Awesome Tips and Exercises that Will Improve Hand Independence

Playing with both hands is something that pretty much every pianist will start to learn how to do early in their lessons and playing.

Often, one hand will play the melody line and the other hand will play chords. This means that while we’re using both of our hands at the same time to play, they are doing completely different things…and that can get a little challenging!

We usually learn how to play with both hands together playing the same notes through scales. This is important to help us learn how to play with our hands together, articulating correctly and playing the tempo correctly. As we move into more advanced playing and start pieces that have different parts for the left and right hands, we need to work on hand independence – meaning both hands are playing their own thing, but are just as strong as the other one.

Today, we’re going to discuss some specific tips that will help your hand independence while playing the piano and then I will show you some exercises in the video at the end that you can do yourself to strengthen and reinforce this particular aspect of piano playing.

1. Start out with something simple to play. One of the easiest ways to move into playing different things with each hand is to go back to your scales that you know really well, and instead of playing the same notes in your left hand as your right hand, play chords instead in your left hand while your right hand plays the scale notes separately.
2. Make sure you take some time to work on each hand separately if you need to when you first start a new piece with independent parts in the left and right hands. Getting the notes, rhythm, articulations and everything else right in each hand separately first before putting them together will make it a lot easier, because your brain and fingers already know where to go, you will just have to work on letting them go – together.
3. Keep scales and arpeggios in your practice routine. This will help your fingers and hands learn to move together at the same tempo and reinforce what you’re working on in your new piece, especially if you practice the scale and arpeggios in the same key signature as your piece.
4. Learn Music Theory. The more music theory you know, the easier it will be to understand what you are playing, how the notes and chords fit together, and where you are placing your fingers…this will really help to strengthen your playing in each hand.
5. Always start out slowly. This is so important! If you try to play a newer piece with both hands at a fast tempo before you are ready to, it’s just going to get frustrating. And while playing slowly at first may feel a little constricting, the more you do it and get better at it, the faster you’ll be able to go. So be patient, and let yourself go through that beginning time of playing really slowly so your mind and body can learn these new techniques correctly.
6. Use Your Metronome. While you may not want to start out using the metronome, as you progress in playing with independent hands, using the metronome will really help get you from a slow tempo to a fast tempo successfully because you will move up in your tempo just a little tiny bit at a time. In fact, when you move the metronome up just a notch or two, you really don’t notice the difference in the tempo. This is sneaky of the metronome, but it’s also why it works so well. :) 

There are so many wonderful exercises that we can practice on to increase and strengthen our hand independence while playing the piano.

Some of the ones I go over in the following video include:

• Czerny “100 Progressive Studies”
• Czerny “The School of Velocity”

​These etudes are well known and are fabulous for helping to establish successful hand independence in piano playing.

They take you from a beginning level of this type of work into as advanced a level as you want to be, and you would benefit from practicing these etudes for many years. Take one at a time and spend at least a few days on it to really get the skills learned and then move on to the next one.

​I will show you several exercises from each of these collections and play some samples on the piano to show you exactly how to approach this kind of work. Remember to start slowly and be patient. Steady work will ensure success…so keep at it daily. 

If you like my tips and lessons, you will love the courses over on my website. Whether you are a beginner looking to get a solid foundation to build on or you are looking to take your existing skills to that next level, the online music courses on my website https://www.pianolessonsontheweb.com will help you do just that.