Is hands separate practice necessary?

[Piazzo22]

Please, don´t answer with ideas of Chang´s online book. I don´t quite believe ALL he states.

Is hands separate practice necessary?
When I practice some polyphonic pieces HS and much later hands together, i notice that my hands doesn´t FEEL the same way in most sequences.
Knowing that practice is memorizing how our hands FEELS when playing a piece, how could it help to practice with other feelings (HS)?

Please don´t say HS is the only way to aquire technique and things like that (Chang´s book).

I´m a very poor sight-reader but if I practice a small section (4-6 bars) trying to figure out how the movements in my hands feels as it sounds I think it could be better.

I´m starting to think hands separate practice is really a BIG waste of time, even on poliphonic pieces.

I don´t know if a make my point clear here. My english vocabulary is very limited. :-)

Please answer!! Especially those who don´t practice hands separate and can learn pieces that way!
I need a big advice here!
Thanks.

[donjuan]

Like you, I am not a proficient sight reader...(yet... I have ordered Richman's book)

But, I have found that playing the various voices of the music separately, whether it be all in one hand or distributed in both, to be very helpful in understanding the construction of the music.

Dont learn music hands separately if you dont find it beneficial.  Learn a single voice, (Like the melody, for example) play it to the rhythm, and add accompanying voices in as you feel more confident.

Good Luck!

donjuan  

[Hmoll]

  Knowing that practice is memorizing how our hands FEELS when playing a piece, how could it help to practice with other feelings (HS)?

Practicing is not just memorizing how your hands feel.

Chang did not invent HS practice. It's been used for centuries.
Playing the piano is producing sound. Practicing is learning how to produce the sound you want. People can only hear so much at one time, especially if they are engaged in something complicated like playing the piano. One of the main - but not the only - reasons for HS practice is to isolate parts of what you are learning so you can hear what it each hand sounds like. If you have a really good ear, and only practice HT, you may hear something is not right, but not be able to isolate what is wrong. In that case, the efficiency of HS is in isolating those problems quicker.  However if you do not have a good ear, you won't even reach the point where you notice the problem - oh well, ignorance is bliss after all.

Since another big part of learning piano music is determining what motions are most useful based on the technical demands, and the sound you want to achieve, it is more efficient to practice these motions early in the learning process in an isolated - ie HS - fashion. For any music that is difficult, it is almost impossible to determine, and use the right motions HT at first. The idea that it takes longer to unlearn a wrong motion  and replace it with a more appropriate one speaks, again, to the efficiency of HS practice.

Keep in mind, that not everything needs to be practiced HS. If you've played enough Mozart and Haydn, you may not need HS practice where the lh is and Alberti bass accompaniment, for example.

So, the idea that HS is a waste of time contrasted with the idea that it always has to be employed is nonsense. 90% of learning to play the piano is learning how to practice. The more tools at your disposal the better. Don't put blinders on yourself, or limit yourself with ideas like HS practice is a waste of time. THAT's where you will waste a lot of time. Use your head, and with experience, you'll be able to figure out what works when.

[Daniel_piano]

Please, don´t answer with ideas of Chang´s online book. I don´t quite believe ALL he states.

I don't think the point is believing but trying
Take two pieces of similar difficulty and try one hands separate practice and one hands together practice and see which method is to YOU (and only you) the one that make you learn a piece quicker and better

Is hands separate practice necessary?
When I practice some polyphonic pieces HS and much later hands together, i notice that my hands doesn´t FEEL the same way in most sequences.
Knowing that practice is memorizing how our hands FEELS when playing a piece, how could it help to practice with other feelings (HS)?

