How to develop HAND INDEPENDENCE ?

[musicioso]

Hallo dear members of the forum,


Do you guys have some advices, books, pieces, tricks etc on how to develop good hand independence for improvisations?
What should i do to be able to play two very different (simple) melodies with both hands at the same time?  Wich exercises are good for developing hand independence?

[shadowzerg]

Play pieces that require each hand to play a separate melody..(I.E. Every single Bach Fugue and his Inventions as well)

[musicioso]

Thank you ver much for your advice.

Do you know which Bach fugues are most easy to play?  Because i am not so good yet.

[shadowzerg]

Well I'd have to know what you consider to be easy before I can answer that. Easy to me may not be easy to you(none of them are easy to start with). What can you play?

[countrymath]

UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPp

I need some tips to do this....

I can play some fugues, but i cant do diferent things with both hands when improvising...

[ingunite]

Have you tried playing/learning Bach's two-part inventions? If not, I would highly recommend them. They are not difficult, and should prove to be very rewarding in many ways. 

[jimbo320]

I only use one hand, my right, but I would imagine just practicing slowly each hand one at a time for muscle memory to the point of playing out of habit would be the way to go. Take a look at Rick Wakeman. He uses two keyboards at once to achieve that. Breaking it up physically might be helpful in your case too.

Best of luck, Jimbo

[countrymath]

Have you tried playing/learning Bach's two-part inventions? If not, I would highly recommend them. They are not difficult, and should prove to be very rewarding in many ways. 

Yeah, i made 4 or 5.

I only use one hand, my right, but I would imagine just practicing slowly each hand one at a time for muscle memory to the point of playing out of habit would be the way to go. Take a look at Rick Wakeman. He uses two keyboards at once to achieve that. Breaking it up physically might be helpful in your case too.

I see... i may buy another keyboard, then.

[Derek]

This'll sound odd, but the easiest way to develop hand independence for improvisation is to simply start doing it. I can say from experience, if you start literally messing around with both hands going at once, eventually you will be able to generate a spontaneous interplay of ideas. When you first start, it may sound random but you must have faith that your subconcious will develop control over what is going on. For some reason an awful lot of people find this hard to swallow. Yet, it was the advice I received and for whatever reason I understood it and it worked for me.

On the other hand, there are some "games" you can play with your hands that can help. I know when I started using both hands, I did a sort of "call and answer" thing. I'd play some melodic fragment in my right, and then imitate it in the left, possibly at a different part in the scale. It doesn't have to be an exact imitation, either. Eventually you can start overlapping the rhythm of these imitative exercises, and before you know it you'll be generating more than one idea at the same time that work together, in both hands at once.  It does take time. I'd say my first experiments with contrapuntal improvisation were in about the year 2004, and it took me I'd say about two to three years to produce my first "wow, did I do that?" experiments with it. Note this was after several years of less complex, homophonic improvisation experience. I don't see any reason why one couldn't start on it sooner, though.

A comment about practicing Bach. I started doing contrapuntal improvisation before I knew more than a handful of very easy bach pieces. It is a lot easier to start from the ground up than go from the top down. It is easy to believe going from the top down, with a lot of detail and theory is the way to go, but the "path less taken," in other words, just doing it messily at first and gradually building up a subconscious sense, may actually be easier for you if you give it a chance.