I have a followup question to a thread I read last night from Bernhard. It was about hand coordination, or cueing, and the method for encouraging this was called "dropping" notes, wherein the pianists would play the right hand, and then start adding notes here and there on the left hand. The idea, if I understand the reasoning correctly, was to train the hands to play together in a way so that the hands were neither dependent or independent of each other. Rather, there is a coordination of the hands.
Yes, you understood it correctly.
Well, the other night as I was practicing a piece that I can already play hands-together, I decided to play it hands-seperate to polish up some imperfections. I played the right hand just fine. But then, when it came to play the left hand, I suddenly realized that was very unsure of it, and made several mistakes. Basically, I came full circle, in that I could no longer play the left hand by itself -- but I had once been able to because I had practiced hands separate, before joining!
If you want to polish imperfections of a technical nature (fingering, wrong notes, inappropriate motions), hands separate work is mandatory. You cannot work on these imperfections with hands together. However, and a surprising large number of people miss this point, it is also mandatory that technical work of this sort be carried out in
very small sections, sometimes a couple of bars, and in extreme cases a couple of notes. A lot of people who have not been taught how to practise correctly and efficiently will play through the whole piece several times – and consistently make a mess on the bit that have trouble with – be it with separate hands or hands together. Of course not only this does not work as it will ingrain the mistake in the unconscious.
Once you decide on the size f the section you are going to work on, by all means do separate hands work and memorise each hand. But as soon as you feel you have corrected the mistakes/ imperfections, join hands and get over the co-ordination bit. Then join the section to the rest of the piece (or to the larger section where it belongs)
with hands together. There is no need to learn – and memorise – a whole piece with hands separate. The only exception to his rule is counterpoint music (e.g. Bach) where it is very helpful to know in detail each of the melodic lines, and even then it is not so much hands separate that you learn, as separate voices.
It is also possible that your left hand problem is of a different sort altogether. Have a look here where it is all explained in detail:
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2720.msg23353.html#msg23353(How to practice aim and accuracy – looking at the LH and giving verbal instructions to the RH – Full discussion on left and right brain).
I was a little troubled because I was not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Is this a sign that my right hand was "cueing" my left hand as what to play? Is that what we want, in the end, since the composition is meant to be played hands together, and not separate?
Or, is this a bad thing in that my left hand is too DEPENDENT on the right hand?
Yes, it is a very good thing. You must understand that there are different stages in learning a piece. At the “accomplished” stage both your hands should be in total collaborations and act as a unity (not exactly dependent and not exactly independent, but each absorbing information from the other). Trying to keep track – which I suspect is what you are trying to do – of what each hand is doing will cause minor disasters. At a certain point, you must let the unconscious take care of the motions and co-ordinations: the conscious mind simply cannot cope with the complexith of the task. The conscious mind is only helpful at the stage where you are carefully programming yore unconscious for the task.. At that stage the conscious mind is irreplaceable. But because the conscious mind is so limited, you must simplify the task by separating hands, working on small sections and playing in slow motion.
This is exactly analogous to computer programming. The actual writing of the program has to be done very carefully, it is slow work, and you must be on a constant watch put for bugs. But once the program is written, you let the CPU get on with it. You do not keep trying to keep track of “which line of the program is the computer executing right now”. Of course if the program has problems, then you have to take it apart, but you do not rewrite the whole thing. You identify the chunk where the problem lies and correct it.
Also, once you start playing hands together, isn't there always a danger of forgetting the hands separate memories, and just keeping the hands together? If so, is this necessarily a bad thing?
There is no need or usefulness in remembering hands separate. The only reason to work on hands separate (and always in small sections) is to figure out the technique to play the section. Join hands as soon as possible (this sometimes may be along time depnding on the difficulty of the section) and memorise the piece with hands together (in any case you only develop true hand memory with hands together).
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.