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I feel like when I learn a piece, I'm actually learning three pieces: the right hand, the left, and both together. What I cannot understand is that, no matter how well I think I have the separate hands, when I bring them together it's like I've never seen the music before. The music just isn't "in my hands" like it was when I was practicing right and left separately. I've been playing for about 2 1/2 years, and I practice less than I would like to, so perhaps it's more an issue of practice.

When I finally learn both hands together, it's OK, but again, it feels as though it's not a function of building on the separate hands but learning a whole new thing on its own.

Does this happen to anyone else? And how do you overcome it?

I have the exact same feeling. Bear in mind that I am a true beginner, I have been taking lessons for about 9 month, so do not expect much help from my answer, apart acknowledging that this happens to me as well.

So far I neglected hands separate practice because I did not see much benefit in it once I try to put my hands together. However, recently my teacher is not even letting me play my piece if I am not capable to play it reasonably well hand separated. This led to some frustration initially because, despite being able to play my piece note perfect and at tempo, I stumbled left and right when playing it hands separate for her. In order to get a pass, I had to relearn my piece hand separate and it did feel almost like learning a new piece all together.

I very much see the benefit of slow practice (the other well known technique for practicing a piece), but I have yet to fully understand the benefit of playing hands separate.

If hands separate playing does not seem to have a role on how easy is to play hands together, I hope somebody will be able to explain what is the benefit of it.

Luca

I've only been playing a little over a month and I go through the same thing. Practice LH then RH then try to put the two together and they don't play well with each other. The only thing I've found that helped is practice.

Take a measure or two and play that until you're comfortable then move on to the next one then play them and repeat the process.

I still don't know if I'll ever get a handle on my brain when I try to play both hands together for the first time. Who knows maybe one day something will click and then you'll ever wonder what the issue was in the first place. I personally can't wait for that to happen.

As a beginner, I went through this with learning the major scales. I found that the better each hand "knew" a given scale separately (to the point of not having to think about it), the more easily both hands could do their thing at the same time. This realization set the template for how I am approaching everything. Take it slow, but also BE THOROUGH in hands separate before attempting hands together.

Tony

Playing RH only will secure the RH part.

Playing LH only will secure the LH part.

Back to the first statement though, if you are able to manage with it, I think it is fine to start hands together. When you really want to secure the piece, or section, try hands separate. You are absolutely correct that this does not come as easy as you would think it should. The RH alone feels weird without the left. Similarly, the Left without the Right. When you get all three, it will be far more secure.

Thanks, Greener. Nice explanation and yes, it does feel weird.

Now that you mention it, I can see how hands separate can help to secure the piece. I would say that by giving a different "point of view" to the piece, it helps to memorize it better. It kind tricks muscle memory forcing you to put a more conscious/mindful effort into it.

Thanks,
Luca

One thing I have found, and I don't know if this is true for others, but for me it is MUCH easier to get my hands working together with little trouble when learning a tune off a recording by ear as compared to doing it from sheet music. I can learn, say, a Michele McLaughlin tune off the recording by ear and not struggle much at all when putting hands together, but when trying to learn a similar tune from sheet music, the hands together part seems to come by with much more difficulty. I can read music, so that isn't the problem.

Tony

lizcat
A few points that might be worth considering.

1) you're always going to be able to play hands separate at a higher (often much higher) tempo than you can play hands together. This knowledge can be used in two ways.
a) when you put hands together, slow down. Slow way down. No no no...way to fast, I mean Slow WAY down. If you're struggling you may be going way to fast.
b) when you practice hands alone, practice them much faster than the tempo you want to play hands together. That will help you play hands together much faster too. Most people practice hands together at the tempo they want to play the piece at. I think it's helpful to speed it up

2) Tackle smaller pieces... Just take it 1 bar at a time. play one measure (and maybe a couple of beats of the next measure) with each hand, and then hands together. If you're trying to play the whole piece, or even a whole phrase hands together, it may be too much for you to take in.

3) This last point I can't emphasize enough. if you want to get good at playing hands together, you need to practice at playing hands together. Do you tend to look just at one clef and switch your eyes back and forth between them? That tends to happen if you do a lot of hands separate practice. you need to be able to take in both clefs at once (generally you want to read them bottom to top as you read left to right). If you've been playing 2.5 years, you should be playing some fairly advanced beginner, maybe even early intermediate pieces. Get some super easy beginner pieces way below your current level and practice playing them hands together from the beginning. Only practice them hands together. I mean marry had a little lamb simple. Go as slow as you need to, speed will come in time...but you have to practice the specific skill you want to develop.

It can be hard to get a lot of beginner pieces, so I'm a big fan of sightreadingfactory.com which generates as many beginner level pieces as you want. or you can just find lots of beginner exercises online. This practice will help you learn to take in both staves at once in a single glance.

