 guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. Now I'm here in this lesson to answer probably the most common question which I've got from students of all ages and also in our YouTube channel, comment section, Instagram and wherever people approach me. How do you improve the coordination or how do you build hand independence? Well it's asked in all sorts of ways. Essentially how do you play with two hands on the piano or how do you improve your hand independence? Now I think the important word here is how do you improve it? It's not how do you achieve it because I don't think you can ever achieve hand independence. I don't know what the end goal is. It's like saying I have reached the maximum level or the maximum speed as an athlete or something like that. I mean that's very very infinite isn't it? You can go as much as your mind and body wants to take you. So hand coordination or hand independence the first thing is let's look at a few reality checks about it, how you can practice it and what you need to do when things are tough during the process of achieving it. The first point I'd like to mention about hand independence is don't do specific exercises all the time to develop it rather just go with the flow. Play music just freely and just do what you have to do. If you're doing a song there are two ways of playing a song if you think about it. You could play the melody line in the right hand that would be a melody section which is more or less played in the right hand and there will be some kind of a chord pattern to support that melody in the left hand. So all through a solo pianos journey you're gonna want to do that for example. So if you observe the melody is in the right hand and there's some kind of a support for that melody given in the left hand. However I could consider another way of playing piano which is more of the accompaniment style wherein I go just the chords along with some kind of a pattern. In this case I'm just blocking chords and playing that in a pulse. Or some arpeggios and you just support. So your job is not to play the melody which you can by the way. But it's essentially for a choir or a singer or a group or another lead instrumentalist like a violin player to play alongside the piano support. So first of all there are two ways of playing the piano. There's no it's not melody is only you also accompany or it's not just accompaniment it's solo piano as well. So when you're in either mode of playing the piano there are certain challenges that you might face for both. But the way I look at hand independence from a macro perspective is look at the two hands more like a vehicle. You know you get into a car and you trust the fact that the engine is running fine that all the parts are oiled everything has been serviced well so to speak. So you get in and then you have the controllables you control the steering to move it around and accelerate and brake and what not. Those are the things you control. So think of the one hand which you are in control of and trust that the other hand you know is going to deliver and going to do its job. So this is the common problem which people have when we play a line. Let's say we do any kind of melody. Now this is probably going to be in my conscious brain. You know I'm thinking of the tune. You know while this the other hand if this also has to be conscious then how are you going to put them together. It's not going to be feasible. It's the same thing with life in general. You can't focus on two things at the same time. You may be able to do two things at the same time but you're generally focused on one you know. So for example you can talk to a delivery guy on the phone while doing some other work or you know you can cook food while talking to your friend or if you are an Indian and if you are used to our extremely busy and chaotic streets you can probably cross the road while having some momos while doing so. It is possible. I wouldn't recommend it but it is possible to do two things because you're used to one thing. The thing which is important the thing which takes more time to develop like crossing a road which is very important. You have to know the logistics of crossing a busy road right. It's very dangerous if you don't. So that gets committed to our subconscious brain or our instinctive skills so to speak and that is how I would look at your two hands on the piano. One hand should be instinctive. So a good way to practice that would be I want to learn a pattern. I don't care which melody that pattern is going to be used for. I just want to learn a pattern. So let's take for instance the anapageo maybe this one. Just that. Now this could be used for so many songs you know and this should be almost subconscious instinctive. I'm just playing an E minor chord and just rolling it you know and I am able to talk to you also right now that means I'm not even thinking of my left hand or giving it very minimal thought. The only thought I'm giving it is when to change it. See I'm doing a little bit of a change in the middle here that I'm even that now I want to slowly commit to the subconscious or not think about it. You know just becomes a natural it just happens and that frees up our mind from bringing out certain things in the right hand. For example this song. See whatever melody I play it's doesn't affect what my left hand engine is up to the engine is pumped up and running and this is one of the many patterns as you know on the piano. You could do something groovy in the left hand as well like maybe this one. Even this has to now get committed and you can play a variety of music. You're freeing your mind exclusively for the right hand and technology in some cases may not help your cause in the sense a lot of