First of all let me tell you that hands separate practice is taught universally buy almost any conservatory teacher
Here in Italy from S. Cecilia, Scarlatti, Puccini to Verdi Conservatory they have always taught hands separated
Hands together practice is usually teached by avantguard teacher but as far all the people practicing hands together (not so many tough) have had bad results, injuries or give up the piano

There are two reasons why hand separates practice is objectively necessary and why it's necessary that you
hands doesn't feel the same

When you practice the first times you are very likely to use many wrong movements that later will discarded by your uncounscious
So every error you do must be done hand separate if you want not to make of it an habit
Unfortunately hands together practice movements are permanent not easy to correct
So in the study phase when you're more likely to do something wrong you need the chance to correct it
Because hands together practice (expecially for one not good at sight reading) rely more on hands memory it's not easy to correct wrong movement hands together as much as for hand separated

Hands separated besides make you aware about the different voices/parts
I know concert pianist teacher who not only after 30 years of teaching keep practicing hand separated each voice/part but if there are three or four voices/parts they study each part separately hands separated

If you study a polyphonic piece hands together your're not very likely eventually to have mind memorized, hand memorized and ear memorized the two/three/four different parts
To being able to say that you have learned a polyphonic
piece you must be able to play and memorize each separate part
This is possible only hands separated

Your hand feel not the same when you practice hands separated and then hands together because many movements you tried hands separated have been discarded by your unconscious so you're able to start practicing hands together when all wrong movement have been checked, labeled wrong and eliminated
It wouldn't be so easy to understand what movements were wrong and eliminate them if you had practiced the piece hands together

Another reason is for example that your brain doesn't coordinate the hands in the same strong way, for me, for example left hand is weaker than right
So if you practice only hands together the weak hand will always hinder the right hand
This way:

1) your left hand will work too much and your right hand will work nothing
2) your won't able to bring the piece up to speed without injuring your hands because you're "training" in the same way tow hands that need different amount and kind of training because they're not strong the same

The reason why a piece is brought up to speed hands separated is because each hand need different way of practicing the right movement becuse of their different strength and brain coordination and also because the wrong momevemts you try bringing the piece up to speed are memorized better and less easy to correct

For one that is not good at sight-reading hand togethers would provide a weak hands memory that is soon to be forgotten, while if you know perfectly each part you're more likely to remember them when put together

I´m starting to think hands separate practice is really a BIG waste of time, even on poliphonic pieces.

You learn eventually a piece sooner hands separate and then hands together than studying it hands together, if you eventually are able to learn a piece well hands together that's it
I've known only two teachers who taught hands together
All their students (included me the few months she was my teacher) had a lot of problems and many got injuries
Both the teached had carpal tunnel syndrome and one of them after an up-to-date course decided to change her way of teaching from hands together to hands separated

My suggestion is to both alternate fast and slow practice and hands separated and hands together practice before you're able to play it
In this way you can check whether the movements you're doing are correct and if your brain has learned to think ahead of the hands enough to coordinate them
When you see you're ready start practicing hands together but anytime you must try something that could eventually be discarded as wrong practice hands saparated

The point is to know when you're ready so alternate everything and use the advanced methods as a way to check how you're doing
Alternated left hand and right hand, alternate bar-by-bar and whole piece with pause, alternate fast movements and slow movements and alternate hands together and hands separated

Imho
Hope this helps

Best Wishes
Daniel

[Daniel_piano]

Knowing that practice is memorizing how our hands FEELS when playing a piece, how could it help to practice with other feelings (HS)?

By the way,
practice is not memorizing how our hands FEEL when playing a piece
This is called hands memory and although part of knowing a piece you can say to have really learned a piece only when you can play it without rely on hands memory
Why practicing a piece super slowly is so difficoult ?
Because your hands memory doesn't work at such low speed so you're obliged to really know the piece without the help of hands memory

Only when you know a piece super slowly you can say you know the piece well

Practcing actually is three important things:

1) learning tecnique, meaning not knowing certain hand movements and learning them (just like learning karate or yoga)

2) Train your brain two think ahead of your fingers

3) Train your brain-muscles coordination

When you start practicing a piece and after four of five days it sounds better and better what you have actually learned  is tell the brain to send messages to move your fingers, arm muscles and body

It's all about neuro-training
How your hands feel is the last aim of practicing

In fact, fingers and hands sensivity (feeling how your hands FEEL) is not something different from piece to piece
It is part of the keyboard  geography training of sight-reading and once you know how each intervals FEEl under your hand you will know before practicing how every should feel under your hand though it requires time

Two precious suggestions I've been given by the great teacher Greg Presley and they have always helpd me a lot

