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Having read a few archived posts on whether or not to practice hands separate or together, the writer hopes this is not resurrecting a rather "beaten and dead horse".

Some prefer subscribing to practicing hands separate while others prefer practicing hands together. There is a school of thought that is worthy of proposition. The question of which to subscribe to i.e. separate or together may not be the real issue. The real challenge is determining when to practice separate or together. Furthermore, there are sections or bars of the piece that may require practicing separate while others require together as the need arises. Therefore, the issue is primarily subjective.

Some may have used either method with great success and don’t wish to fix what is not broken.

The writer wishes to state an element which some may need in addition to practicing slowly. This method means playing the piece at rubato tempo. It may mean playing the order of the notes without regard for tempo but with correct fingering. Once the order is well ingrained then like others have stated, gradually increase the speed. A metronome is best for this. Some may find that they’re well advanced in sight reading and have no need for this.

Is this well received? Is there any necessary element that may have been overlooked? Please comment.

ClassicalMan:
I do think there are times when hands separate practice is necessary, and times when it is not beneficial. Same with slow practice. I use slow practice and then gradually increasing tempo with a metronome is a great way to bring a piece up to performance tempo.

Hands separate is not so easily defined, however. Most Beginner students do not require hands separate practice because they generally only play one note at a time, although there are exceptions to this "rule" if you can call it that. Intermediate students, however, start to play more complicated hands together stuff, and this is a good time for them to learn to practice hands separate, then put together once the separate hands are somewhat comfortable (but not to the point of memorized or up to performance tempo). If one waits too long to put hands together, then it is like learning a whole new piece for the student to put them together. If one puts hands together prior to bringing everything up to tempo, they have simplified the process a bit without having to relearn everything.

Then at some point, usually around Advanced levels, the student can go back to learning hands together right from the start. Here is where they can then use hands separate practice not as a means of learning the notes, but isolating difficult areas that may need extra attention that can only be given with hands separate practice. Again, the student should not learn the entire piece this way, but just use hands separate practice as a means of simplifying to do detail work. Once this is done, then the student should try to put hands together with the same results as hands separate. This is just my opinion on these things, and certainly there are exceptions that perhaps I've overlooked.

CM, I think perhaps we should break this question down a bit.

When an elementary student reads or practices a piece hands alone, it's usually because they cannot read the piece as a whole. This is completely different than that of a player who is reading hands alone to solve a specific problem, such as fingering, rhythm, phrasing, wrist motions, etc.

I prefer that my students not begin pieces which requires them to read hands alone, that is, the selection too difficult for them to read as a whole, at even the slowest of tempos. To me, that is forcing them to make too great of a leap.

Does this help any?

That's why I believe the issue is subjective. It depends on what the situation calls for and what works best for one's personal experience. There shouldn't be hard and fast rules concerning whether one should resort to HS OR HT. That's been a major argument on here from looking at the archives on this topic. Musicians/Music teachers are trying to recommend their personal ways which may or may not be the ideal for other players.

Yes it does help.

I think hands separate is absolutely essential at whatever level for the sake of musical and sound control.

Imagine a choir.
People don't sing together.
Each groups of singers learn its own part and only that. So the individual parts that will eventually blend to form the piece are learned separately and only once they're perfect separately they're blend together.

Practicing hand together from the start reinforces the flaw of thinking "this not goes with this note" which creates unmusical playing and confusion.

The right hand part and the left hand part are indeed separate entities. They happen to sound well together but they exist on their own. Without hand separate is rather impossible to give each part its own independency, musical sense, interpretation and dynamic because the other hand or part will always try to mimic the other.

Hand separate is necessary becase at the very core of the piece it is not a whole piece made of notes that goes together but it is two or more horizontal musical lines that must mantain their independence while also harmiously combining. So at the very core of the piece left hand and right hand will always remain separate by their nature and any attempt to consider them unified will only sabotage the very nature of music and the piece.

In a way hands together is a misnomer. It implies a sort of codependency which doesn't exist.
Hands are coordinated yet they are completely independent. Each hand follwos its coordination and musical line and ignores what the other hand is doing. They play "at the same time" but not "together".

The only exception of course is when left hand and right hand form a singular melodic line and they never play together. (i.e. certain arpeggiato romantic pieces)

Danny:
So you recommend that everyone learn hands separately first, then put together? How many students have you taught? I don't mean that as a challenge or an insult, but it seems rather naive to assume that it will work well in all situations. As I said in my post, some students will struggle to put hands together and so they must learn a piece as a whole. Hands separate can be a useful tool, but not a great method of learning a piece as a rule.

