I'm sure this must be an old topic, but as the list seems quiet at the moment, perhaps you'll allow me.....

Does anyone else have problems with learning something in seperate hands, and then trying to put them together? I wonder if it is just an age thing, in that I've started learning piano late in life, from a non-music background.

No matter how much I try, it just doesn't work. Even something simple like a repeated note or chord, on the beat, in the left hand goes to pieces if I try to put a right hand with it. I might as well be trying to juggle! Needless to say, it makes sight reading difficult too.

I have talked with my teacher, but I think his view is that if I'm working towards grade 5 now, it can't be much of a problem.

Anyone else experienced this and overcome it?
Any advice?

A.

First thing is no, you're not alone, putting hands together is part of the difficulty of playing the piano: it doesn't necessarily follow for anyone that if a piece can be played hands separately it can be played hands together. One option is to learn the hands separately more thoroughly if you're really struggling, but even then there will be some time, no matter how well you've learnt them separately that you've got to sit down and thrash out getting them together, doing them independently can help a lot, but the coordination is a something else that can only be learnt when they're put together. I'd say generally it takes me more time to put a piece hands together (given they're learnt separately) than it does to learn both of the hands separately, you may be the same; others will differ and some don't even learn hands separately at all: they find it easier to go straight for it hands together. It's just different learning styles.

It's not really fair of your teacher to dismiss this as a problem because you're tackling grade 5 repertoire, indeed that doesn't say anything about how much you're personally finding it a struggle. What happens if you look at easier pieces, do you find it easier then? Or is it not much different? There are a number of possibilities:

1) You're actually learning to put hands together at a reasonably 'normal' speed, you've just not appreciated that this is actually takes that amount of work for most people (could explain the teacher's dismissal);

2) It's your learning style and although this stage takes you the longer than usual, other phases take you shorter than usual and it all comes out in the wash (again could explain why the teacher wouldn't see this as a problem);

3) You're finding the pieces at the level you're playing a bit tricky at the moment in terms of co-ordination and it might help to play some that are easier to co-ordinate (and perhaps more difficult in some other respects to match the rest of your playing if necessary) in order to practise this skill on easier repertoire.

Interesting question though .

Do you have problems only with things that you've learned hands separately first? If you learn a piece with hands together right from the start do you find it easier than if you try to put them together later in the process?

I don't know at what stage people normally switch from learning them separately to learning them simultaneously (or, indeed, if some people never switch completely - I come across people who are way way better pianists than I'll ever be who still learn some things hands separately), but I dumped the hands separately thing almost entirely from a very early stage. I find that, for me, it makes it /harder/ to try to learn a piece that way. I will rip small sections apart and do hands separately while I untangle some fingerings or whatever, but I don't learn a whole piece hands separately to begin with as I really need to have a feel for how everything fits together from the outset.

So, maybe it's a matter of personal learning style? If you find that learning hands separately makes it harder to put the bits together later, maybe you can just keep them together from the start?

Also, it depends a bit on the music. If you're learning something where the melody is constantly passing back and forth between the hands (like CPE Bach - Solfegietto) or something where a middle part is shared between the hands, or something where you have to keep crossing hands or playing with one hand above the other, I would think you pretty much /have/ to learn it with both hands right from the start as the interplay between the hands is so important.

Anyone know if there's an official "correct" answer to whether it's better to take the synthetic or the analytical approach? Cos, if there isn't, I'd say just go with whatever you find works for you personally. (I might say that anyway come to think of it, because if the correct approach just gets you in a muddle then it probably isn't the correct choice for you.)

T.

Many thanks for your thoughts.
They make interesting reading.

It's possible that my brain just doesn't work that way (when it does!), and processing two lots of information independent of each other will never be easy for me. I notice it particularly in something like a fugue, where the left hand plays one part and the right has to come in part way along with another part. Especially if one part is legato and the other stacatto, or one is p and one is f.

I'm also aware of being very right handed, in that simple tasks like toothbrushing and knife and fork are all but impossible to do in the wrong hands. I've tried to develop a more ambidextrous (if that's a word) approach to things, but it's so easy to forget, and do things as they've always been done.

It seems to me to be such a basic piano playing skill, I wondered how I'd got to the level I'm at without it.

Perhaps I should believe my teacher when he says I'm doing OK!

