Practicing Hands Together on Piano

Piano Practice Techniques

Does practicing hands together on a new piece of piano music frustrate you?

Especially the first few times you try?

Do you feel as though your practice success grinds to a halt temporarily?

Believe me, you're not alone! :-)

Daily piano practice can start to be a chore when you're not seeing progress...

and when everything you're trying to do feels so difficult.

Simply put: practicing the piano with both hands is hard work for your mind. Using two hands, instead of just one, multiplies your thought processes exponentially.

You may think, "Wait a second. I'm already playing each hand well by itself. Adding one more hand should just be simple addition -- not complicated multiplication!"

But it is. Think about everything you're trying to accomplish musically, with just one hand. You're reading notes from the page and translating them to the right keys on the keyboard. That requires your hand to be in the right place, and the right finger to press down.

You're also trying to control just how the finger presses. Forte? Piano? Legato? Staccato? Next is rhythm. (This is math, by the way!) Quarter note. Half note. Whole note. A run of sixteenths.

You're also thinking about tempo. About pedaling. About mood and interpretation. About phrasing.

Now add another hand.

Suddenly, you're asking your mind and body to play what is, in essence, an entirely new song!

Yes. :-)

When you practice piano, or anything else, your brain is forming connection. Like a roadmap, or a chain of events. It uses every bit of sensory data it can.

So, when you practiced your right hand alone, your mind wasn't forming simply a road map of the notes you played and what finger you used. Your brain took note of how you sat, what you looked at, what it sounded like, what your left hand was doing, what your left foot was doing the color of the wall, the smell of your coffee... you get the picture.

You created a map of playing the right hand of that song -- a very effective map!

Ditto your left hand. Each map your brain created was full of detail (even things you didn't consciously notice.) You very efficiently built a routine toward your desired outcome -- playing your music with one hand.

Now you're asking your mind to take two very complete, detailed maps, and to process them at the same time.

Let me give you an analogy. You know when you're working away on your computer, and you click around too fast, have too many applications open, and all of a sudden everything stops? Error messages fly... you need to reboot. You simply asked too much of the processors.

Practicing hands together is a similar situation. You are asking your brain to not only process two maps at the same time, but you expect to do it as well and as fast as when you played each hand on its own! With no error messages (mistakes)! Crazy, right?

You have to give your body and mind time to create a new map. To combine the two hands into one. To allow for all the musical factors to be incorporated.

Your body tries to make connections with each note you play -- so of course you want to play the right ones. But how, when it's so hard to do?

You get it now, right?

Practicing hands together is the creation of a whole new song, as far as your mind and body are concerned.

So... what can you actually do to make the process easier and less frustrating?

Glad you asked! :-)

Click on over to Hands Together Practice Tips.

You'll find a step-by-step practice guide, with a series of techniques that work for my students and myself. In fact, it may seem too simple to actually work.

But I promise you, it does -- and remarkably well.

More Piano Practice Techniques

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