My left hand is stupid.

[benji]

I took piano lessons when I was about 7 until I was 9, then quit. In the fall of last year, I started tinkering with Joplin's "Entertainer" and Pachelbel's Canon, then I started taking lessons. Since then I've noticed that my right hand is quite a bit more agile and controllable than my left hand. I can't control my left hand's dynamics very well (which is blaringly obvious in the climax of Rach's C# Prelude). This is extremely annoying. What can I do to make my hands more equal?

[Clare]

Don't worry. Your left hand isn't stupid. Many people have this problem.

My advice to you is to practice the left hand more than the right hand, and carefully. Look at the different way your left hand and right hand play. I have the opposite problem, in that my left hand is often better than my right hand. I play the same thing in both hands and examine the differences. Is one hand higher than the other? Does one hand have a looser wrist? Do the fingers of one hand fly up and the fingers in the other hand stay close to the keys?

I don't know whether this actually helped me, but learning violin and guitar is pretty left-hand intensive. Maybe you could try learning a bit of guitar.

OK. I hope I helped a bit and good luck to you!

[pies]

­

[Clare]

Good question. I'm not sure, but I think it might improve them.

I was born left-handed but my parents made me write with my right hand. So, I don't know whether it was the guitar playing or the being born left-handed thing that helped my left hand out more.

I think many people have one hand which just feels more 'natural' at playing than the other and it probably has something to do with being left- or right-handed.

[goalevan]

I write left handed and my left hand is still noticeably slower than my right on scales, probably because most of the practice is from working on real pieces.

Having that said I suggest working on a piece that deals with a lot of left hand speed and agility like Revolutionary Etude etc..

[edouard]

hi,
THe problem is that right from the beginning, pianists are lumped with repertory that is imbalanced. Take the chopin etudes, they are very biased towards the right hand (except for a few). Even non-repertory like scale fingerings in most books are right hand biased (see Bernhard's comments on this)
This leads to the situation where some pianists do not learn how to 'think'correctly about their left hand. Once i fell off my bike and could not use my right arm for a week so I only played left hand and this helped a lot. This taught me how to relax and how to observe the particular movements of the left hand rather than 'copypaste' the Right or get irritated about how it never follows.
hope this helps (don't fall off your bike on purpose
edouard

[faulty_damper]

The solution to your problem is this.  I am only partly kidding, of course.  Partly.

Get into your car, put it in reverse assuming it is automatic transmission, then quickly jump out of the car and put your right arm under the front wheel.  Allow the wheel to roll over your arm, not your fingers.  You should feel pain of the utmost excruciating of sorts.  Now quickly jump back into your car and apply the brakes.  Then park it back to where is was or, if you are able, drive yourself to the hospital.  If you are not able, then you should call the ambulance to take you there.  If you choose to call, it is perhaps best to call before you put your car in reverse as this saves time for the ambulance to arrive.

Now, since your right arm is useless for the moment, you will be forced to rely on your left arm to do most everything.  You'll soon increase your ability to use your left arm in a very short amount of time.  It will become highly dextrous because its use is a necessity.  I'm sure you've heard the saying that invention is the product of necessity, or some thing similar to this line.

Of course the easier route, without breaking your right arm, is to just not use it.  Wrap your right hand with a cloth and tie it closed.  Then tie your right arm with a sling.  This should immobilize it from its use.  Now, since you cannot use your right arm to do the things you have relied on it to do, you will be forced to use your left.

---

Last year, one of my teacher's students injured his hand and it was in a cast.  I forget which hand but he couldn't play.  Now, having realized that there are many pieces written for left hand alone and a couple for right hand alone, his inability to play any repetory was clearly a bogus lie, to himself mostly.  You can play with only one hand available.

See this thread about one hand only compositions.
https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=repo;action=display;num=1084390696

(Did I just pull a Bernhard?  I think so! )

[newsgroupeuan]

I have that problem also.  I'm naturally left-handed ,  but write with myright hand.

I find Bach is helpful for me

[benji]

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I'll have to go try some of those out now.. *pulls out car keys*

[donjuan]

hehehe!!
I suggest working one pieces that equally balance the hands.  Chopin's works are always heavily favoring the right hand or left hand.  I recognized this and decided Liszt would be better balanced.  I was right, and now both hands work identically, even though I am right handed in eating and writing.
donjuan

[NoCreamNoSugar]

well, you just need to practice with your left hand. simple.

a tale:
i woke up late one day, at 2pm instead of 8am. i thus missed a lunch meeting as well as work that morning. i saw an alarm clock that said 2pm, freaked out, yelled obscenities, and punched the floor. now, i had the foresight to not punch the wall and make a hole because i've kicked a hole in a wall before. unfortunately, punching the floor made my hand give instead of the floor. so i gave myself a metacarpel boxer's fracture. amusingly, the ER nurse asked, "let me guess, you got angry and punched the wall?"

the good thing about all this was that #1, it gave me good pity points for missing work, and #2, i was working as a graphic designer at that time so i had to either learn to mouse with my left hand or use my three accessible fingers of my right. either method was about equally slow, but using the left hand made it so i could learn something new. it took about 3 weeks to get fully proficient. i'm sure this helps my left hand piano work, but to what degree i cannot say.

good luck and mind your temper.

[donjuan]

hehe!! my friend did the same thing.. but it was a different situation- he couldnt get a computer game to work, and he got so angry he punched the floor and broke his hand.
donjuan