Start simple, go slow, and build.

Warm Regards

AND if you can't play each hand separately playing hands together will be quite a trick.

Do you mean you learn the left hand and right hsnd sections seperately? I thought everybody learned both hands at the same time. Im not that far yet, I need to practice my left hand, it refuses to be an individual on tricky pieces.

Hands together from the beginning works for me. At (very) hard sessions, and in rare occasions, I may play only with the RH just to feel the music, then I add my LH.
I think it's harder to learn hands separately.

Too much reliance on hand separate learning can slow your learning of sight reading, in my opinion. I found that if I spent too much time learning only one hand, I stopped paying attention to the grand staff, and only read one staff at a time. It made it much harder when I put the two hands together.

I agree that learning the piece one hand, then the other, and then together is like learning three times. I have not found that HS practice helps coordinate the two hands together, and isn't conducive to faster learning.

Now I use both HS and HT to learn a piece. I read through first HT, then I work on chunks HS to get the fingering and motions in place. I put a piece HT chunk, by chunk, so I am not spending much time only reading one staff. Throughout the learning process I do practice HS, to assure that the fingering hasn't wandered, and to improve memorisation, but the majority of my practice is HT now.

Threads such as this are really helpful for me. I like to read other people's opinions and experiences to get ideas to try in my own practice. Lots of good stuff here.

Tony

This is exactly what I do. I don't see the value of practicing hands separately.

YES--several of you hit the nail on the head. I do read the staffs separately. I wasn't even conscious of that until now. So I guess it stands to reason that my hands won't act in concert if my eyes and brain are not.

There's really great advice in this thread. Thank you for all the suggestions--I will try them!

Interesting discussion.

I have gone back and forth on this (tried different approaches multiple times), and for me, I learn a piece much faster if I learn the left and right hand separately, and then put them together slowly. When I say "learn" I mean I get the basic fingering down, but I don't go beyond that until my hands are together.

At my level (Elementary C/D) there is simply too much information for my sight-reading abilities to handle on the initial run-through of a new piece, if I am playing both hands at the same time.

However, it makes sense to try different approaches.

Agreed Brian, interesting read.

Being a self teacher I found myself going through a phase of really playing hands separately for longer, now I find myself putting hands together sooner but play really really slowly to begin with.

It really depends on the piece for me, if there are tricky fingering sections where I get confused I focus on the one hand for a bit before putting it together.

While I have 7 months under the belt, as a child I did play recorder for many years, and strange that after all those years of not playing any music I think it still helped me since sight reading in treble clef came rather easily, something was still there in memory I suppose.

Most pieces at this level grade 1 - 2 for me are easy enough to sight read, the bass clef threw me a bit at first for quite a few months, but now is getting better. I really do try to focus on not looking at hands directly, although you sort of see hands in peripheral vision. I try and focus on the sheet at all times as much as I can. It's hard, but slowly, bit by bit it is working better.

While the wind instruments helped me somewhat, taking in two lines and multiple notes all at once and not looking down at you hands is a much harder challenge. With the recorder or trumpet I also played briefly your fingers are already in the right place, and you only got to read single notes at a time.

Yep, I keep saying it to myself and finding out everyday that piano is a tough old instrument to learn, but so rewarding I find myself sticking at it every day all the same.

For me, the issue with playing hands together at first (especially when reading) is getting the timing of what one hand is doing against the other. If each hand "knows" its part before trying to get them to work together, it seems to go easier.

I suspect that, because there seem to be different approaches to the various problems we all encounter when working through our music, and each has very good reasons behind it, that different people simply have different ways of working that suit each person accordingly. The best we can do with all the various responses in a thread like this is try the different ideas and see what of each works best for our situation.

The more we have to work with in terms of ideas such as these, the better we will probably be able to address our own issues.

Tony

It's a matter of practicing your brain and fingers to do what you want them to do.

For example, try putting your palms on your belly, move one hand vertically back and forth and the other horizontally. Do they move straight or do the skew a little? With practice, you'll master this as well.

I've been always wondering how my dad has the capability to play drums. Hands doing their own, hihat and bass drum with his feet and he manages to talk to me while playing a song. Wow! Essentially it's also based on his years of practice.

Lots of different opinions on here. I'll toss mine in:

I've been entirely self-taught for the last 2 years since I started. I have NEVER played hands separate and then together. I have ALWAYS learned both hands together at the same time. I feel like I learn pieces pretty quick nowadays. Like within a few days anymore.

I think it's personal preference and what works for you as an individual. If hands separate then together isn't working for you, try them together from the start. I think the point is that while there may be a "widely accepted" method, there is no "one true method" and "one right way" to learn.

The "slow WAY down" advice is ALWAYS agreed upon, however. I would not take that with a grain of salt at all. It helps. A lot.