1) Work a lot on the piece before actually play even a note
Study the sheet music
Didive the parts
Clap the whole rythm
Work out all rythmic problems and phrasing before start to sigh-read the piece at the keyboard

2) Train your big muscle first
Once your big muscles and body have been trained to move properly the fingers movements follow easily
That means train your big muscles to pass smoothly from bar to bar by moving quickly and waiting on the next note before playing it


Hope this helps
Daniel

[Piazzo22]

It is part of the keyboard  geography training of sight-reading and once you know how each intervals FEEl under your hand

That´s what I´m talking about.
My hands doesn´t feel the same when I practice HS than HT.
Should I practice HS until each hand gets automatic, and then coordinate both together?
It takes me (personally) about 5 days of practice to automatize HS movements so I can play anything with one hand and the other hand automatically moves without thinking ( only the sound).
It doesn´t matter the lenght of the piece, it takes me the same amount of time. it has to be something with sleeping and all that.

[Daniel_piano]

That´s what I´m talking about.
My hands doesn´t feel the same when I practice HS than HT.
Should I practice HS until each hand gets automatic, and then coordinate both together?

First, your hands doesn't feel the same when you practice HS than HT because many "first" wrong movement are lately discarded and so you don't use them anymore when practicing HT, so they will always fell different
Second hands shouldn't get automatic
I mean, that is hands memory and it's good to use it but it's not wise to rely on it

Also, your hands feel different from HT than HS because of brain neurological coordination
You feel more sensitivity in the hand when you use only one and less sensitivty when your brain has to use both
It also depend what side of your brain is more utilized

Another reason why you may feel so much different is tempo and rythm
If you doesn't play at tempo and following the rythm you may notice that you have played notes where actually they shouldn't be played
In this it becomes hard to coordinate both hands because the two lines doesn't coincide (in your mind) since you've practiced with the wrong rythm HS and now the two lines are not coordinated

The solution to this is to work out all rythm problems before ever attempting to play a note of the piece you're studying
Separate each part and clap the whole rythm
When you practice count aloud

I don't think "without thinking" is a good mark for telling that you have learned a piece
You're imho relying too much on muscle memory

Learning a piece well doesn't mean that you play and move your hand without thinking but that your brain think ahead of the fingers and the arms

So you must think must faster
If you just let your hands find their movements without thinking then you're completely relying on hand memory but this is not enough and hands memory is quickly forgotten

So, you shouldn't get your hands HS automized before you can coordinate them together
You must first work out all the rythm problems before playing even a note
Then you mark all those part that are harder or that need a tecnique you don't have yet aquired
So if in a whole sonata there's only a fast thirds 2 bars and a fast cromatic scale 4 bars you just have to work on these section before playing the whole piece

During your practice you're working for two reason

1) teaching the hands new movements
2) training the brain to think ahead of the fingers

So, start only working on these sections
Have many short practice session every day
So work on the first hard section for 15 minutes and then have a 10 minutes pause and work on the other hard section

Remember that the piece must "grow" alone into you
So you practice something and then let it be learned by your unconscious
This is something that every teacher at my school know and I've yet to meet a teacher who doesn't know that a piece improves alone after you've practiced it

So, start with one hand and as soon as it is tired start with other hand
Let say you have a fast scale of 1 bar
You repeat it enough times by alternating slow and fast motions
Slow motions are needed for accuracy, learning the notes and training your brain to think ahead
Fast motions are needed for checking what movements are better at that speed and to then use these movements at slow motions

So, it work like this for me
You repeat the same bar alternating the speed

50  bpm   some errors
120 bpm  a lot of errors
50 bpm    know it's good
55 bpm    some errors
120 bpm  better than before
55 bpm    perfect
120 bpm  still a mess
60 bpm    good
65 bpm    many errors
120 bpm  less errors
65 bpm    perfect
70 bpm    good
120 bpm  now it's okay
100 bpm  good
120 bpm perfect

You keep alternating the hands so they don't tire
So, let's say know your hands have learned movements needed for fast speed in both HS
Now you can attemp to play these section hand together

