Hands separate or hands together approach to music learning.

Your thoughts and comments on the way you approach a new piece of music.

lc

Just plough in hands together- I find one-handed playing quite easy usually.

Hands Together to see how you get on and if you struggle then do hands seperatley for a bit !

Ben

Me too. My teacher always used to tell me to do seperate practice, but I never did. However it does help with some things, like Bach, where your hands seem to be totally independant of each other at first, and it helps to get the different parts into your head.

It depends on the person, too! Speaking as someone who finds coordinating both hands really difficult, I find practising hands separately can be incredibly helpful, even though I tend to find it very easy: if I can really get to know the parts separately, I have a far greater chance of keeping everything together when I put them together, even if it ain't Bach!

Some pieces require the 'hands separately' approuch. Some pieces however, require the 'both hands' approach. Don't try to stick to just one all the time. You will learn a piece much quicker and much better if you use the correct method.

I used to always only be a hands together person regardless of what any teacher said. Now I'm actually listening to my new teacher and she says not only hands separate, but voices separate too!! (Not just in fugues either, but even dividing up chordal sections into voices!!!). Anyways, I don't know how it will work just yet, but I do know that she knows how to play (distinction in her diploma). But if you're talking about actually "learning" the notes, then except for fugues, I do hands together. I separate it afterwards to analyse and understand and find hidden melodies, ect.

The reason I do fugues hands separate now is because I finally found someone to give me a good reason why! You can learn them just fine hands together (I always have), but it risks sounding "vertical" (eg. chord chord chord) instead of "horizontal." (I have been caught doing this before). So far, since I have only just started playing the voices in different pairs after memorizing them separately, and have not yet played all 3 voices together, I cannot give a full report. I will however say that I am amazed that I can now hear the individual voices as separate entities, whereas before learning with this approach, all's I did was listen for the subject, and other than that, my mind was only on one voice at a time and the others just followed it, so pretty much, chord chord chord, with voicing.

My teacher says if 2 students played a fugue and each learned one of the 2 different ways, you could hear the maturity and understanding coming out in the playing of the one who took the time to pull it apart first.

I was not very keen on MEMORIZING each voice SEPARATELY and would have just rather played them separately with the music, but now that it's almost done, I'm really glad I did it. It makes learning the notes easier when you combine the voices. It makes it easier to hear each voice when they are combined because you are so VERY familiar with each one. And it means you have a very secure memory start on the piece.

I think, in the other pieces, it also adds depth and maturity to it. Not necessary even so much hands separately as VOICES separately. You find all kinds of cool things. It's very painstaking though. I used to just rip off my pieces from memory as soon as possible, add a few dynamics, and be done. I'm really excited to see how my playing will change with this new approach.

Hands seperately allows the brain to process and register one thing at a time rather than bombarding it with too much information.......especially as a pianist when you need to learn the fingering together with the note. Having to learn 2 sets of fingering at the same time can actually lead to neither hand being totally 100% bomb-proof with the fingering with the result that the piece is never totally solidly and reliably learned.......

natural inclination is to get on with it and play hands together, but I've come a cropper over this in the recent past, and am now playing hands separately, especially for Bach. Trying to get each melody to sing out is impossible for me unless practiced by themselves.
Also ,I feel a bit of a hypocrite, since I always ask my pupils to practice hands separately!!

My teacher keeps telling me to practice hands separately; but I must admit I usually don't.

Unfortunately he caught me out the other week when to tweak a few right hand issues, he asked me to play him just the right-hand... I couldn't. I'd become so used to having both hands playing that piece that I got lost trying to use one or the other.

I find it depends on the piece: if there is a lot of flowing from hand to hand it's difficult to make sense of hands separately.

I usually try out new pieces (eg for the grade above) by sight reading each hand separately. If I can do that at approximately the right tempo I feel I might have a chance of playing the piece eventually. It also helps me to decide whether my hands can reach the notes.

I've been caught out by that too.....

Illustrates what happens whwn you think you know better than your teacher...

Hahaha.. true.

I like to throw in a few issues each week so that he thinks he's still teaching me stuff.

BTW I'm kidding here, of course, my progress rate went through the roof when I started taking lessons and hasn't really slowed down since.

I also think it depends on the person and on the piece...
My teacher also tells me to practice hands seperaltely first and I rarely listen to his advice except for Bach.
While in a Chopin Waltz , I usually find it much better -for me- to practice hands together.

Piano teachers give advice for a reason!!!!!! I'm a teacher and performer and I generally play a new piece through together to get the gist and to keep my sight-reading up to scratch but then I always practise separately first. My own teacher taught me to do that when I was a teenager, (and he's an international concert pianist of great calibre and experience) and I've never ignored that advice. One of my pet hates - and I see it over and over and over - is when I tell a pupil to practise separately until each hand is known thoroughly and fluently and 100% accurately, and then they come back the following week with the piece hands together full of note errors, fingering errors, inconsistencies, hesitations etc etc etc because they haven't practised the way I told them to........ And the piece as a result is NEVER 100% concretely learned.....because they were trying to run before they could walk with the piece and were trying to take short cuts. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

True.

Though , I don't think that practicing with both hands should be considered as a short cut .
One student is good at practicing with both hands , another is not . In that case , the latter should practice with hands seperately at first.

Agreed.

But I'm a little too old to be doing exactly what I'm told if I have inclinations to do something else. Advice not orders thank you very much.

