Piano is hard

thecolourbox

Mad World is a good "difficulty:good sounding ratio" one, essentially two chords and the way through but with lots of sustainer pedal and thoughtful sounding running, it can sound great

HCDavies

Dominic said:

I played piano since age 4 and still find it hard 55 years later although I'm a reasonable player.
but I find it a lot easier than guitar and more logical when you look at a keyboard or at a stave .If you imagine a stave chord notation being vertical on the page rather than horizontal you can almost copy the shape with your hand -the note spaces are a clue starting with the lowest......you become instinctively aware of sharps and flats if you know what key you are in / what the chord shape looks like .
Arps are very logical but to get them rolling smoothly is simply a question of fingering and muscle memory....just keep practicing them.Don't expect to start with the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata !

You may of hit on the nub of the problem for many there. I struggled with written staves ever since I started playing guitar. Once I discovered the tab method and realised how a keyboard and a fretboard work. It was easy, but I can not still read standard written music.

mixolyd

Ok I think I have the answer to the problem of playing two hands together.  Yes it is the hardest part (physically - lets leave sight reading aside) of playing piano but it’s shouldn’t be extremely difficult or taking up 90% of your practise time - if it is you are probably practicing incorrectly.

This approach is highly influenced by “The Fundamentals Of Piano Practice” by Chuan C Chang.  I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the book itself as it’s not very well written and contains some idiosyncratic ideas that aren’t really properly backed up but the core teaching is dead on (The book is free to download here http://pianopractice.org/ ) This guy was taught piano as an adult by an old school Paris Conservatiore pianist using the same methods that concert pianists use (used?) and tried to pass them on.

It was years ago I read that book but I’ve been putting what I’ve remembered - plus what I know from guitar - into practice since earlier this year when I started working on sight reading at the piano. I’ve gone from near zero to sight reading beginner level Beethoven arrangements and learning full Bach minuets all while having a disability that prevents me from actually pressing the keys on my Wurlitzer down in a few months of 40mins or so practice per day. The below is a combination of half-remembered Chang and whatever else I’ve picked up.

LOOP

Loop short sections and master them.  Don’t waste your time playing all the way through - you’ll just get better at making the same mistakes.  Every time you notice tension, mistakes, doubt etc you’ve found a nugget of gold.  Loop that nugget and polish it to a shine.

MOST VITAL IMPORTANCE: HANDS SEPARATE PRACTICE

Playing with two hands together requires the brain control three actions: the left hand, the right hand and the coordination of the two hands (which is more complex and taxing than either of the other two and also greatly inhibits re-learning of the other two while it is in play).

Playing with one hand cuts those three processes down to one.  Also because playing with one hand is simple you can play very, very, very fast.  As Chang says you can play many things at infinite speed (play all notes together) and progressively slow down from there rather than starting slow and speeding up.  Even in parts where you have to start slow (and you are practising in parts of a few notes at a time right and not ploughing through bar after bar, you at least know not to do that when still trying to master the physical act of playing a piece, right?) you can bring the speed way up pretty quickly.

So with this approach you can quickly drill each hand to play the required notes at several times the desired speed.  Only when you’ve done this many times (I usually go for dozens, or over a hundred if the part is tough or is accompanied by a tough part in the other hand) and gotten the feeling that you can play the one handed part purely by feel should you consider it ready to be played with the other, similarly drilled part.  Try closing your eyes.  Someone mentioned this earlier as being trance-like - that’s it.  If you need significant attention to play a part in one hand you will have great difficulty playing it alongside anything non-trivial in the other hand.  

YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED TO PRESS THE KEYS WHILE PRACTICING

Im sure there is a term for this in the pianist arena but being a cripple it’s the way I’m mostly forced to play.  When you are pressing the keys it slows you down and can create a bunch of tension especially when trying to play fast which is necessary for learning the parts quickly - so just don’t bother!  Most of the time when you can’t play something it’s because your brain hasn’t got a clear enough idea of what fingers go where.  You can practise this just as well without taking the time to press the keys, speeding up the process nicely and giving you a taste of how playing quickly and smoothly feels.  This technique is particularly helpful for practising big position shifts where your brain needs to feel and see the arm movement many times in order to learn it.

WHEN STRUGGLING - GET THE MICROSCOPE OUT

Most of your practise should be spent practising chunks of a bar or less, but sometimes you’ll hit a snag in these little loops.  Stop and pay attention - what is the real problem?  Maybe it’s a fingering issue and you are using an inefficient finger in one hand (if you are noticing this kind of issue and are trying to play with both hands you’ve gone wrong) or maybe there’s a subtle (or non-subtle) position change required of your hand.  Whatever the problem is, drill it.  If you can reduce it down to just two or three notes, or just the motion of a position change in your arm then drill that.  Just don’t leave the problem sitting in a nest of other notes and try practising it all together - that’s The Loser Method. Isolate and annihilate those pesky issues until you can breeze through them at hyper speed.

Extra tip: keep a pencil to hand for writing fingerings onto the sheet music.  Many times you know where you need to do a little practice loop but you can’t figure out the fingering at that point without playing a bunch of stuff leading up to it.  So - play it once and write the fingerings in, now there’s now excuse for wasteful, sloppy, long practise phrases.

HUMMING HELPS

What is needed to play?  To know the notes of both hands. To know how the notes should sound. To know how playing those notes correctly feels in each hand.  Let’s be honest, you don’t really know exactly how that syncopated part should sound and integrate with the other part do you?

So play it in one hand while humming or “da da”-ing the other hand with your voice.  Drilling this teaches your brain exactly how the parts fit together without you actually having to play them together.  Like pretty much every other suggestion I’ve made it’s all about minimising the number of new tasks you are trying to learn at the same time.  Usually it turns out that each task is pretty simple when isolated from the other tasks.

CONCLUSION

Practice small sections.  Don’t play pieces all the way through until you’ve addressed the tricky parts.  Isolate your hands.  Pay close attention and isolate problems.  Play hands separate FAST so you can get the reps in.  Play hands-together slower (and slowly speed up), when you’ve mastered each hand separately.  Leave a pencil on the music stand.  Use your voice and imagination to practice the “other part”.