Is it's a mees you need more work on these section HS if it's quite good you can practice HT for sometime and then come back to HS

Now you need a way to join all the sections
Te best way is to moving quickly from section to section but waiting some second on the note before playing it

In this way you teach your big muscles and your body how to move and once you have got the big movements properly the littler fingers movements are easier to add

Another think you should do is "penetrating" the piece structure
This means that you change the nature of the piece and in this way you get more recognition of it

So you can change the rythm and using a napoletan, or alla lombarda rythm in these sections
You can play the notes backward
You can play two note, the pause, then another two notes
You can play the section by thirds

Let's say that you drink a cup of hot water and it feels like really hot
The you drink a cup of hottier water
This time the first cup will fell like colder

This is way alternating it works

Anatomically, mentally and neurologically you practice on the piano because you need to teach your hands new movements, to teach your brain to think ahead of your muscles, to have your brain send neurological messages to your arms as fast as possible to teach your brain to coordinate your hands together

Now, both HS and HT, slow motions and fast motions, bar-by-bar and whole are needed but each of one is needed for different reason

By alternating the different kind of brain-thoughts and movements you're sure to get what each of this practice has to offer

Once these sections are okay hands separated (the next days) you can start playing the whole piece (each bar quite fast but waiting on the note on the next bar before playing it)
If the whole piece if okay hands separated you can start practicing hands together seriously; but remember that you already used HT in your alternations

By the whole okay hands separated I mean

1) your brain know the rythm and different rythm of each had and can follow it easily

2) all the movements have been aquired by your hands so when needed you can use them (hence you keep thinking it's not something automatic)

3) you're relaxed and the big muscles moves properly from bar to bar and the fingers movement easily follow the big movements

4) your brain think many bars ahead of your fingers

5) both part are musicallt correct

So as you can see this is a conscoius work not an automatic one
At this point join the hands and play the whole piece (fast but waiting on the first note of each bar before playing it)

mark those piece where the coordination is not okay

Now work only on these section
Alternating HT to HS, alternating slow motions to fast motions and always training your big muscles before the fingers
In fact the most important thing is that you're able to move smoothly from bar to bar .. then you can easily on each bar content

Remember to always clap the whole piece before playing it and if after the work your hands are still not coordinated check if there a rythm problem to work out

So let's say you study a little easy piece such as the Clementi Sonatina n1 op. 36

1) Work out any rythm problem before playing a note
    Clap the rythm
    Count the rythm
    Mark the hard or tecnique demanding parts

2) Work only on those hard section
    Work on each section for a 15-20 minutes practice then forget about it until the next day

3) While working on the hard section count the rythm
    Alternate left hand and right hand
    Alternate HS to HT
(HS to work on each hand HT to check is the work done HS has worked and also to make the brain and the hands relax more from passing to HT to HS)
    Alternate slow motions and fast motions
    Slow motions to learn the notes, trainining the brain to think ahead and accuracy
Fast motion to check what movements works at speed and what don't work
    Work before on the big muscles training them to move smoothly (by moving the hand quickly but waiting on the note before playing it)
   
4) Join the hard section to the other section to form the whole piece

5) When the piece is learned HS and both hands knwo their part check the rythm problem to work out HT and mark the harder section

6) Work on the harder sections HT the same way you work HS as in point three

7) At this point when speed and tecnique is aquired and all the bar are difficult or easy in the same manner start connection HT all the sections to form the whole piece

Work on the big muscles first and then on the fingers

9) Play each bar fast but moving quickly from bar to bar wait on the first note of each bar before playing it

Remember that when a bar or a section is harder you must analize the reason why:
Is it a rythm problem ?
Is it a wrist angle problem ?
Is it a relaxation problem ?
Is it that my mind is too worried and my inned voice doesn't shut up ?
Is it that I used a wrong fingering ?

