Troublesome Left & right hand synchronisation

[animae]

Greetings fellow pianists,

After much hard work achieveing ABRSM grades 1-7, I'm now ready to sit my grade 8 in mid 2012. However, while deliberating over the immense workload which I must allocate time for alongside my studies, I've encountered a (serious) problem: My left hand doesn't move as fast as my right and seems rather lifeless. This is frustrating because I've been mentoring myself since grade 5 and therefore, cannot seek professional advice and so, I need your help!

The problem wasn't as noticeable in the earlier grades. However, A1 'JS Bach's Cappricio in C minor' the problem IS noticeable right from the outset. The left had sequences are sloppy and I double press notes i.e. Instead of pressing a F, I'd press F AND G simultaneously! This degrades the overall quality of my playing and I'm drastically trying to resolve this before I get to the second page. However, I do find the 12 note leaps very manageable in the left hand so the problem lies in sequences.

I'd like to express my left hand more clearly and bring out parts and develop clarity within the piece itself. I have a tendancy to look at my right hand while playing, although I'm trying to focus directly on my left hand.

Any advice?

NB: My right hand is fine!

[nyiregyhazi]

Greetings fellow pianists,

After much hard work achieveing ABRSM grades 1-7, I'm now ready to sit my grade 8 in mid 2012. However, while deliberating over the immense workload which I must allocate time for alongside my studies, I've encountered a (serious) problem: My left hand doesn't move as fast as my right and seems rather lifeless. This is frustrating because I've been mentoring myself since grade 5 and therefore, cannot seek professional advice and so, I need your help!

The problem wasn't as noticeable in the earlier grades. However, A1 'JS Bach's Cappricio in C minor' the problem IS noticeable right from the outset. The left had sequences are sloppy and I double press notes i.e. Instead of pressing a F, I'd press F AND G simultaneously! This degrades the overall quality of my playing and I'm drastically trying to resolve this before I get to the second page. However, I do find the 12 note leaps very manageable in the left hand so the problem lies in sequences.

I'd like to express my left hand more clearly and bring out parts and develop clarity within the piece itself. I have a tendancy to look at my right hand while playing, although I'm trying to focus directly on my left hand.

Any advice?

NB: My right hand is fine!

I'm afraid there's no magic answer for this kind of thing. Your problem is too general for anyone to give you any very specific advice. Even if your right hand is notably better, it's basically a "how do you play the piano?" question. The closest thing to useful advice would be to say that if you're not playing with complete accuracy, you're practising too fast. However, if you were to post a video, it would be far easier to identify any specific issues.

Also, I wouldn't guarantee that the right hand is necessarily "fine". All too often the easier hand takes up more attention than it should (a typical issue being that there are far too many individual movements of reaching for notes at short notice, rather than a smaller number of better movements that prepare more notes under a single position) and detracts from the ability to focus consistently on the other difficult hand. Sometimes the hand that works okay needs simpler movements, in order to free up the attention for the other. I see this over and over again with students- where it's actually an issue in the easy hand causing problems in the difficult hand.

[scott13]

I'm afraid there's no magic answer for this kind of thing. Your problem is too general for anyone to give you any very specific advice. Even if your right hand is notably better, it's basically a "how do you play the piano?" question. The closest thing to useful advice would be to say that if you're not playing with complete accuracy, you're practising too fast. However, if you were to post a video, it would be far easier to identify any specific issues.

Also, I wouldn't guarantee that the right hand is necessarily "fine". All too often the easier hand takes up more attention than it should (a typical issue being that there are far too many individual movements of reaching for notes at short notice, rather than a smaller number of better movements that prepare more notes under a single position) and detracts from the ability to focus consistently on the other difficult hand. Sometimes the hand that works okay needs simpler movements, in order to free up the attention for the other. I see this over and over again with students- where it's actually an issue in the easy hand causing problems in the difficult hand.

This can be a very frequent issue when playing Bach. More often than not it is a fingering problem in the 'better hand' that causes the issue for the other. Without a teacher you are also at a disadvantage as a good teacher can do wonders for fingering certain passages.

Perhaps try sourcing other editions of the same piece to see if other editors have different (and for you perhaps easier) fingering suggestions. But always remember they are only suggestions, never take fingerings as a given, as in Bach, more often than not i find them unhelpful.

Best of luck

[mcdiddy1]

That is a pretty common problem. Your left hand is just not as coordinated as the right due to a lack of use. Most simple pieces have a left playing a simple accompaniment so naturally the left hand is less skilled. Easy answer is to play pieces with more Left hand work. Bach Inventions are exactly the right way to go to help with dealing with coordination issues.  You should practice hands separatly and make sure you can play your left hand in time.

When it is time to practice playing hands together than you can try dropping notes. Basiclly it is playing a piece with both hands and each time you play a note in the left hand you start over and keep adding a note in the left hand one note at at time. Its a very simple strategy that can work wonders.

[ted]

Sometimes it is possible to have a pretty strong finger technique but still find certain playing forms produce coordination difficulty, or so I have found. What I do is invent exercises which force an unusual degree of finger coordination. A particular example would be broken scales - by this I mean scales played with the finger sequence 132435.... in both hands at once, perhaps in different keys and displaced so hand groups are not coincident. I used to find this a peculiarly difficult thing to do, but having learned it, it makes other things seem very easy. You could also insert one extra note in one hand so the cycle of up and down is not coincident again for many repetitions. If you can do this without fumbling once I'd say you won't have many more finger coordination problems.