Playground Forums

I am only a few weeks in and about half way through the beginner boot camps but I go from competent with either hand to chaos with both hands. I have been practicing the beginner version of Let it Be and can play pretty well, with both hands, at my own pace but as soon as I try it with the app, it all falls apart pretty quick.

Does it just take practice and more practice to get comfortable with 2 hand play? Will my brain eventually kick in?

Pretty much. I remember being exactly where you're at.

There's a few key elements to both hands playing, in my opinion:

-repeated mastery of each hand individually, so much so that you're not even thinking about it.
-extremely slow practice with both hands at the same time. The key here is to assess the relationship between the hands at ANY given point in the music. Is one playing and the other resting? Are the both playing? What fingers? Are they moving in the same direction? Are they moving contrary? Is one moving and the other's not? Do the durations match? What's the overall shape? There are so many questions to consider. Eventually you will begin to "feel" each hand at the same time and how they relate to each other.
-lastly: confidence. this is the most basic ingredient, but you'll just need to believe you can do it. for me this lacked for a while and it causes a lot of inhibition especially when facing the metronome.

Hello Woodyd. I'm going to echo Andrew here.

I still run into that on new lessons and songs. The trick is to, as you do, work through the both hands "off the clock" to work out mentally when things happen together between the two hands, and when they occur separately. Then I start with a VERY slow clock speed on the Tempo and work through do it it with the correct Rhythm, even at a really slow pace. If it is really tough, I increase the tempo in tiny steps. Also, I only increase to a faster tempo when I really have the current tempo down well.

What Andrew forgot to mention is the time honored quote - Don't just practice until you get it right - Practice until you can't get it wrong -variously attributed but ultimately Anonymous

Haha. That quote actually comes from my first trombone teacher in college.

That's right, I'm a piano-playing trombone player. Oh well.