synchronizing left & right hands

[ggpianogg]

Hi guys,

I'm finding myself having a bit of trouble synchronizing my left and right hand notes precisely. This might be a bit misleading so let me explain: I'm not saying that I'm having trouble connecting my right hand with my left hand. What I'm experiencing is that whenever my right hand presses a note at the same time as my left hand, the two notes 80% of the time do not come out at PRECISELY the exact same moment. There is always a (extremely small, for sure, but it's extremely frustrating to listen to as well) small 'lag' between the note in the right hand and the one in the left hand, so instead of having one beautiful sound emerge from the conjunction of the right and left hand notes, what I get is actually two seperate sounds, one following the other with like a micro second delay (but still enough to make it sound like two seperate sounds instead of one "bigger" voice).  

I believe it is mostly the left hand that is always a bit ahead of the right hand. (although now I think of it, it's not neccesarily so - it might be quite random).

Back when I used to play on my old small keyboard (I played at it for a few months) with no weighted keys, I don't believe I experienced that problem. Well, I can't say for sure, but I'm positive I would have noticed it back then. I'm finding this problem is occuring only now on my new regular piano with weighted keys (which I've been playing on for 3-4 weeks).

The problem occurs both when playing really fast AND when playing slowly, although it is of course much more noticable in faster playing.

Any advice? Thanks in advance

Thanks in advance.

[ggpianogg]

Update: I MAY have found the source of the problem, although it's definitely too early to tell.

I tried to play the piece hands seperately and noticed that for some reason I completely couldn't do it! Even though I practiced HS at the beginning before joining hands of course, and can play it HT at the moment "well" (other than for that lack of synchro), for some reason HS didn't work at all even at half tempo. So I played the whole piece through HS focusing around 15 minutes on each hand, and I can already see a lot better synchro when playing HT. Like I said, too early to say, I will do a bit of HS tomorrow again and see how it goes.

But in the meanwhile, if you got any other suggestions or comments, please share.

[m19834]

All you have to do is think about how you want to play, relax, and then play -- oh (!), and listen while you play.  Always listen !

[timothy42b]

I think you're on the right track.  Don't give up.

Most people play with a small lag between hands.  But think about it, if your hands aren't playing at the same time, at least one of them is wrong! 

Gieseking notes that even accomplished pianists do this, but they don't seem to hear it.  I think he's right.  Over time we stop noticing it, we teach ourselves not to.

Instead, we should listen specifically for it.  That will result in improving our ability to hear.  As we learn to shrink the gap between hands, our hearing will improve to hear a smaller gap, so progress may seem to slow, but that's okay.

If you don't do this, you may do the opposite - train your ears NOT to hear it.  Then you'll never fix it.