How many hands in practice

[tac-tics]

Hi. The other day, I think I had my real first traumatic experience with the piano.

I've been studying Bach's inventions. So far I have 1, 4, and 8, and parts of 10 memorized. Usually I can play through 1 or 4 maybe messing up twice each time, but yesterday, I absolutely for the life of me couldn't keep from making tons of mistakes. It was driving me nuts. I know that my psychology and physiology probably took advantage of me having two tests this week, but even hands seperate, I couldn't quite remember all the notes of any of the songs. I'm well aquainted with the fact that some days just don't go as well as others, but as I played, I began wondering about something appropriate to ask here:

Is it necessary to continue practicing a song hands seperate once the song is memorized and the hands are successfully joined?

I know that practicing for speed requires hands seperate, and memorization, hands seperate, but once you have played the song x-times flawlessly or near flawlessly (my definition of that would be without missing notes or breaking rhythm), it is advisable to continue practicing hands seperately?

[rivaldo]

If you are playing as good as you want I think there's no need to practice HS. But maybe you might want to improve that or that part so you can practice those parts HS to make them even better. Also, if you play the song a lot, many times, you might start to make mistakes (sometimes happens with me), if this happen you can practice those parts HS again a little bit.

But if you are playing as good as you want, there's no need to practice HS I guess.

(I'm also learning bach inventions, I can play the #4 and I'm currently memorizing #8, it's very tough to memorize this stuff! )

[steve jones]

I am doing these exact same Inventions almost (1, 2, 4, .  Iv been combining slow HT with fast HS practice religiously. Iv found the HS practice to be very important, as any tiny difficulties there are amplified ten fold when attempting HT.

I know what you mean though about these little mistakes. Im having a mare ironing those out too. Then again, I took my time learning No8 and didnt rush anything - no problem areas yet! No1 I rushed seriously and was playing to speed after 2 weeks - I have several problem areas with this one.

So my advice is to take your time and give everything due care and attention. In the end this will save you time.

[cjp_piano]

I would say YES, you should still practice hands alone.  Be able to play the right hand alone memorized, and the left hand alone memorized.  This way, while you are playing both hands, if you have a slight slip in one of the hands, the other one will continue, or should  =).  If you are ONLY practicing hands together, they can rely TOO much on each other and could be disastrous.   

This is only my opinion and it works for me.   I don't think it can hurt, especially with Bach, to continue to play through a piece hands alone. 

[CC]

This is a nice thread, very relevant, I think.  Don't think of HS practice as something to rely on, but as a stepping stone to something better. In other words, piano practice is not some process of making things simpler so you can play well without even thinking, but rather a process of increasing your brain power so it can think MORE while you play.  Just as body building requires lots of work, brain building requires effort and work. Therefore, once HS practice has done its job, you shouldn't need it any more except as an emergency repair process (which happens more often than most people would like). Also, HT is not the end of the road -- the level you need to attain is Mental Play, and that is why I added it to all relevant sections of my book, FOPP (see link below).  Please see my list of latest updates in that link, where you will find all the updated sections. If you try mental play, you should find that even after good HS and HT play, your hand memory is still controlling much of your playing. Everybody has slumps in which yoiu suddenly can't play something you played nicely before. There are probably many causes of this, but 2 of the best cures are musical play and mental play. Bach purposely wrote music that is difficult for mental play, so that his music becomes a good training tool; this amplifies all other difficulties, such as memorizing and playing without mistakes or blackouts. There are gezillions of benefits to mental play, as explained in my book, but two of them that apply here are (1) you can now practice anything at any time, even away from the piano (but please don't do it at the wrong time, such as when driving) and (2) when you hit a slump, you will know it BEFORE you play anything on the piano; you will know where the new difficulties are and be able to repair them instead of going to the piano and getting a nasty surprise. Moreover, a firm mental play will usually rid you of all residual hand memory, making it very unlikely that you will fall into another slump.