Before practicing an hard section understand what you should do to make it easy and what the problem is

Hope this helps
Daniel      

[Daniel_piano]

I forgot to mention that, as Greg Presley taught me, you shouldn't practice bar-by-bar literally
The reason is that by doing so when you join each bar you end up with a non-musical piece rather dry
You should instead practice phrase-by-phrase
That means whatever section you chose to mark as hard or to practice it shouldn't be simply a bar but a musical sensed phrase
If the section is to large and you need to shorten it, be sure to cut the section in a way in which it is still musical sensed
Do not chose sections that are musical imcomplete or that taken out of context sound completely different than in their musical context

Maybe if you want you can send me the piece you're working on and I can try to suggest you how to work out the difficolous, to you, parts

I had the same problems you had with my first teacher but eventually I was fortunate enough to have teachers who taught me a very important thing in piano playing and practicing: analysis

Playing mindless like a robot doesn't work as well as you can't become a good pianist or well rounded musician if you doesn't understand the musical, harmonical, melodical sense of what you're doing
So analizing is the best thing you can do to improve your practice and your playing

Daniel

[rlefebvr]

OH GOD, Bernards brother has joined the forum.

God help us all...............




If you don't get it after all of that, you never will.

[cellodude]

[sacarsm]
Hey guys my stomach hurts real bad. Can someone help me please? And please don't tell me to go see a doctor. I don't quite believe ( understand, actually ) ALL  they say. But someone please help me!
[/sacarsm]

Sorry for the sacarsm but sometimes it is easier to get a point across by having it stretched to an extreme.

It will be difficult for you to learn anything if you post a question on a forum, then list the possible answers and proceed to tell others what you don't like and what you like, then invite those who think like you to tell you the answer.  What do you think they will say? They will most likely confirm your ideas ( I'm trying to be nice here, I wanted to use 'ignorance' but thought the better of it ) which may not be the truth.

Obviously, you tried Chang's suggestion and it didn't work as expected. Instead of blaming him wouldn't it make more sense to try and find out why it didn't work for you? Thanks to Hmoll and Bernhard's brother (Thanks rlefebvr,  I really got a kick out of your post) now you know.

I tend to agree with Daniel's suggestion that you are probably doing the HS practice wrong which tend to be discarded later when you try HT. That's why you feel your hands are doing things different when you put them together.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this but Chang suggests that when you do HS practice you do it at speed incorporating all the hand movements that are required at speed. You do that ( use appropriate hand movements ) even when you do slow practice. Bernhard calls it slow-motion practice. That is, you perform all the hand motions that you would do at speed, slowly.

That's why Chang is against practicing a piece slowly HT and then ramping up the speed using a metronome. Hand motions at slow speed are different from hand motions at (high) speed.

I hope you have been helped. I may have misunderstood your problem entirely in which case just ignore this post.  

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now)

dennis lee

[Saturn]

I agree with Hmoll on pretty much everything here.  Just want to add a few things.

Many people identify "practicing" as a single activity, but there are actually several phases to it.  You can draw a rough analogy between piano practice and writing:

1. Pre-practice = Pre-writing.  Pre-practice is looking at the score, listening to recordings, analyzing it, sightreading it, understanding (at a rough level) what it is and how it goes before you plunge into the learning phase.
2. Learning the piece = Writing a first draft.  You master technically difficult sections, learn to play the piece as a whole, try to apply some musicality to it.
3. Practicing the piece = Revision.  This is where you learn to play the piece well and make it sound the way you would like in a performance.

This applies to my practice, and yours may be different.  While there is some overlap between the phases, it's important to separate them on difficult passages.  Trying to practice tone, phrasing, and expression while simultaneously trying to learn the physical movements necessary, is a bad idea.

There is one situation in which HS practice is pointless: when working on a piece written for only one hand.

For all other pieces, the amount of HS practice necessary depends on your level compared to the level of the piece.  If Marc-Andre Hamelin wanted to learn a Clementi sonatina, HS practice would be completely unnecessary.  But if the average piano student wanted to learn a piece at or just above his level, HS practice is essential.  The reason why is this: when working HT, you must not only keep track of what each hand is doing, but you must concentrate on coordinating the two hands simultaneously.  In terms of the brain, this makes HT practice tremendously more complicated than HS, especially if you haven't yet acquired the technique required for the passage to feel easy and comfortable.

