A new adult student I had a couple of years ago returned to the piano after decades. She had all the built in habits from 30 years ago and would never ever play with both hands together until she mastered each hand on its own. But to her great frustration, she couldn’t get the hands to sync with one another. After a few weeks of this she agreed to try a different way of approaching a new piece which enabled her to move on with her piano playing.
Practicing with hands separately is great for several situations and is an essential tool in our box, but like every tool, it has to be used correctly or else it will be useless or even cause damage. In the case mentioned above the potential damage was a growing frustration that could have led this person to giving up piano entirely.
If you let the hands “live single” for too long, they develop their own habits and dynamics and find it difficult to enter a “partnership”. The coordination between the hands is not something that comes by practicing each hand on its own and the musical sound of the piece is only partial when you play only one hand.
When is it good to practice hands separately?
- To help you understand why you are repeatedly playing a section incorrectly
If there is a passage you find yourself often stumbling over, it’s good to break it down as much as possible to detect the source of the problem and figure out how to approach it. In this case playing each hand on it's own will be helpful.
- To enhance your musical understanding of what you are playing
After having played through the piece hands together, you could benefit by zooming into the role of each hand, scanning for interesting musical turns and hidden inner voices that are harder to notice when playing hands together.
- To help with challenging rhythm
If you have a complex rhythmical passage you will benefit by practicing with less notes while keeping the beat steady.
- To help you read the score
If you are having difficulty deciphering the notes of both hands at the same time but are determined on learning the piece.
Playing with hands together will be a little tricky if hands have been practiced too intensively on their own. Therefore, I would suggest working section -wise, alternating between playing hands separately and together.
When practicing a new piece or song it’s good to keep going back to the big picture as much as possible. Read or play through the whole piece and then break it down, finishing off with the big picture again. Getting lost in the details can lead you to a dead end, so remember where you are heading and keep connected to the goal: to the piece as a whole with both hands playing at the same time.
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