Right hand, left hand, and then both hands? Necessarily?

[gleeok]

I have been practicing pieces with the primary rule of playing with hands separately first, but I have breaking this rule recently lol. I practice right hand first and then when I'm confident enough with it I go on with the left hand together with the right hand. I guess this happens because I still have more difficulties with the bass clef staff than with the tremble clef, so to "make sure" I'm doing it right, I play with both, so the right hand confirms if what I'm doing with the left one is right.

Specially this piece I'm working on which is much harder than what I was used to and has much bigger spaces between notes for the LH.

Has anyone ever done this? Or practices with both hands directly?

[scherzo123]

Good question. It all depends on what you piece you are learning. For example, for me, for a Bach fugue, I would do right hand, then left hand, then both hands. For (sometimes) a Mozart piano sonata movement, I would do both hands together immediately. For Chopin's Etude Op.10 No.12, I would do the left hand and then both hands. See? It all depends!

[j_menz]

I still have more difficulties with the bass clef staff than with the tremble clef

LOL, I love the tremble clef.

I only do HT, so my advice may be a little off, but I'd suggest that first off you should do whatever hand gives you the best guage of tempo and feel. After that, the one you should do most is the one that gives you the most technical challenge.

For fugues (and other countapuntal works), rather than doing hands seperately, voices seperately would be more useful.

[lloyd_cdb]

I tend to start practicing hands together except on the most challenging pieces.  If there are specific spots i'm struggling with I'll switch to hands separate so as not to practice wrong notes into my muscle memory.  I do make a point though to never practice hands separate if I'm playing sections of 3 over 2 or 4 or anything of that sort.  I find it to be useless and often times harder to combine them together after learning them separate.

[davidjosepha]

For fugues (and other countapuntal works), rather than doing hands seperately, voices seperately would be more useful.

That's great for hearing the voices, but as far as fingerings go, hands alone is still beneficial, and then just add in any extra notes with the left hand that are necessary to make the voices make sense.

As for HT vs HS, it really depends on the piece for me. For lots of pieces that are either easier or rely on an interchange between the hands, I play hands together from the get-go. Other times, I'll work out fingerings for my left and right hand by going through hands separately, but only do that once or twice, and then start playing hands together. If the piece is very difficult or one hand's part is difficult and the other hand's is not, I'll practice hands separately so that I'm not covering up any problems with the other hand.

[jollisg]

It depends on how hard-read and hard-played the piece is. Sometimes I learn it with both hands, but I always go back and work one hand alone (two professors at the royal college of music have said that to me, and I trust them)

[gleeok]

Thanks for the replies!


Well, yeah, I guess its up to who is learning and the nature of the piece being practiced! I remember that I had to practice the left hand in a previous piece, but only for doing it more automatically, it really didn't feel like the right hand practice, it was more an exclusively automatic thing.

Then, based on my own conclusions and your advices, I came to the answer that the best thing to do is to follow your instincts, and practice the way it feels the best (in case you have no teacher to direct you ).