The purpose of HS practice is to simplify.  The less work the brain has to do, the more efficiently it learns.  When it's learned the passage HS, learning it HT will not be too difficult.  But if you try to work on a difficult passage HT, completely skipping any HS practice, it will take longer to learn, and will still be sloppy!

In the "revision" phase of your practicing, HS practice is still essential, for pretty much the same reasons as above.

HS practice can be boring, which is why Chang advises alternating hands.  Don't write him off; his advice is good.

But, don't just take anyone at their word.  Only you can formulate a practice method that works for you.  Try every suggestion seriously, and see which works most efficiently.  Post your findings; if it ends up that HS practice is, for you, no more efficient than HT pracitce, I'll be very surprised.

- Saturn

[Piazzo22]

[sacarsm]
Hey guys my stomach hurts real bad. Can someone help me please? And please don't tell me to go see a doctor. I don't quite believe ( understand, actually ) ALL  they say. But someone please help me!
[/sacarsm]

I know, it sounds ridiculous.
But I believe in medicine. Chang´s statements doesn´t have fundation other that "divide and conquer".
Many teachers are against HS practice, that´s because I ask YOU for advice and not Chang´s "followers" that the only thing they do is quote his book without even trying what he says. Why? ´cause it sounds nice and credible? I don´t think so.

Chang´s book is all around memorizing. HS could be useful for mechanical (not auditive) memorizing, seeing your hands while you play 2 bars with each hand, and memorizing what keys you press. In fact, THAT is the most intuitive method that exists. And when I didn´t have a teacher and begin trying to play the piano, that´s the way I practiced. That´s what he´s talking about with his "keyboard memory". But that is for people who don´t want to hear what they´re playing, so they don´t memorize never without a visual aid.
I think the purpose in memorization is to unconciously feel the movements we have to do to produce the music.

Well, it doesn´t matter, I´ll have to figure it out by myself.

[Hmoll]

I know, it sounds ridiculous.
But I believe in medicine. Chang´s statements doesn´t have fundation other that "divide and conquer".
Many teachers are against HS practice, that´s because I ask YOU for advice and not Chang´s "followers" that the only thing they do is quote his book without even trying what he says. Why? ´cause it sounds nice and credible? I don´t think so.

Chang´s book is all around memorizing. HS could be useful for mechanical (not auditive) memorizing, seeing your hands while you play 2 bars with each hand, and memorizing what keys you press. In fact, THAT is the most intuitive method that exists. And when I didn´t have a teacher and begin trying to play the piano, that´s the way I practiced. That´s what he´s talking about with his "keyboard memory". But that is for people who don´t want to hear what they´re playing, so they don´t memorize never without a visual aid.
I think the purpose in memorization is to unconciously feel the movements we have to do to produce the music.

Well, it doesn´t matter, I´ll have to figure it out by myself.

Why the bee in your bonnet about Chang? He's nothing but a blip on the piano pedagogy screen. Not a professional pianist or teacher. Just someone who wrote a book that he gives away for free on the Internet.

He has some good ideas, and some that are not so good.

HS practice is not something he invented. It is a practice technique that has worked for centuries because it isolates movement, isolates sound so you can hear it, and is an efficient way of learning difficult music.  

Pianists don't practice this way because it sounds like a good idea. They use this and other practice techniques because they have been proven to work. Believe it or not, but there are a few pianists and teachers now and through the years that are and were pretty smart, and capable of independent, creative thinking. I'm not sure how advanced you are, but keeping an open mind and taking advantage of that experience would not be such a bad thing.

The biggest mistake I see people make is putting on blinders, attaching names to ideas, and either dismissing them or taking whatever they say on faith - "Chang bad," "Hanon bad," "Whiteside the only who knows what she's taling about."

There are a lot of good ideas and techniques out there. Keep an open mind, and use what works.

[Daniel_piano]

author=Piazzo22 link=board=stud;num=1087965609;start=0#11 date=06/24/04 at 17:27:58]

Chang´s book is all around memorizing. HS could be useful for mechanical (not auditive) memorizing, seeing your hands while you play 2 bars with each hand, and memorizing what keys you press.