the keyboards we buy these days we buy them with all these technological features and I wouldn't even call them as features because they are just existing drum loops and samples that you trigger by hitting a play button then you have the accompaniment button. Now if you do all that how are you actually playing the piano you're not it's just the keyboard playing itself with samples and you're just pushing those buttons so if you want to develop hand independence stop using the technology don't look at anything here ever just look here look at the white and black keys and maybe here all I would do minimally is control the volume maybe use a metronome and maybe explore one or two different piano or electric piano samples or organs or whatever sounds yes but don't use all the drum beats and those other accompaniment buttons those things are going to render your technique very harmful actually and if you're mentoring children if any of you are teachers or if you're a younger person watching this what happens is that becomes a bad approach in the long run so for one year you will play like that and to get out of that bad habit becomes almost impossible right or tough I would say not impossible but very tough so try to play piano don't play other things just only focus on the piano so that's a very important idea wherein one of the hands gets committed to the brain and the to the subconscious and the other hand is going to explore or improvise and so on and so forth however you will have to go with a chord progression so even the chord progression the shifting try to work on that first and a great way to do this is to sing the melody line before you play it on the piano so if I'm playing maybe this sort of a pattern or let's change the pattern on maybe this one maybe this one and if I come up with a melody okay now before you even consider playing that sing that with the piano going and then now keep that same pattern slowly changing the chords and once you get that singing with the piano the right hand becomes an extension of your voice come to think of it whatever you sing you just play because that becomes good ear training because I'm trying to play that play what I'm singing and enjoy the process enjoy the journey of doing this you know and start simple or just whatever you have to do start with singing so the main point I'm trying to make here is focus on getting one hand to be an engine and then the other one will be the actual work which a driver of a vehicle would do steering wheel and so on and so forth that is how you conquer it and you may think oh I should always engine my left hand no you should all you can even engine your right hand in cases for example when you play a pattern like this you know something like this my creative hand is now the left hand so and so on so now my entire focus is given to the left hand now the things which may not help when practicing and independence one thing I told you yeah using technology to aid with the left hand then you're not really playing piano right technology should should make things faster for you to learn it shouldn't stop you from learning which a lot of the keyboards out there seem to have these arranger workstations are the ones I don't like because they're just expensive the buttons break in any case you'll have to give them you'll have to spend a lot more on service you'd rather get something with limited buttons and just good piano sounds on them okay right so while you practice hand independence you'll obviously have road blocks along the way in the sense your eventual goal didn't actually happen or is not happening right now so what you need to do is have a kind of a reality check a reality check in the sense I am not able to do this particular level of coordination right now so for instance if I just play a few cards in the in the left hand maybe just E major E major E major and then a B seventh in this nice dominant seven shape so if I do this and you want to now explore some kind of improvisation in the right hand let's say your end goal is maybe that may not be working maybe you're getting only the right answer what do what some of the students I teach end up doing is then they'll nail that melody and simplify the left hand so sounds good but it'll sound 100 times better once you get the chords and the rhythm pattern there don't you think so what you should then do is rather than playing or rather than simplifying the left hand you should simplify the right hand and have a kind of a reality reality check currently in this moment of time I cannot play the right hand so let me bank the left hand and start slow let's increment I would I wouldn't say start slow start simple so if you take a standard left hand pattern maybe just keep it simple maybe just block it for now and maybe go in the right hand everything you're gonna ever play will be semi-brieves 3 4 2 3 or 1 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 see this I'm sure you can do just stay on the E major scale otherwise it'll sound a bit wrong so back to me now semi-brieves sound nice but it's a bit boring because it's not the chord now semi-brieves are nice but it may end up being a bit boring if you keep using it over and over especially because the chords are changing so what's after semi-brieves maybe two minutes just following one of the notes of my left hand chords I'm staring here or in my book I would have had E G sharp B as the chords written so there's no new note and that's another challenge with hand coordination if you have different stuff to play all of a sudden the chords change it's not only the pattern or the rhythmic framework it's also the melody if you just suddenly change notes that's a job so the coordination of the hands is a