do this exercise I have found on Youtube max 5 minutes a day.

Left hand: 5 on C, 4 on D ... 1 on G

Right hand: 1 on next octave C, 2 on D ... 5 on G

Now play quarter notes with your left and eighth notes with your right hand at the same time. In other words, play one note for left and two notes with right. This exercise alone used to fry up my brain. Now I can do it effortlessly.

You can invent (literally) hundreds of different variations on this simple exercise. Use legato on left and staccato on right. Or use ff on one hand and p on other. Switch hands, try two notes on left and vice versa. Try playing 3 notes instead of 2.

If you have some trouble doing any of the exercises then slow down, even if it means 10 bpm. One morning you'll wake up, try it and voila!

Hope this helps!

Thanks for that. The thing with such exercises is you dont beed a keyboard-you can practice on your lap or table, counting in your head.
At the moment I am all fingers, but I will persevere!

Hand independence comes from using your hands independently.

Yes, Bach Inventions are ideal when you're that advanced and Clementi's sonatinas provide good exercise in independence but many introductory pieces do the same thing. Even the popular Minuet in G in the Anna Magdalena Notebook stretches a beginners co-ordination and independence. We all go through this problem when we start out, there's no need to target the problem specifically.

We may all go through it but some find it harder than others!

Yes, but still, working on ordinary pieces will do the job. You don't need special exercises, just a slower and more careful working speed.

Consider whether the next note/chord is LH or RH, prepare it then play it, hold the notes down while considering the next note/chord and the next hand/finger.

When you can move correctly from one note/chord to the next, work in groups of three or four, then in half measures, then in full measures then in phrase lengths, then when you've got it mechanically sound go back and introduce rhythm and tempo.

When I started on Clementi's Op. 36 No. 1 way back when, I stopped at M.9 with four notes in RH and eight in LH and cried in frustration. I seriously doubted if I would ever solve it. If only someone had told me back then to just go slow enough to get it right...

yes. but there is a lot of versions. i picked the less difficult among the variations. this is where i get the sheet music: http://www.onlinepianist.com/sheets/viewer.php?id=1266
just in case it doesn't work, just go under sheets and look for Johann Pachelbel - Pachelbel's Canon (Canon in D) , difficulty moderate. It's free and the site really stresses the importance of the legality of the song sheets, so i assume that it's fine. the piano app is helpful to see if you got the timing and notes correctly too. Good luck and have fun!

Thanks Ty. I was wondering about a free source of sheet music-beginner stuff.

I'm not sure if you meant the piece is too hard or you wish for another source of easy piano pieces.

Just in case it's the former, dont be scared by the sheet music. it looks tough and long but it's actually just multiple repeats. The left hand only repeats 4 arpegiated chords throughout the song. So it's an easy song to memorize and you can concentrate more on bringing the hand together. Let me know if you need help, it's just recently that i learned it and it is my first piece on the piano. So maybe a beginner point of view will help you.

as for another source of easy piano pieces, i usually looked and listened to the list from the website i mentioned, see which one i want to learn and google the sheet, hoping that i get a similar sheet as the one being played. The thing about easy pieces, they are mostly not memorable, and once you learned it, you'll easily forget it. I tend to push for the harder pieces skipping all the easy steps, but when i return to the easy steps, they are actually very managable by then. Just imho.

Oh no I was just saying I was looking for a free source and then you found one! But having said that it doesnt show on my phone-I get a blue Lego block with a ? Next to it. Oh well I will try my tablet later.

I don't know if this helps or not, but practice practice practice

When I was a kid taking lessons I, unfortunately, wasn't willing to put in the extra work it took to really learn hand independence. Now as an adult I understand it's importance. Here's what I do and it really helps me. When I first approach a piece I look through it, then I play just the right hand a few times until I seem to have that pretty good. Then I play just the left hand until I seem to have that pretty good. Then I slowly play both hand together. What this does is helps me to focus my brain on the separate parts and then place those parts together. So then when I am playing both hands together I know what they are both supposed to be doing.

If I run into places in the music that seem to be difficult to play both hand together for whatever reason, I stop and go back and play hands separately until my brain know what to do. Then I go back to slowly playing both together.

This has always helped me. Have fun learning!

Another resource for free sheet music: http://gmajormusictheory.org/Freebies/freebies.html

Pieces from very beginner level, to intermediate, all public domain. The site also has a great music theory course, as well. The site creator is a music theory professor at the University of Pittsburgh. I am not affiliated with this site in any way; I have just found it to be a great resource in my own teaching. Hope that helps!

Thats great thanks! Just need some blues tunes to practice and we're good!

It depends what pieces a person is working on. If, for example, someone is only working on the heavily chordal pieces in Alfred's All-In-One, then some advice about pieces to select outside of Alfred's is in order. And there are other ways that someone self-teaching in particular may not have found their way to the variety of pieces that will allow them to learn the variety of skills they want to learn.

If we're talking about sheet music, imslp.org has the largest library I'm aware of.

I had intended that post to be a continuation of my earlier one mentioning Bach and Clementi but, frankly, any piece where...
...should do the trick.

Solving any problem presented in an actual piece is an excellent technical exercise and ties in with the 'just in time training' philosophy. It targets the very thing you can't do, just when you need it, and adds motivation and reward for resolving the problem. There's no need for specific exercises except as an end in itself.

Yes the solution is simple. Practice. Its only a simple routine but playing Ode to Joy with a simple left-hand accompaniment over and over until I can do it without mistakes is the way to go. I get a buzz when I can play with both hands, and its kind of a positive feedback loop.
I feel that I can do this. I'm not going to try to play piano. I'm going to LEARN to play piano!

Think about what is being attempted. Hand independance means "independance"; two totally different lines of music. If they are related as in a 2 part harmony, or a 2nd voice, then the lines are not separate and if practiced will become a 10 finger piece. This become obvious when the staffs share close voice lines.

The early Jazz players revolutionized the piano by using the left hand as percussion. Classical counterpoint (Bach) is always mentioned as an avenue to hand independance, but nothing works better than boogie piano. Crave the "Crave"..