I have taught several and yes I have witnessed the problem of struggling to put hands together. But I always warned them against "this note goes with this note". I explained to them it would have been a shortcut that creates a momentary sense of efficiency and skill but that will backfire later. Eventually they were able to put hands together maintaning the independency and never resorting to such "dangerous" trick.

Besides I know a great system to learn to play with both hands at the same time while maintaning their independency and the independency of the musical lines.

I'm all for tricks that work and make things simpler but I'm against tricks that improve things for few days and worse them for the rest of the time. One example in my athletic quarters is that of ketogenic diets. You lose so much water and glycogen that the initial weight loss seems amazing. The problem is that you start losing lean body mass at a higher rate and as soon as you get out of ketosis you're so raveously hunger that you regain all the weight plus some more. Only this time your body is made of an higher percentage of fat and a lower percentage of muscles. What I call a metabolic junk.

So I instead promote creating a consistent and small caloric deficiency that provides weight loss results in a longer longer time but without backfiring later and with the certainty that the lost weight won't come back so easily. In other words I'm for education and ri-education instead of shortcuts.

This an example of the psychological aspect
of piano playing that is so often overlooked.
I simply will not practice hands separate,
even though it apparently is beneficial
in some situations. Psychologically I cannot
do it. It goes against some inner grain
in me such that I won't do it under any
circumstances.

Do you believe that the need for HS is caused by poor or under developed sight reading skills?

It seems to me that this concept is trying to compensate for the brain not being able to process information fast enough. HS appears to break the process down to simpler components, allowing better focus (like trying to juggle two balls instead of four).

The alternative compensating solution would seem to be to slow down (with HT), thus allowing 'more' time for the brain to process the needed information.

Said another way, if one's sight reading skills doubled, tripled or quadrupled in ability, do you think the need for HS would no longer exist?

Danny, sorry, I cannot resist this.

Did you learn to bicycle using the left foot first and then the right foot, and then finally put them together? No?

Well, perhaps to make the situation more musical, we should examine the clarinetist. Do they learn hands separately? After all, some notes are played with the left hand and others with the right hand.

In the end, playing the piano is a hands together activity, so, IMHO, students are best served when they are taught to read the score as a whole, think of the music as a whole, and learn to read and play new music as a whole.

Our current methods are well developed to foster this approach, too. Not only do the methods develop hand and finger dexterity, complexities of reading are slowly, but progressively, folded into advancing lessons.

Wrong examples.
Your examples are like my arpeggiatos pieces example in which the left hand and right hand play really together because they both play one melodic line.

Both the bycicle cycle and the clarinet playing are example of one kind of pattern, one forward line, one motion done by the hands together.

It's like the difference between taking a melon with the left hand and cutting it with the right hand versus cutting the melon holding the knife with both hands.

My example of the choir is more in tune.
The choir has a range big enough that each piece is composed by more musical lines interwined together but beautifully independent. One group of choristers doesn't learn what the other does. Each group has its own unique part and their work is to perform that unique part properly. Each hand is like one group of the choir. They don't play together they play at the same time but with different motion, coordination, dynamic and musical flow.

Students that think of music as a whole develop a musical perspective which is harmonically poor. They have huge problems in understanding the harmonic nature of music and in making sense quickly of composition concepts. They have problems harmonizing and giving enough independency to each musical line. When they listen concertos, classical pieces or even pop pieces they have problems reproducing the different musical lines and all they can think of is the melody because it is what stands out but they can't discriminate the bass line.

No piece is written as a whole. No composer writes one note on the right hand and one on the left hand and proceeds in this vertical manner. They instead write a good bass musical line and then try to pair it with a good melodic line in the right hand or viceversa. The score is not a whole. What we have is not one right hand note going with a left hand note but independent musical lines harmoniously blending together but maintaning their independency. There's no whole, only its illusion. The hands are coordinated but independent. They don't play together at all (which would mean they perform the same motions and play the same thing) but play different and independent parts, of a piece composed of more independent musical parts, at the same time.

Danny, just to pick nits, you can cycle my bicycle with either foot alone or both together. Ditto for my blockflute. But I get your drift.

However, your statement - "Students that think of music as a whole develop a musical perspective which is harmonically poor. They have huge problems in understanding the harmonic nature of music and in making sense quickly of composition concepts. They have problems harmonizing and giving enough independency to each musical line. When they listen concertos, classical pieces or even pop pieces they have problems reproducing the different musical lines and all they can think of is the melody because it is what stands out but they can't discriminate the bass line." - could use a bit of support. Has this been studied academically? I've never seen evidence of this in mine or others students. Quite the contrary, these students seem to grasp both whole and part far better.

Actually, following your reasoning to the extreme, students should really learn one finger at a time. After all, fingers are independent, and are controlled by the flexor muscles which are tied together near the elbow. It's only one joint more, the shoulder, where the two sets are jointed.

