Tips For Playing Piano With Both Hands

I’ve been playing the piano for the majority of my life (around 22 years) and it never gets old. This is an instrument I’m extremely passionate about, and have been fortunate to play in some awesome performance venues and countries. Perhaps the best part of each performance is meeting the audience members after the show. This is typically where they get to ask me any question they’ve got on their mind.

Without fail the question I often get asked the most is “how in the world do you play piano with both hands?” Usually my answer is something along the lines of “I concentrate really hard, work hard and ultimately don’t think about it too much”. Now that I think about it even more I’ve kind of wondered myself exactly how I go about putting both hands together. I’ve played so much repertoire over the years that I kind of fall into the process and don’t think to much about it.

My Personal Tips For Playing Piano With Both Hands

With that said I decided this would make for a helpful article for those looking for tips for playing piano with both hands. I’ve gone back and made notes of exactly what I do and what works for me.  By sharing this process I figure I can help a lot of people out who have not quite figured out how to make their hands work together on the piano. I think for most of you reading this these methods will really change how you approach playing the piano. It might even be unconventinoal for some of you who swear by always playing hands separately first too. Everything doesn’t come together overnight, but with some persistence you’ll be able to get it done pretty much the same way I do it!

1. Learn Hands Separately

I don’t do this as often as I should, but learning the notation separately is a nice starting point for most pianists. I like to break down the music into separate parts, and read a few bars at a time. You might want to try this with 2 measures at first for the right hand, learn it and then move on to the left hand. Playing hands separate really helps with visual memory, muscle memory and of course the mental side.

The tough part about hands separate is that you can’t hear any of the harmonies. That’s the main reason I only save this for the really difficult passages such as the right hand part of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. For a beginning pianist though it’ll be helpful to get some harmonies in there. One thing you could certainly do is analyze what harmonies are happening throughout each measure and play chords in the left hand (or right hand). This helps give your ears some foundation; something to latch on to.

2. Chunking The Measures

This is just an add-on to learning hands separately, but chunking the measures is really important. I would chunk the measures in groups of 2 and then do them in bigger chunks. So an example would be 2 measures, then another 2 measures and then perform those 4 measures together all with one hand. Next I’ll do the same thing for the other hand. After that I’ll do both hands, but in groups of 2 measures. Then add it up to 4 and finally perform those 4 measures together.

What you’ll find with chunking is that it’s not an exact science, but it does provide nearly instant results if done correctly. What happens sometimes for pianists is they’ll get a section to sound really good, move on to another and then come back to this one and it’s all gone. Don’t panic, that’s kind of supposed to happen. Our brains are taking all of this in. You might have to spend several days chunking the same sections in the same manner. What you’ll discover however is that each day things will speed up and become second nature. The end result will be awesome though, so stay patient!

3. Practice Slowly (like, really slow)

I didn’t do much of this until I got to college, but I can’t stress how important it is to practice slowly. Piano is as much of a brain game as it is a physical task. Sometimes our brains need a few moments to catch up to what’s going on, and slow practice is a good way to make this work. You can do this either with or without a metronome, but going at a slow and steady pace helps you achieve a few things:

• Accuracy in touch
• Finger accuracy
• Evenness
• Memory

The accuracy in touch is probably the most important thing, because you don’t want to just play the notes correctly on their own. How you sound really matters, and you’ll discover as you speed up the music that your touch will change quite a bit. However with slow practice you’ve built in the ability to have a lot of control over that touch. If you practice too fast and the passage is 32nd notes for example, then they might sound scattered, uneven and patchy even with many dropped notes.

I find that passagework as well as chords deserve some of the same amount of detail when it comes to touch. Of course finger accuracy is developed best in this regard, and then evenness is a bi-product of all of this. Memory I find comes with time and attention to detail. Check out my beginner piano tips; they’ll help you out if you’re just starting!

4. Establish The Fingering Early

Finger accuracy is really important. If you’re not putting finger numbers in your music then you really ought to. My teachers would always tell me to get the Urtext editions of music and in the past I used to dislike publications that didn’t have any editors suggestions in them. Now that I’ve transitioned into professional playing it makes more sense to me now. They were trying to get me to come up with fingering that worked for my particular hand size (I have large hands!). At the same time I found that when I write the fingers in myself I really make an effort to drill that in during my practice sessions.

Sometimes many people struggle playing with both hands together because they’re trying to force the editors suggestions onto themselves. Impatience is also a culprit here too, but with piano playing it’s a slow and methodical process if you really want to get things right. We all have different hands sizes, finger lengths and playing techniques so you have to consider this when learning new music. Don’t be afraid to venture out and change the fingering to something less conventional. It just might save you a headache.