challenge melodically harmonically and rhythmically you're you're dealing with all the three departments as one on the piano so understand have a reality check and then what can I do at the current moment maybe minims I'm sure you can do crotchets which are quarter notes that's on the pulse itself just realize that this is not very much hand-independence because the two hands are hitting at exactly the same time so you want the hands to kind of do different things and if this is a challenge for you or if this is not a challenge for you change the notes maybe the scale maybe jumble things and then slowly move forward to other rhythms like maybe a minimum and two crotchets or maybe flip that around two crotchets and a minimum let's see what am I doing now I'm doing a crotchet and a dotted minimum dotted minimum last three counts maybe flip that around also the dotted minimum following up with a crotchet and keeping my decisions in the right hand fairly simple I'm just fooling around with a chord tone of the left hand you can even write this down writing things down before you play right either writing the notation let's say you already have the notation for an exercise you're practicing I would still urge you to hand write it on your own rewrite the whole thing and it's your own work which you put in right to write all that down that itself in turn internalizes it and notation is a good way to visualize the way the two hands are linking up with each other so you'll know the right hand is doing minimum minimum the left hand is doing crotchet crotchet crotchet crotchet I call these as hand ratios you could practice things like one is to four four is to one two is to four four is to two so for example what will be a two is to four left hand is to right hand will be one two hits over four counts and this will be for it so it'll be one two three four one two and you can practice these hand ratio drills anywhere you don't need a piano you can do it on your leg or on some kind of a table or wherever to so I'm practicing the two is to four ratio and when I take it to the piano this could be harmonic one two three four and the right hand could be playing double of that now you could even visualize a two is to four by going left hand as crotchets and then the right hand will be double of that so that'll end up being quavers right what about one is to three those are triplets for you so hand ratios is another great reality check so one reality check was whatever you're doing in the left hand you're telling yourself I cannot play the right hand with respect to the current left hand but I will not simplify the left hand I will simplify the right hand I know that melody is a really catchy one I know you want to play that but trust me this takes time and another important thing as you practice you need to enjoy the process I wouldn't say you need to you will rather if you plan things well if you write it down and if you tell yourself the reality check which is I have to simplify my right hand the common thing is students will simplify or most of us myself included we simplify the left hand so if you want to grow hand independence do that the tough yards first finish the tough work which is the non-glamorous work so that will be the left hand for the most part if you're doing a solo arrangement and then the right hand will eventually you already know the right hand the right hand is that catchy tune but get you can't get that with the sophisticated left hand pattern so work on the sophisticated left hand pattern with a very very simple right hand melody and thus you're going you're basically going step by step realizing what challenge you have and the advantage of going step by step you take a few steps back do something simple and if you can do a dotted minimum and a crotch it in the right hand alongside some kind of a left hand pattern some arpeggio you have not only got it for that song you've got it for life you've got the hand coordination pretty much for life and the things which we get very good at other things we don't obsess over every other day for example if you're playing a racquetball sport like badminton table tennis or the tennis or the like you don't actually keep telling yourself I have to serve this is how to serve this is what I do yes there'll be a basic posture but you have to keep doing it and you will on the job or in the game realize that your serve is not good enough the opponent is able to smash you any at any point of that particular court so then you have to think your survival instincts have to kick in and then you realize where should I serve then you get into placements you get into you know angles and spin and the speed variations and bouncing and all of those things so the point I'm trying to make is you should learn it on the job by going in a stepwise manner and the advantage is you will know how to deliver that rhythm pattern for anything in life it stays with you for life the thing about music is we have our three departments rhythm melody and harmony knowledge of rhythm stays with us forever at any age whichever age you decide to pick up music this is not you know age-dependent rhythm stays with you for life if you practice it well you have to practice it with a lot of lot of respect in a very very stepwise stepwise manner right and the thing with piano practice is if you're looking at practicing something on the piano it's not supposed to be easy isn't it practice is supposed to be tough it's supposed to get you to sweat it out and get better progress forward to the next stage so I understand the frustrations of practice but I will say a few things when it comes to the the the way we practice or the mindset of practice what always happens is the first few minutes it