I have tried to explain you why HS is considered imho )on second thogh, quite objectively) important and usefull and I never mentioned memorizing
I don't believe in memorizing in that you play the whole piece while looking the keayboard
You neeed knowledge of the piece not memorize it
You need to follow the music on the sheet while you play the piece

HS is required for

1) Being able to correct and discard "firt-try" errors that would be hard to eliminate if aquired HT

2) Having the hands rest while doing much of the work without stopping practicing
(by practicing HT you would require to stop every 5 minuted to rest your tired hands, by practicing HS when one hand is tired you can use the other and the practice is not interrupted)

3) To be aware about the different parts and how they integrated within the piece

4) Each hand need firstly to practice in their own way has one is always weaker or less coordinated by the brain

5) Once each hand know it's part well it's easier to coordinate both of them
It's like directing a movie
First each scene is filmed separately and accurately studies then they join to form a film

It's the same thing for making armchairs, cooking, teaching, pumping iron, making cars, studying gramma and math ...
In fact, very few thing are studied or created in their whole, almost everything we do and know is usually a mix of many part prepared in different times
Someone make the sauce someone make the paste then they are put together
Someome make the wood, someone make the keys, someone make the strings .. and then they are put together

Each person prepare a different thing on one's own and then they are joined to form a whole object
In piano each hand prepare his part and then they are put together
In a instrument concerto every instrument prepare its part and then they're put together to form a whole concerto

By practicing HT and only HT with no HS you end up with

1) A need for making a pause every 5 minutes
2) otherwise unjuried overworked hands
3) Few knowledge and aural recognition of the different parts
4) A part that it's always weakest and it's supposerte by the other hand
5) A slow non coordinated piece
this because there are coordination problems and speed problems when you work with two hands together when they are coordinated and utilized different by the body and the mind

So not only memory is not much important (knowledge is) [in fact there's no exam test about memory but a taugh one about sight-reading and following the sheet[
but the reason for practicing both HS and HT and not only HT has almost nothing to do with memory

It seems quite strange that you consider HS a Chang's idea
It's the less innovative idea that his book can offer
All pianist-composers have always practice HS and HT
Hand separated, in fact, is not something invented or discovered but just the most instinctive way to learn to play keyboards instruments from the first day they appeared on this earth
I don't know of any professional teacher who teach HT
I don't know of any student practicing only HT who became a good pianist or did not injuried himself/herself
I know many teachers who wouldn't never agree with Chang ideas but that have always and will always teach HS

HS is not what Chang stands for
It there something he stands for is "parallel sets"

What poliphonyc piece are you working on that is giving you so much problem ?
Maybe someone can help you with this particular piece

Daniel

[cellodude]

Piazzo22,

I think Hmoll sums it up pretty well in the statement below.

...
There are a lot of good ideas and techniques out there. Keep an open mind, and use what works.

My earlier point was that you may not have understood Chang's description of HS practice. If you have, and tried it correctly and found it wanting, then HS is not for you (although I still have my doubts).  But keep on searching for what works for you and don't do what you did by telling others what you want to hear right off the bat. It can put some people off and you may actually hear what you want to hear going away happily but not having learnt anything new.

In any case Chang only advocates HS practice for passages that you find difficult. He does say in his book that if you can handle a passage HT then there is no need for HS practice.

Oh BTW, in my earlier piece on sacarsm, I know you do believe in doctors. That's why I've stretched it to that point where it sounds ridiculous. I know you have a real problem and that you want to search for an answer to it. But what I'm saying is don't limit the possibilities that may come back to you even if they are things you don't agree with. Chang's description of HS practice may well be the answer to your problem if you do it correctly.

All the best in your search,

dennis lee

[Piazzo22]

Thank you all for your answers!
Is difficult for me to write in a foreing language without being rude. It´s just that i don´t know english and all I say can sound like a big moke, but its not. ;-)

[Piazzo22]

Sorry, mock,   See?

[cellodude]

Thank you all for your answers!
Is difficult for me to write in a foreing language without being rude. It´s just that i don´t know english and all I say can sound like a big moke, but its not. ;-)

No problem.

TTFN,

dennis lee