Mozart said that the first test of a player's capability was the test of his sight-reading ability. What he could not sight-read, he had to practice. That being said, understand that sight-reading occurs with HT. Practicing occurs with HT or HS.

I think many of us are missing my original post. We can't compare playing music to a choir or biking. That would be like saying in order to type one must learn the each hand seperate then put them together. It's more of a cordination technique.

There are some singing groups that are so well coordinated that they do not need to sing parts seperately then put them together. Of course that depends on the style and number of people in the choir/group.

Futhermore, HT or HS is a rule but not the law. It depends on one's experience, how advanced one's skill is and the nature of the piece.

Those whose practice technique is well developed may not need hands separate.

I tend to prefer HT by practicing it tortuosly slow. I think some folk are attempting to say that one method is advantageous over the other. I'm saying there's a compromise between the two schools of thought. HS OR HT is the rule but not the law!

ClassicalMan, I see that you're relatively new here. I often use examples with tongue firmly in cheek. But in this case, I often use the bicycle example to get students and parents to see that piano playing is a two handed activity, even though we can make music using just one hand, and that in the long run, we're going to have to learn to play with both hands.

I don't know if there has been a difinitive study to determine if using one method is faster than the other. It strikes me as intuitively obvious that if a pianist can read music "two handed" then they've got a leg up on those who cannot.

I insist that bicycle pedalling is a wrong example.
In pedalling the two feet are busy with doing the same action and achieving the same result.
As one feet goes up the other goes down and they work together to activate the same identical mechanism. There's a total interdependency.

Hands on the piano are not interdependent at all.
The right melody exist without the bassline and the bass exist without the right melody. The hands don't follow any kind of specular pattern where one hand does the opposite of the other and they don't work together to play the same thing but each of them play a different musical lines with different independent dynamic.

Each of them do their own thing and one hand doesn't need to know what the other is gonna do.
They're totally independent, coordinated but independent. While the bycicle example is an example of coordination in opposite interdependency, piano playing is an example of coordination in distinctive independency.
It's a huge difference.

I hate to say this, but somewhere in this copious mass of posts some teacher somewhere said he sometimes teaches one finger at a time. :rolleyes: (being mischievous) It had something to do with Mary Had a Little Lamb and a boy who could not cope with the first few notes.

This was meant in fun but there is a valuable point here. Danny's reasoning seems to be partly about the physical independence of the hand motions, but mainly about the musical independence of their parts. So following the reasoning to the extreme doesn't lead us to practicing fingers separately.

Question for Danny: When you learn a 3-voice Bach fugue, where the hands often share one of the voices, do you practice hands separate or together? Or do you practice each voice separately?

I agree with Danny.

In a bicycle etc. the two parts have the same job to do, they rotate the same way etc., it's the same thing you make with both feet.

In a piano, the left hand generally cares for bass and chords and the right hand generally is in charge of the melody. They are like two or three basic instrument which join in a mini orchestra to create a musical piece, their movements and challenges, their "behaviours on the keyboard" are basically different.

I'd put the piano nearer to a violin and cannot imagine that violinists do not exercise their left hand separately, because the two hands have different jobs (I know i'd do it if I were them anyway... ).

Personally I find it even easier to learn hands separately and join their work rather then learn to play them simultaneously.

To put it in a stupid way, it seems to me much easier to say to my left hand "now you do this" (follows repetition of a chord etc. ad nauseam); then to my right hand "now you do this" (same procedure with the melody) and then say to the two "and now please together" rather than try to drill both hands together "now whilst the right X finger is here the left X finger is there, then the left finger pauses whilst the right finger plays" etc..).

It also has the advantages, to me, that both hands have learned their job separately so it will easier to change their individual job without affecting the other hand: if I want more strenght on the left hand, say, I think after practicing with HS this will be easier to build in...

Please give the bicycle analogy a rest. The purpose of an analogy is to help someone understand a concept, not to be an exact duplicate.

Betty's post, whch im srue we al chckled at:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it,

shows really well how our brain actually solves the score reading process. My guess would be that those of us good at sight reading, read through this with great ease, while others may have struggled more. English as a second language readers may not have been able to read it at all.

Same controversy, different forum, I'm afraid, although the "separate in the beginning" seems to be the one accepted these days. One wants to have unity of the two, and one wants to clearly understand what one is doing with either and then blend with that clarity intact. You also have interaction where one affects the other. Same with a wind instrument, I suppose - tonguing, breathing, various articulations. Singing: pronunciation, certain vowels, an explosive consonant as an expressive device - together or apart in which order and when? Is unity lost? Is such a thing as unity a separate entity that is threatened?