could be if your practice session is about one hour it's going to be near impossible to just at least for me that first ten minutes is crucial I need to give the first ten minutes to the the piano I have to just go there and just give it the time and what I tend to do is I'll do something which I don't know very well I'll do an exercise but I also want to get into the mindset of being a piano player and taking myself away from the other parts of the world around me like the social media my phone with Instagram and whatnot so to get me out of that space I try to write down what I have to do get into that mindset and then play something you don't know never start with something you know because if you do that then you'll only do that for ten fifteen minutes and because you're damn good at that your mind will wander away and it's the same with all instruments it's also the same with anything if you're a music producer or songwriter composer never the first time you get into that into that environment do something you don't know do something which you absolutely suck at okay and that gets you into that mindset of respecting that one hour and saying oh I'm gonna make that one hour useful so that first ten minutes is very very crucial so that first ten minutes to kind of get into the zone as I call it is very important and then the time will just fly and when you practice there are two things you need to keep in mind practice is an exponential job and sleep is very important so what I mean by that is if you're practicing one rhythmic permutation between the right hand the left hand and it's an absolutely grueling process it's taking you almost 40 minutes of the practice let's say now do that you should not give up because in your original goal you have about 20 rhythms to do but this one rhythm itself has taken you 40 minutes don't worry you've put in time the others are going to be just binary permutations here and there you're just gonna move the e to the or the and to the e or something like that it's just gonna be one or two displacements and the rest of the rhythms will just fly it's always gonna be an exponential curve whenever I practice or any student who I've taught practices I asked them to follow this and just observe at which point is the peak of the exponential curve where is it actually skyrocketing you know that's not the time where you need to shut off your piano and have a good meal that is a time you need to finish it off because there's literally a light which you're seeing at the end of this tunnel so it's an exponential thing and let's say at the end of a piano practice session you feel absolutely horrible that you have achieved nothing this is where you should never focus on the goal the goal is something I don't like to keep in my mind when I practice I like to keep it as at the back of my mind rather if I have a process I want to enjoy the process and stay in the present and then the result will come so don't practice with the mindset that I have to get the result it's not coming it's not coming not at all if you have practiced the result and if you got it to let's say some form of skill trust me your brain your subconscious brain also needs to practice what you've done in that half an hour was practice for your conscious brain your active brain what you're observing you need your other brain to also work and that happens when you have a good night's sleep so after having a good night's sleep wake up and don't stop playing the piano don't go with a negative mindset go back to the piano with positivity and what will happen is your brain will reward you go with a positive mindset always saying doesn't matter I'm gonna eventually get it no matter what okay and this sleep pattern is very important by sleep I don't mean actual sleep well I recommend it for all of you but I don't mean I just mean taking a break it could even mean dividing your practice maybe you have your work at about 9 a.m. so you do a little bit of early morning practice go to your office come back then you're a bit tired just before dinner given a maybe 20 more minutes you'll realize what you did in the morning is just gotten better in the evening even though ironically you're supposed to be more tired in the evening but then you're playing the piano better in the evening and to build hand coordination I always like to think that every one of us piano players are playing it as an even playing field we are all given the same keys the same key size the same instrument and we are all the same species so at the end of the day there's a guy who is working harder than you who you should start striving to kind of become so even for a person like me I don't think I even know 10% of what I need to know I maybe a 10% itself is an exaggeration so in one lifetime you're never going to be a master of an instrument it's the same with a sport it's same with anything it's a process there will be days where you feel that you cannot even play the instrument but it's just a cycle you have to just go with the flow and just realize that we are just one individual trying to play this instrument and give it the best of what we can give it so to speak you have to practice it will sound really really airtight and the thing which you're doing get that to be really good you don't want to say I want to master hand independence that doesn't make sense if I want to say that to myself I'll do I'll do about 20 things then there'll be a 21st thing which puts me back to the drawing board and then you will be you'll be very clear and certain that hand independence is a it's a process you have to keep doing it you have to keep trying it and that's some of the challenges of learning in today's you know fast-paced YouTube like environment