I do find it easier to learn a piece hands together (bit by bit mind, I'm no prodigy) and hearing the two rhythms together. Whilst I certainly see the benefits in hands-separate, I'm responsible for my own learning and development and will take the decisions I see fit.

I don't expect my piano teacher to know me and what works best for me 100% time. He's a musician not a psychic or psychologist.

I like sight reading a lot...so always practise with both hands if I can, and if the rhythm is not too awkward or too fast. However if there is a really twiddly bit, like a fast bit in Chopin Nocturne in Eb that I'm learning right now, I'll practise hands separately.



Was really shocked once,when my piano teacher was ill, and I got a different teacher for one week...I had only learnt about 2 pages of Debussy Arabesque 1...and she made me sightread (both hands) the rest of the piece!

I'm good most of the time CD...... isn't there a tiny bit of rebel in most of us?

It's all in the wording, especially with older students. "Some find this helps", for instance, is much more productive than "Do this. Don't argue: I know best."

Yes by all means feel free to ignore the advice of your piano teachers, but spare a thought for the teachers who see their advice ignored and have to sit through lessons week after week knowing if only the pupil had taken the advice seriously the piece would be learned and polished by now, instead of which there are truckloads of wrong notes and bad co-ordination, and tempo fluctuations and appalling fingering which changes every time they play through the piece again, and all because they haven't concentrated 100% on what each hand is actually doing before playing both hands.............Of course if it's a piece like Bach's Solfeggietto, then that's a different case altogether.........

Wow. I take it all back...

If only I'd known that if I practiced hands separately then my lessons would be free of wrong notes, bad coordination, tempo fluctuations and poor fingering.

I'd always assumed there were more factors creating those issues. Never say I can't take advice, I will practice hands separately from now on... can I quote you next week when my latest piece isn't perfect?

Being a mere mortal I can practice hands separate until I know both well, then it all falls to bits when I put them together....

I do agree that sometimes it is ignoring the teachers advice that is responsible for lack of improvement.

I'm only speaking from the frustration I've felt from 20 years' teaching experience when I've seen pupil after pupil doing exactly the same thing. Yes, there are other factors aswell, but a lot of the problems have been caused by not preparing slowly and carefully enough....... maybe it's just my pupils........

I can do slow and careful and still mess up....

And me...

I usually have a go first time with hands together - as a sight reading challenge. Then I will go hands separately until I get the feel of what each hand is supposed to be doing (trying to count time).

Like many I am also very impatient so I tend to add the other hand in a little bit (makes me feel I am progressing ). Then when I am happy with each hand, I will put it together. Once I am happy with it at this stage I will play it for my teacher and most likely make a complete hash of it because of nerves!!! ... then she makes me play it hands apart again.

Maybe because I am older it takes my brain longer to process each hand separately???

elizabeth

I find it difficult learning a piece completley hands seperaltley and then attempting to put the together, for me it is like learning a new piece. I will though play the melody through to get the jist of the piece and then slowly work through hand together. But by doing it this way i find it difficult to play after hands seperatley and I am used to both hands working together

I know that doesnt make much sense

Ben

Hahaha, I doubt its just your pupils - but people learn differently. If you know yourself well enough then I think you have to go with your own instincts sometimes. I've spent my whole life learning things (some musical, many not) and have a good instinct for what's going to work for me.

I think you can prepare slowly and carefully enough with both hands together. Well... I can anyway... hands together at about a tenth of the desired tempo. Same four bars repeated for three hours straight.

Once I've cracked the first eight or twelve bars of a piece then the rest comes quickly.

The problem I have when I've tried hands-separate is that I can usually do it easily; but when the hands are moving together then it doesn't work at all. Often skipping the hands separate stage makes no difference but saves me some time (of which I have very little). Also, and more importantly, I struggle to play a piece until I get a "feeling" for its overall rhythm and sound - introducing the left hand early helps me get that.

At times I have all the problems you mentioned earlier; but they're from different causes. Such as having a bad memory, and even worse sight-reading skills. And I frequently lose concentration when playing - just sort of fall asleep.

I find hands separate practice easy, usually, but that's the point, isn't it? I generally do a combination of both, depending on how complex the piece is, but the hands separate practice will be to a much higher tempo than the piece will ever require, and I will make sure that everything is absolutely secure and includes all dynamics, articulation etc at that speed. After that, hands together becomes a lot less daunting.

Hmmmmmmm Although I'm advised to do hands separate and I do, I don't do it in my lesson.
Lesson time is for seeing how the pieces are going as an entity, at least that is what I thought.
I wonder if my teacher thinks I'm ignoring him? I hope not.

Anyway, I do hands separate for the following reasons: (this bit is for Rink)
1) to ensure ease of fingering and relaxed hands when playing the piece at speed so I do hands separate really fast
(if you can only do it slowly and tensely then the fingering probably needs a new idea)
2) to ensure correct rhythm and articulation, so I do hands separate really slow as well
3) if I get a memory glitch or finger stumble I can keep going with one hand. Much easier to memorise one hand at a time.
4) Since right hand is better than left, I get the hands co-ordinated in difficult passages by "slotting in" left hand notes
to a slow right hand.

To me there can be three melodies: right, left and together, because the harmonies can make them sound completely different. Especially if there are 3 vs 2 bits etc. Sometimes I can only remember the left hand if I play it together with the right hand, which happens when I've been playing something for a long time, in which case I know it's time to go back to hands separate (and to look at the score!!)

I understood CD to be saying that it's the result of not doing what she advises that can cause frustratioin, not that she expected to hear hands separate in the lesson.