Dropping Notes or Hands Together question

[phdezra]

I've been reading through many posts on Bernhard's "Dropping Notes" method and I have a basic question:

In one of the posts it was written:

a.   Hand dependence – Most beginners use this approach “intuitively”, since their intuition (= unconscious patterns of behaviour) is untrained and therefore crap. This means that they think in terms of “this right hand note is played with this left hand note, then the right hand next two notes go alone, then the left hand next note is alone, then the next two notes in the RH and LH go together”.

As you can tell straightaway, the moment you start thinking on these lines, the movements you so carefully trained are forgotten and replaced by other weird movements that the unconscious is coming up with due to the pressure. The playing becomes excruciatingly slow and a stuttering pattern of hesitations ingrains itself. The more repetitions the more this terrible playing becomes ingrained. Soon you cannot play any other way.

Users of this approach (usually for ignorance of the proper way of joining hands), then go back to hands separate work, and find that they usually can do it well. They go back to hands together, and again everything falls apart. In some cases, after some months of this drudgery something clicks and they can actually play hands together passably well. This reinforces their belief that all you need is “more practice” both with hands separate and hands together. Most people however never get the “click”, the “knack” of playing hands together, except n the simplest rhythms and the easiest pieces: their repertory is forever limited.

Surely there is some truth though behind "this right hand note is played with this left hand note, then the right hand next two notes go alone, then the left hand next note is alone, then the next two notes in the RH and LH go together” because that is in fact what gets played. But am I to understand that it is the mental link in the brain needs to go about it a better way? Can anyone expound/clarify further? Thanks.

[counterpoint]

I haven't read about this point (hand dependence, independence) before in this forum, so this sounds very interesting to me.

There are so many cases, where I do fully agree with Bernhard's wonderful approach to piano playing and teaching it.

But in this case, I definitely do not agree.

Bernhards explanations continue as follows:

b.   Hand independence. As one becomes aware of the limitations of the above approach, one reasons (ah! Logic!) that surely the way to go is to have complete hand independence: if one hand does its job completely and regardless of the job being done by the other hand, and if both hands are right on time, the lines will come beautifully together.

Is this really true? Is our brain really able to do completely different things at the same time? I don't believe it.

I never thougt of having two hands when playing piano. I always thought of having 10 fingers, and it's only a minimal difference to play a phrase with fingers of the left hand, with fingers of the right hand or with alternating fingers from both hands. The melody doesn't lie in a hand - it lies in the brain. Same is for chords, pedal, pauses etc.

But even more important: the feeling of playing is very different when playing a melody without the harmonies or the harmonies without some notes. Music is sounding so different and the feeling of the fingers touching the keys is completely different.

I don't want to make so many words, so in short, I want to say, I don't like to learn music this way.

It seems now clearer to me, why quite a lot students don't like to study new pieces and instead play their old pieces over and over. If they are forced to play the thing voice by voice, single note by single note, it can't be very enjoyable for a long time. It's like all the other shitty work you must do, but nobody enjoys to do.

I never had this feeling, when playing or learning music.

Perphaps I'm a real foolish guy. Perhaps I don't know how to play music well from a professional point of view. But music is so much fun to me, it's the best, life can give us - if you don't take it too serious and if you don't look at it as something, you are forced to do by obligation.

[henrah]

Could you post the link to the thread where this was posted?

Thanks,
Henrah

[counterpoint]

It's here:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,7682.0.html

[timothy42b]

I practice piano but play organ in church on Sundays.

It would be very helpful if I could use the feet to cover simple pedal lines, not only for the sound but for the coordination. 

But my feet are not independent, and this is more mental than physical.  I think Bernhard is probably right, but it's hard to get the hang of. 

I do hymns two different ways.  If they are relatively simple and I have enough time to work on them, I play them SATB as written.  (My skill level limits this but eventually I'll do them all that way.)  If notice is short or they are difficult, I rewrite them in lead sheet style, with the melody in the right hand and a simplified accompaniment in the left. 

Physically it doesn't seem like much difference, but mentally there is a world of difference in the amount of hand independence required. 

[henrah]

Playing the organ is a humungous feat of brain power and mental co-ordination. Every time I see my dad play he amazes me. I would ask him to explain to me how he goes about learning and memorising organ pieces, but I'm pretty sure that he doesn't for the most part, i.e. sightreads them on the night but with some previous knowledge of certain parts, not pure sightreading. It's like he's able to scan through a couple of bars ahead and then store that in his mind and look at the keyboard and his feet to play them, and just before what was stored runs out he looks up and scans again.

Amazes me everytime.
Henrah