where you just what are you gonna type generally you're gonna type how to play this song how to do this how to master hand independence you know we've also done titles like that so don't be misled by such things those are kind of ways to get people to watch our videos but the truth about hand independence is it you cannot explain it in one video you can't explain in even hundred YouTube videos you have to dive into the sea for yourself and develop the skill okay so my main issue with YouTube videos is we have to kind of give you a final goal at the end of the video but at that point you'll also think that that is your final goal and it shouldn't be your goal should be to practice your goal should be the process and finally you you get this really good feeling that you're just organically getting into that song and it just one day just hits you just one day comes to you and it's a very good feeling you shouldn't force the result right guys so before I conclude this talk I just wanted to mention a few very important points I've said a lot but I'll just revise it and focus on five things which you need to keep in mind when you're dealing with hand independence the first thing which I've talked about earlier is sing and play very very important when you're playing the piano it avoids frustration it gets you to be in the zone and you're in the game you're playing the sport you're not going to some simulation or learning how to play badminton in a classroom you learn it by going to the court and actually playing and then losing winning and sweating and falling and whatnot that's how you do it so sing and play and whenever you play the piano and you're trying to work on hand independence you need to always focus on one of the most probably the most important thing in music the pulse so if you go if you see what I'm playing on the piano it may be a lot of notes a lot of subdivisions but look at my head it's just going with the pulse it could be my head my upper body my foot I can't clap because I'm playing the piano but feel the pulse focus on the pulse that's very important and I know it's a tough thing to say but try to relax when you play the piano and it sounds a bit strange how do I relax you know it's a bit tough because it is a physical job your back is being used your whole upper body is being used to play the instrument so I would just say one thing focus on your breathing whenever you feel things are very tense whether job is too difficult to achieve try to just focus on breathing in and breathing out breathing in and breathing out also ends up making the music very organic and very dynamic I would say so see if you focus on breathing as you breathe in it gets louder as you breathe out it gets softer science biology it's what happens when we breathe so focus on that and also what I like about breathing is you take yourself to the bigger picture of the song you're at the end of the day one musician playing a song you're just one guy on this earth play you so you tend to avoid being too possessive and you don't think about yourself you're thinking more about your song and what you're supposed to work on so breathing is a more kind of a bigger perspective on the whole music which you're trying to play okay and basic things like slowing down simplification is very very important slow down what you're playing you can use a metronome to help you see if you're playing on time and another thing I like to do when I use the word simplify I also say don't judge yourself while you're playing a musical instrument be it a piano or guitar or whatever because at the time of playing it there is a lot of energy you know there's a lot of you know emotions being thrown at you or flowing by you so you you're also jamming with people they may also tell you many things so never judge anything real time record it on a cell phone or any kind of recording device listen to it the next morning and then decide and then be a judge and say oh yeah my timing is not so good I should work on that a bit more while you play it's always nice to not judge and if you're new to the pianos even more important that you should never judge yourself let a teacher judge judge you or or something like that or put up a couple of recordings and share it with your friends and family see what they think the last person to judge oneself in this field should be us it should be others because ultimately music is for others it's an entertainment business at the end of the day right and lastly the reality check build up to the eventual goal focus on the process rather than the result or that final song so have a reality check coordinate your hands with simpler things rather than you know just trying to climb Mount Everest without having any basic training or having a backpack which can handle the the climatic conditions right guys I hope this video gave you some insights into practicing the piano and I hope you can use some of these concepts and some of these tips in your journey let me know what you thought about it in the comments and if you like the lesson there's a like button somewhere there do consider hitting that and for future videos there's a subscribe button don't forget to hit that and there's a bell for regular notifications all of our content is supplemented on our Patreon page for as low as $5 a month and then you have other tires you can get video courses you can get personalized lessons with me and if you'd like to do a full-on course a semester style learning at Nathaniel School of Music where you may want to improve on your year training your piano theory composition production or whatever it might be head over to Nathaniel school.com and reach out to one of our course advisors cheers and catch you in the next video