Expert knowledge on combining hands

[heroofmyownstory]

I would like true expert knowledge on the process of combining hands after learning the two hands separately.
I am a beginner-intermediate. I know from the study of guitar and voice that there is a lot of wrong information in the music world and that you can waste vast amounts of time.
What is typically the best technique for combining hands, once you have learned the hands separately?
I don't find it difficult to learn the separate hands (at least at the level of notes, played correctly -- playing with beautiful tone and dynamics is not easy). In "book 2" of the book I use, I can learn both hands separately in a single practice session. (Of course these are easy pieces.) But putting them together, I don't feel that I have any method other than "trying." Is there something better than this that a true expert has outlined?
I do not have a teacher, and where I live, teachers are impractical as they don't speak English, and I don't speak their language. The one English-speaking teacher I had was a superb musician but had minimal teaching skills.

[klavieronin]

While I can’t honestly claim to be an “expert”, the advice I would give you is not to think about it like doing two separate things simultaneously, but rather, doing one thing that requires both hands. Think about clapping your hands. You don’t clap your hands with each hand separately. It requires both hands moving in a particular way; toward each other, then away from each other. It’s the same with piano playing. Your hands are always moving together in a particular way. It’s just more complicated than clapping your hands.
If you want something more practical, I’ve found tapping out the rhythm (both hands together) away from the piano to be quite helpful.

[brogers70]

I also do not claim to be an expert, but one thing you could try is, for example to play the right hand part in full, but only the first note of each measure in the left hand part - that will help you line up the hands at the beginning of each measure. Then when that feels comfortable you can add in the rest of the left hand part.

Also, you can work at a very micro scale. Just pick a measure and make sure you know how to put the hands together for that measure. Do it until it's easy. Then do another measure. It may feel like "what how am I ever going to finish the piece at this rate?" but you'll get faster at it over time.

When I was first learning, it was a nightmare to fit a simple Alberti bass pattern in the LH with a simple tune in the RH, as in Mozart's "easy" C Major Sonata. You just have to work slowly and trust that it will get easier over time.

[jamienc]

While I can’t honestly claim to be an “expert”, the advice I would give you is not to think about it like doing two separate things simultaneously, but rather, doing one thing that requires both hands. Think about clapping your hands. You don’t clap your hands with each hand separately. It requires both hands moving in a particular way; toward each other, then away from each other. It’s the same with piano playing. Your hands are always moving together in a particular way. It’s just more complicated than clapping your hands.
If you want something more practical, I’ve found tapping out the rhythm (both hands together) away from the piano to be quite helpful.

This is absolutely correct. Practicing hands separately is about 98% of the time a complete waste of time and energy. Practicing hands separately should only be reserved for places where there is such difficulty in that hand that you do need to focus on it. However, when you put the hands together (if you haven’t noticed already) there is a completely different brain operation that takes place that renders the hand-separate practice almost useless.

A technique that I often used to combine the hands properly is to devise fingering that will place the same finger on each hand together in a convenient place. For example if you are able to align the index fingers at one point in the piece to create a “landmark“ by which you can organize and coordinate, that will help. Another technique that works well is to analyze a hand position that you are in and see if there is a specific scale pattern or chord shape that you can place your hands in to keep you grounded with hand coordination.

One of the biggest obstacles pianists face is the moment where a shift in hand position is required to make the music fluid. This is where technical aspects of playing can go wrong if you are not careful to manage the shift effectively. The shifts and the time that it takes to get from one place to another is just as important in your practice as the notes and positions themselves. The tendency is to over-anticipate the shift to the position you are moving to and thus compress or rush the notes in the prior position to get to the new one. Uncoordinated hands during practice or performance is a sure symptom that this is occurring. A suggestion to cure this would be to slow the tempo down and focus a little bit more on the time it takes you to get from one position to another. Doing this should clear up many of the coordination problems you might be having. Hope this helps!

[heroofmyownstory]

Thank you for the suggestions, I will try those techniques.

[lostinidlewonder]

I also do not claim to be an expert, but one thing you could try is, for example to play the right hand part in full, but only the first note of each measure in the left hand part - that will help you line up the hands at the beginning of each measure. Then when that feels comfortable you can add in the rest of the left hand part.

This is good advice. It plays a large part of practice method that I teach my students. Being able to pinpoint what reduction you can do to one part and then how to build upon it in the most effective manner is probably not so easy to do alone but a good teacher can guide the process.

If the OP wants to learn more you should give a specific example of bars then we could discuss this technique in context and make a lot more sense. Speaking in generalisations will hardly help you as much.

[lelle]

To add to the other answers, if you do have to practice hands separately and then put it together, in my experience it's better to take a really short fragment that you can get right immediately or fairly quickly, and practice it slowly until you can do it consistently, before moving on to the next fragment. Contrast this with trying to slog through the whole thing, struggling, not getting it right. So work with very small, manageable segments if you're trying to put together something that feels tricky.