My daughter has started bringing home some duets for trombone and tuba. She reads the trombone part in the bass clef and the tuba is in the treble clef. On the music she has the trombone is at the top and the tuba underneath, as an added complication the tuba part is in Bb and so needs transposing.

Having recently realised that I can play two lines of music on the piano at once she wanted me to play it to her so she could hear what it sounded like. I found it virtually impossible to play with the treble and bass clef the wrong way round (let alone sight-transpose one of the hands). Last night, in the middle of the night, it suddenly occurred to me to play with hands crossed so that my right hand is still playing the top line of music and my left-hand the bottom line and lo and behold when I tried this afternoon it worked

Just wondered if this is my brain working in weird ways or if other people have had a similar experience.

Well you're certainly not alone in this. I also have great trouble with reading "unusual" parts. I think it is because sight-reading is based on recognizing patterns, rather than reading every note. So I think in theory if you would incorporate reading those tuba/trombone duets in your practice every day eventually you will be able to cope with them because then you will able to see the patterns. Don't know if it would be a very useful skill though

I think it's pretty normal to be used to playing the bass part with the left hand. I'm finding it quite a challenge to decouple my LH from the bass line now that I'm learning organ (where the bass line generally belongs to the pedals, leaving the LH with an inside part).

I also found it really difficult to play the melody line of a hymn with my left hand while playing the bass line with my right hand (reading straight out of regular 2-stave 4-part music), which is something I had to do in a keyboard skills lesson this week.

It's easy to get used to things being a certain way up and once you're used to it being that way, anything else feels very strange.

If you don't want to cross your hands, you could still play the parts with those hands, but take the tuba part down an octave or two, to get it to the left of the trombone part (I'm guessing that that's how it would sound if played on the intended instruments anyway).

T.

I've had a few head-scratching sessions when doing piano pieces with pupils in which the hands are crossed. Pupil is sitting there with arms crossed at the elbows, and we both get totally confused as to which limb we're talking about when we say 'left' or 'right'. We're so used to saying left when we look at the lower stave, or at the hand that is normally on the left, that it just hurts our brains when things get messed around with. Working this type of thing out is bad enough when you're doing it yourself, but pointing to the page and having to think about left or right is even worse when you're dealing with another party who is struggling with left and right too!

I had a similar problem when I found that I had trouble playing the simplest-looking part of Gershwin's 2nd Prelude (the bit where the melody moves to the left hand and the right hand plays a simple chord accompaniment) - and the clefs weren't even written the wrong way round!

Crossing hands (an editorial suggestion) was one solution, but some practice soon sorted the problem out, although I still have to concentrate quite hard to make my brain switch my hands around.

Try playing it with your hands crossed ! Seriously !

That is how it would sound but I can't take it down an octave because my mind refuses to read the treble clef for the left-hand.

And F sharp minor, I am seriously playing it with my hands crossed as it is the only way I can play it.

[rant] (thinks the treble clef transposition system of English brass bands is silly and does not benefit what-so-ever apart from not having to read too many ledger lines) [/rant]

It is a habit that my left hands plays bass clef faster than left hand playing treble clef. Right hand doesn't have that problem for some reason. Whatever works I think (kudos to you for transposing one line and not the other at the same time!)