Everyone tells you to learn each hand on its own first when starting a new piece. I think that’s mostly a waste of your practice time.
If you’ve done it, you probably know the result. Bruce M., a member of my community, said it plainly: “I can play through the entire piece with each hand separately but had trouble putting both hands together.” Lori N. described the same thing: “it is very frustrating when I cannot play hands together as I did separate.”
Each hand learned its own part. Neither learned how to get along with the other hand.
Every example below is in my video, so you can watch and hear each one at the piano: STOP Practicing Hands Separately: Do This Instead for Perfect Coordination.
What I’ve seen from heavy hands-separate practice
Students who’ve practiced hands separately a lot tend to have their own problems. I’ve seen it judging competitions. At one winner’s concert, a little boy’s left hand stopped completely. His right hand carried on for a couple of measures, then he ran off the stage in tears. At another, a young woman’s hands drifted half a measure apart in a Bach piece. She somehow got through it.
Usually the player is thinking about the dominant hand, and the other hand is on its own. If something goes wrong in that other hand, it’s crash and burn time.
In my private teaching, students with a hands separate background often have trouble with passages that are fine for other pianists. Usually the issues involve something with how the hands relate – timing, movement or sound. The learner gets easily confused and stuck on these problems. Students who mostly practice hands together don’t get stuck in these places.
Find the moments the hands play together
Start by noticing when your hands play at the same time and when they don’t. Then focus on what you feel at those together moments.
Here’s a nice early level example.
In one of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos pieces, the right hand starts alone. Then the hands play together, and Bartók is being nice: both thumbs play an E. Think about what’s the same. Next, both hands go down one finger from where they are. After that, the right hand goes down while the left goes up.
Say it out loud as you play: “Right hand by itself. Left hand down one. Both hands down one.” You have to think clearly before you can say it. Then you hear your own voice, which adds another layer beyond the sound of the piano.
Keep the chunks small. You wouldn’t play all of that at once. (More on that in Chunking: Why Small Sections Learn Faster.)
Use more senses
To make those together moments land in your brain, exaggerate them and bring in more senses. The more senses you involve, the better you remember almost anything.
Feel the tip of your finger on the key before you play. Notice the bottom of the key. Notice that one hand is on a black key, sitting higher, while the other is lower on a white key. Listen. Talk to yourself.
Ask: same direction, or opposite?
A student brought a Handel Passacaglia to her lesson and said, “I think this piece is impossible.” She had practiced it hands separately a ton and couldn’t put the hands together. I told her she was wrong, and that she’d play it just fine.
Here’s what I saw on the page. Sometimes her hands moved in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. The whole 2 pages are built on that pattern. Once she had that one idea, she could play the whole piece.
The trick was thinking in 2-note chunks. Ignore everything between those 2 notes and ask one question: are the hands moving the same way, or opposite?
The same goes for “in and out.” (In means your hands move toward the music stand, into the black-key area. Out means they come toward your body. )At the start of Chopin’s Polonaise in C-sharp minor, Op. 26 No. 1, both thumbs are on black keys. Then both come out together. Then the hands trade: one goes in while the other comes out.
Opposite in and out is a common place to get confused. Check for it in any spot that trips you up. Once you notice it, it’s usually not hard. We do opposite movements on each side of the body all the time, like walking.
Find the cue note in fast passages
When one hand has a long, fast run and the other has only a note or two, the hard part is usually where the few notes fit. That’s counterintuitive. You’d think the run is the problem.
In Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2, I find the note in the right-hand run that plays with the left hand. That’s my cue note. My tiny chunk is: cue note, then the left hand leaps. Practice exactly that.
Michael L., a member of my community, was stuck on a run in a Chopin piece. I suggested this same cue-note approach. He wrote: “I’m just practicing the Chopin run section and your suggestion has been amazingly helpful. After 15 mins it’s already much better. I’ve been at it for months!”
The same idea solves other textures
- One hand louder than the other. Don’t play the melody loud and ignore the quiet hand, hoping it goes away. Think of the 2 notes that play together as a pair, and decide how loud each should be. One image I use with young students: an elephant sits on the loud hand, the quiet hand holds a balloon. Or lean toward the hand you want louder.
- One hand legato, the other staccato. Ask what’s the same and what’s different. Both keys go down together. One hand stays on the bottom of the key, the other lets go. Go slowly enough to feel it, or your body won’t remember it.
- Hands passing a run between them. When one thumb plays, that’s the signal for the other hand to get ready. I tell children it’s like a seesaw. When one hand puts the key down the other hand is getting ready to play.
- Rolled chords in both hands. Plan which notes play together. There aren’t too many rules on this subject, so trial and error will help you find a sound you like. Then figure out when the hands are playing together and when they are playing separate.
When hands separate does help
I’m not the hands-separate police. There are good times for it:
- A movement your hand has never made. A gigantic rolled chord, a fast trill. With earlier-level students I teach scales hands separately first, then coordinate them.
- Hearing a hand better. Often that’s the left hand. Play it alone, sing along with it, memorize it, or play the left hand while you sing the right.
- Counterpoint. In a fugue or invention, play each line alone. Then switch: play the right-hand line with your left hand, and the left-hand line with your right.
Just don’t expect hands-separate practice to teach you the piece hands together. It won’t. Leyla M. has found her own balance: “I only do it once as a reading exercise, then move as fast as possible to hands together.”
Playing hands together means training the relationship between your hands, not two separate soloists. Watch me demonstrate every example: STOP Practicing Hands Separately: Do This Instead for Perfect Coordination.
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