A

Always so nice to see a post which reflects my own experience! And no, I have not overcome it, so cannot be of help. In fact, I admire you for getting to working towards Grade 5 on the piano whilst battling with the independence of hands problem. I seem to be stuck at about Grade 2 and three-quarters and have given up on piano exams altogether for that reason.
I am learning the cello as well and find that so much easier, as the two hands are doing such completely different things, rather than having to do a very similar task.
I am virtually ambidextrous, but that does not help with the piano. I am right handed but hold my cutlery like a left handed person and can also write quite well with my left hand. I think it just means that my left hand is quite useful, but it does not improve the independence of hands, which I would guess is purely a brain thing. Advancing age does not help, as forming new neural pathways is rather a challenge.

With a new piece I do try and practise hands together straight away, but then do hands separately to refine things. Not that the end result is ever very refined.

Like you, I find theory much easier!

So sorry, no advice available, but glad to hear there is someone out there with the same problems as I have. You could always try the cello, it's a breeze compared to the piano!

Hi arthur - yes, I know what you mean. I was taught 40 years ago to start hands together and it took quite sometime to accept what my current teacher was saying. I have found that it is better - in the long run. But I find I have to think in terms of three processes, all of them slow - learning one hand, learning the other hand and then, bar by bar, learning both together. As noted in one of the threads about fingering - at this stage you might need to alter the fingering,

From my personal experience I would say stick at it, but perhaps it is an individual thing.

I think it's one of those things that will depend greatly on how best YOU learn. What works for one person may be a disaster for another.

For myself I find it really helps to learn the hands separately. But I think that is because I tend to think along the melody lines of the music, and find it hard to think in terms of the harmony. I am just not a natural pianist. If I had to learn everything hands together I would find it very difficult and slow to do so, and learning all or parts of the hands on their own helps my confidence when putting the two together. But what works for me may be totally different from what works for you, so don't be afraid to experiment and find out how YOU learn best.

Something I realised I didn't say in my post, which probably seems blindingly obvious but may help. When you start putting the hands together play very slowly, much more slowly than you'd play them separately, even if it's so slowly that the piece is unrecognisable. The problem then becomes how to speed it up; rather than how to play the hands together, the latter is considerably easier at a ridiculously low speed. Solving a different problem might be easier .

That's a good point AP.
I think I expect to be able to put two hands together at the same speed as seperate hands, but it must be better to start slowly. But it feels like starting to learn the piece from the start again.

When I think about my scales practice, I do find that even with the complicated ones, I can leave the right hand to do its own thing while I concentrate the left - and even vice versa on the less complicated ones. I think I must have the ability that I think I'm lacking!

A

Interesting thread -- I really think everyone is different in the way they put hands together, and I'm always trying different approaches to help. I sometimes teach hands-together from the start if the style of the piece lends itself to that. Some students need a very brief period of hands-separately before they start putting together. Others need to really consolidate every detail with one hand at a time

That's a good point AP.
I think I expect to be able to put two hands together at the same speed as seperate hands, but it must be better to start slowly. But it feels like starting to learn the piece from the start again.

Important point here. I wonder if it's worth trying not to play up to speed in the hands-separately bit of the learning process - in other words keep it deliberately slow, and as soon as you can play h-s at a slow speed start putting h-t so that the speed changes very little. Just a thought.

In some pieces (depending on the style of the writing) a useful trick might be to play one hand and tap the rhythm of the other - kind of halfway house.

Playing one hand and singing the other can be really helpful too.

Playing one hand and singing the other can be really helpful too.

You've not heard my singing
It frightens the dog and makes the grandchildren cry!

A

Sorry - didn't mean to "shout" with that last post.

Still finding my way around.


A

One useful tactic can be to concentrate just on one or two bars, and play them over and over until you've go them (even if you start off with only one or two left hand notes and then gradually increase). Then work on the next bar or two, and then on the join between the two sections. I try these strategies with my piano students, and it seems to work.

Yes, I play scales like you do too - the right hand can take care of itself, but the left hand needs watching all the way, or it just does its own (wrong) thing!

I think the advice that several pianists have given about playing hands together really really slowly is very good advice. It's boring but it's well worth it in the long run,as the pieces then become 'safe'.
I decided to learn some Schubert waltzes, and because they were so pretty I just couldn't wait to be able to play them and rushed in at top speed. Well, I never really mastered them and there's a bar or two in all of them (and there aren't many bars - they're very short) where I always go wrong - had I forced myself to plod away to begin with I think all would have been well.