why hs ?

[drazh]

Hi
Is hand separate is a waste of time?
I know hs practice we can master both hand but again with ht we should slow down  again increase tempo gradually . So isn't that better to practice ht at first?
Thank you

[birba]

It's not a waste of time!!  I wouldn't say you have to practise EVERYTHING hs, but there's a lot of good to be gotten out of it.  Guiomar Novaes used to say she always practised hands separately.

[drazh]

Dear birba
Isn't that better to practice ht then with increased tempo if there is any difficulty change to ht ?
Thanks

[49410enrique]

Dear birba
Isn't that better to practice ht then with increased tempo if there is any difficulty change to ht ?
Thanks

hs like mentined above is very helpful. usually even if you don't know why, a difficult section can be worked out if you
1. slow it down
2. get rid of the pedal
3. hands separate

if you can't do those three with ease on their own and all three at the same time (that is separate, slow, and dry), it is HIGHLY doubtful you can do it with
1. @ faster tempo
2. with appropriate interplay of clean pedal and finger legato (where able)
3. hands together
.
.
.
4-with CONSISTENCY and under pressure/performance conditions

[jesc]

I use hands separate when I need to polish the clarity(of each note) for very fast passages.

There is something weird however, when I use hands together (since I'm forced to always sightread). I was more capable of recovering from a mistake. When either hand makes a mistake my other hand just continues playing and the other hand manages to catch up.

I say it's weird cause one would expect to obtain that skill by practicing hands separate, but I wasn't able to recover that quickly until I used hands together. Bottom line is, probably it depends on each person on how their brain works. (great, I just implied that my brain is weird)   

[birba]

There is something weird however, when I use hands together (since I'm forced to always sightread). I was more capable of recovering from a mistake. When either hand makes a mistake my other hand just continues playing and the other hand manages to catch up.

    

That's called sight-reading.   

[jesc]

That's called sight-reading.   

lol, sorry I forgot to mention "recovering when I play from memory".

[fleetfingers]

Haha, I opened this thread thinking we were going to talk about home schooling (it's been on my mind today). Oh, well, maybe another time . . .  

It depends on how difficult the piece is for you. If you can read it reasonably well HT and there are not many technical stumbling blocks, I do not see why to begin HS. That's not to say that you won't want to play a section with one hand alone for technical or memory reasons, for which HS can be very useful.

[pianoplayjl]

You can play hands together in some sections where it seems best to do it that way e.g. alternating chords. Otherwise, I think doing hands separate will make learning faster because you know each hand well and synchronization will be easier. If the piece is easy enough then of couse you can do it hands together. Sometimes there are so much detail in each hand that it is really necessary to do hs until you get everything right. This often applies to Bach's fugues from WTC.

JL

[ted]

As usual I am a bit strange. I used to do a lot of one-handed practice, and still do for purely technical issues on the silent clavier. However, in recent years I have begun to explore the way the brain perceives simultaneous movement of the hands, coordination, independence, rhythmic interaction and so on, in terms of musical effect for my improvisation. More and more, I have come to feel that I play with one big hand with ten fingers, at least that is the illusion I get. It probably comes from the fact that improvisation allows very little time to think about hands and fingers individually; everything just sort of happens and various parts do duty all over the keyboard. Any physical decisions involved I prefer to turn over to the lower level hardware, so to speak.

[jtguru]

Hi
Is hand separate is a waste of time?
I know hs practice we can master both hand but again with ht we should slow down  again increase tempo gradually . So isn't that better to practice ht at first?
Thank you

This is the point of HS: In passages that are difficult for you (and that you have not learned HS), when having to worry about the coordination of the hands, you cannot pay sufficiently detailed attention to the movements you are making with each hand if you are playing at anything near goal tempo. You need to be able to correctly play each hand's part by itself pretty much subconsciously before you focus on coordinating the hands, otherwise you will likely start to ingrain incorrect movements often without even realizing that you are making incorrect movements; there is simply too much involved in piano playing to be consciously aware of all of it at once.

If you are doing HS work on a passage, you might as well work each hand up to a tempo much greater than the goal tempo of the passage. When you put the hands together, the added difficulty of coordination will naturally slow down your playing from how fast you could do it HS. If you can play HS significantly faster than goal tempo, than the unavoidable drop in speed in HT will actually land you right around goal tempo. Increasing speed HS is much easier than increasing speed HT.

So to answer your original question, HS is not a waste of time for difficult passages. It may very well be a waste of time to do on everything, including very easy passages, but that's not for me to say!

[birba]

Very well said!

[jtguru]

Very well said!

Why thank you, I try sometimes.