5. Let The Dominate Hand Guide You

There’s quite a bit of choreography attributed to piano playing. You might not realize it, but it’s almost like doing a graceful dance as you tickle the ivories. I’m right handed, so I often let this hand guide me in my playing. The melody is often located here, so I’ll let that control my pacing, chord placement and more. This is also the hand where I do the least amount of concentrating because I’m so comfortable with it. Many beginner pianists will find that as they play their ear is going to lock in on the hand they’re least comfortable with most times. While that’s okay it’s not something you should let completely control you.

6. Focus More On The Least Dominate Hand

I certainly envy all you left-handed folks out there (just kidding), but focusing on your least dominate hand really helps too. This is the hand where you’re either uncomfortable technically, and probably feel the least secure. Pianists at my level don’t usually have this problem because everything is equally trained, however if you’re a beginner trying to get your weak hand to be as good as the other can be frustrating. I would find some key points in the music where you know you can play a section well and then build around it. Look for moments where you don’t have to think about one of your hands at all and put all of your energy behind the other.

7. Map Out A Plan

As you sort through your music you’ll probably discover that there aren’t as many issues with putting your hands together as you think. Sometimes it’s just a couple of key areas that are making or breaking your piece. Identify those and map out a plan to tackle the piece. Once you’ve really secured that plan that’s where all of the freedom comes from. The ability to play freely and musically can’t really be achieved if you don’t know what it is you’re trying to do.

Knowing what to do comes from the security in your technique, approach and knowing where to go and when. I like to write in my music the areas where I’ll do certain lifting, articulations, shifting my focus to my hand, arm-weight and more. I then proceed to practice and perfect that as much as possible so I have a firm foundation to go from in the first place. Once I’ve gotten that down, then I start experimenting with tempo, articulation, pacing and more and things are way easier this way.

8. Get Plenty Of Rest

Seriously, go to sleep. There’s no sense playing the piano for so many hours a day that it gets ridiculous. At a certain point your brain will check out and you’ll just be going through the motions. I discovered over time that if I put in my daily practice time and go to sleep I wake up fresh, accurate and even better the next day. Sometimes our brain needs that time to process the information we’ve thrown at it. You’ll find that one day you won’ t have it, but the next day you will. It’s weird, but that’s just how my brain works at least and a lot of other pianists I’ve talked to over the years. Just because you don’t see the results that moment, or even later that day does not mean the material is not being internalized.

 9. Each Note Is Important

I felt it would be good to end with something a little unconventional, but it’s something that I do to help me focus. This might sound kind of weird at first but let me clarify. Whenever I take on a new piece of music I like to give it some sort of story or plot. Of course to make the story work there has to be a cast; in this case the fingers. I don’t always look at each hand as a single character, but rather 5 different characters for each hand. If you start thinking of your fingers as individuals it’ll really go along way. No note should be left aside, because each of them is important.

Since I know each note has a purpose I know that in order to pull the piece together they all have to work in concert together. Having a mental connection to each note not only helps with memory, but also your attention to detail. Often times I see young pianists simply playing notes but not having any sort of connection to it. Where that gets them negatively though is when they forget part of the melody and can’t recover. Maybe however if they had also focused on the inner melodies, the bass and even the choreography of getting from one note to the next then they probably could have. Listen, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and it’s through that trial and error I discovered that no note should be taken for granted during performance.

10. A Quick Step By Step Approach

You probably noticed that a lot of what I talked about as it pertains to playing with hands together has little to do with technique. That’s because 80% of what you do with the piano is mental, and the physical is the other portion. If you can dominate the mental aspects of piano playing, the physical parts will actually come much easier. To help prevent you from sitting at the piano and not knowing what to do or where to begin with playing with both hands together I’ve put together a quick little step by step approach you can take. You don’t have to follow this exactly, but if you stick closely to it I think you’ll be just fine.

• Start With 1 Page Per Day (Maximum 32 Measures)
• Chunk the music into 2 measure sections
• Play the right hand separately and slowly (at least 15 times in a row)
• Repeat the above step for the left hand
• Add on another 2 measures and repeat the process
• Now play 4 measures hands separately (6 to 8 times)
• Now play 2 measures hands together
• Add another 2 measures with your hands together
• Now play those 4 measures with your hands together (6 to 8 times)
• Maintain Your Focus (give the notes life!)
• Take a nap!

The method above might look redundant and unnecessary but it does work. Piano might look flashy and fun for an audience (and trust me it is), but sometimes the behind the scenes work is a little ugly at least in the early stages. I really would love to hear how this method works for you. Make sure to leave a comment and let me know if this improves your piano playing! Remember, it’s mostly mental so if you can internalize things there the rest will follow! Good luck!