Hello and question

[willyhog]

Hello all here at pianostreet!  I am a sophomore in high school and have been playing for about 6 months.  I now know all of the major and minor scales, and can play them sufficiently up to speed, fingering is no problem.  But when I try to play a piece that has the hands doing different things, I seem to have hit a wall.  Any ideas on how to improve putting the hands together evenly?

[pianochick93]

I seem to have hit a wall

Uh Oh... They don't make a very good sound when you play them...

On a serious note...practice you piece hands seperately, until you know each part very well. If you can do that, then you will find that you can fit it together a lot easier.

[quantum]

I seem to have hit a wall. 

Bob knows something about the sonic properties of walls 



When you talk about different things, do you mean when LH has a chord and RH has melody?  Or when both the L and R have some sort of melody? 

Try practising easier pieces first which have both hands doing different things.  Play slow and concentrate well.  Do you play scales yet hands together? You may want to practise this too.  Again slowly and with concentrating a lot in lining up the notes.

[tsagari]

When studing hands together try at a very slow tempo and progressively increase your speed.

[Essyne]

Is it bad to practice hands separately and then put them together?? ((I don't think it would help w/ sightreading, and wasn't sure if you should just jump right into both hands or not. . . ))

[pianochick93]

Definitely. It doesn't help sightreading, but can help a lot in putting it together and learning it fluently.

[willyhog]

I think it's specifically when both hands have a melody, a good example being Bach inventions or sinfonias. pieces RH with melody and LH with chords are not hard for me to learn 

[pianochick93]

Definitely. It doesn't help sightreading, but can help a lot in putting it together and learning it fluently.

Whoops, I meant Definitely not
it is good to practice both hands seperate.

[slobone]

I think it's specifically when both hands have a melody, a good example being Bach inventions or sinfonias. pieces RH with melody and LH with chords are not hard for me to learn 

For a piece like that, hands separately is a good idea, at least to start with. Break it up into small chunks and master each one before going on to the next one. First hands separate, then hands together but at a slower tempo. Go up the metronome about 3-5 clicks at a time till you get to the target tempo.

After I've reached that stage, I usually turn the metronome way up and make myself play through the whole thing several times without stopping to correct mistakes. But that's just me...

[willyhog]

Thanks!

[littl3sh33p]

If that certain passage has some running parts or challenging stuff..
my teacher taught me to play it in dotted rhythm (long-short/ short-long) or hum the melody out loud.. something like that. it works.

[gyzzzmo]

Its obvious you have some major technical flaws. Playing scales is only a very tiny portion of movements you have to be able to make, to play more advanced music.

You'll have to start doing etudes like Czerny and Hanon. Then you could learn some Bach inventions to increase your technique more.

Good luck,
gyzzzmo

[willyhog]

Gee, that doesn't sound very good.  I do Hanon as well, and am working on Czerny's Velocity stuff, but none of it seems to be helping with the invention.  Thanks for suggesting them at any rate.   

[kard]

Hey, maybe you should look into Chang's practice book. I don't really know if it would be the best for a beginner, but it has helped me greatly because it gives specific idea of the basic keystroke. Technique then builds from there.

The thing about Hanon, Czerny etc. is that they are not task specific (geared towards a problem section), so in a sense, they can become counterproductive. You'd probably need a teacher or something to show you how to use them. I think parallel sets (described in book) are a better alternative towards fixing problems.

https://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm    <-the book 

Good luck with your playing. Other members can probably give you more specific help

[gyzzzmo]

Hey, maybe you should look into Chang's practice book. I don't really know if it would be the best for a beginner, but it has helped me greatly because it gives specific idea of the basic keystroke. Technique then builds from there.

The thing about Hanon, Czerny etc. is that they are not task specific (geared towards a problem section), so in a sense, they can become counterproductive. You'd probably need a teacher or something to show you how to use them. I think parallel sets (described in book) are a better alternative towards fixing problems.

https://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm    <-the book 

Hanon is actually very task specific (too task specific for many i think). But if he's already doing Czerny and some Hanon and still doesnt manage playing the easy inventions properly, he's learning ways are probably wrong. So i agree with Kard, go take a teacher

gyzzz

Good luck with your playing. Other members can probably give you more specific help

[slobone]

I'm not sure if I already said this, but if you have trouble putting the two hands together, make sure that first you know each hand really well when played separately. You should be able to play each hand alone at a faster tempo than you're planning to use for the piece overall.

Then when you put them together, start at a much slower tempo, slow enough so that you can play through the piece with almost no mistakes. When you've mastered it at that tempo, gradually move the metronome up.

Hanon and Czerny etc. are good for warming up and getting your fingers used to different technical challenges, but they probably won't help much with the specific problems you're facing in your invention. They're more of a long-term investment...

[willyhog]

I could be wrong, but I've read that Hanon, maybe not Czerny, but deifnitely Hanon, is geared toward specific problems/techniques.