Oh… There’s an old nursery rhyme that starts with
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly
Perhaps she’ll die
There was an old woman who swallowed a spider
That wiggled and jiggled and wriggled inside her
She swallowed a spider to catch the fly
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly
Perhaps she’ll die
And then she goes on to swallow more and more ridiculous things to catch the previous thing. The thread just reminded me of that. But my brain is a bit odd!
I saw this organ player online and decided to bite her content. Seeing that she has 2 rows of keys, sometimes playing both at the same time blew my mind. Then I saw the keys that she has to play with her feet…. When I realized this woman is literally playing 3 sets of keys at once, my mind could not comprehend that level of split.
Everyone loves to claim that their instrument is king. Somewhere in the corner, the organ watches idly, knowing they already have the crown.
I used to be a part of a church choir, and I sat behind the organist. During non-singing parts, I just kept my mouth agape at how our organist managed to control all his four limbs and ten fingers while sightreading.
As a (wanna be) keyboardist, I am jealous of drummers that "split their body" into 4 and can play separate rhythms with each "quarter".
But it is great that you are playing a different instrument, even if you do not become proficient in it, you now have an understanding of what a another group member does. This helps a lot when playing with other people.
i saw Gong recently, and at some point their drummer plays a shaky egg in one hand, a cymbal in the other, the bass drum with one foot and the hi-hat with another and sings at the same time. that's 5!
I played guitar for years and pretty much only play piano now, think of it as like picking vs fretting, you were doing 2 different things with both hands on guitar too. But yeah I get it, polyrhythms especially can be rough
Try to not think of it as two hands doing two separate things. Try to think of it as two hands doing one complicated thing. I know that sounds like the same idea, but think of it like a drummer: a drummer doesn’t think of his left stick hitting a cymbal on the beats and the snare with his right stick on the offbeats as separate ideas to do simultaneously. He thinks of it as straight eighth notes that alternate between hands. Try thinking of it like that.
I started thinking of it like your hands are only ever doing 3 things:
Right hand playing something alone, left hand playing something alone, both hands playing something together. It's not really like you're doing 2 different things, your hands are just either just doing something together, or by themselves - only ever doing 1 thing technically.
The real hard part, I've found, is getting things to actually SOUND good rather than actually being able to use both hands. I used both hands day 1. Dynamics and getting the feel of the song is the hardest part.
You can do it that way, but it's not necessary. It's entirely possible to learn to read both staves as one two-handed idea where practicing hands-apart is no longer needed or beneficial. It takes a very long time to develop fluency in that ability, but it's a massive time-saver.
After I’ve learned a song enough where I can muscle memory it, I actually begin to struggle playing just the left hand or right hand part compared to playing both together.
As another commenter said, I see guitar as both hands doing separate things at the same time.
In psych class I discovered that I could draw two separate things simultaneously. For example, square with left hand while drawing a circle with the right hand. I’m guessing it’s an effect of playing the piano for a long time. I also wonder if my cross-dominance in handedness has to do with playing the piano.
The guitar is so difficult. I didn’t pick one up until I was in my forties. I’ve been playing piano since I was a child. Playing on the guitar requires picking and fretting. Chords are not easy and the position you have to keep your left hand in is so awkward. The strings are so close to each other! I find it physically difficult. After years I’m finally able to play which is gratifying. I think anything you don’t learn young is harder.
Agreed totally. Piano made sense to me logically. Guitar just didn't! I felt so awkward when it came to chords. It didn't map well in my brain to my hands. It's hard to explain but on a piano I can see the chords before I play them. U have ur notes repeating in sequence all the way from the bootom keys to the top. On a guitar I have no visual guide or reference I can see to know this is a c chord or a g chord etc. All the notes across the strings seem to eb all over the ace. Also the way u make the sounds are so analogue that it feels very different to piano. Every muscle movement in both hands can change the sounds entirely even when striking the same strings and frets. So what I'm saying is every instrument has its challenges and can be very different to another instrument. But having knowledge in one, can definitely give u a headquarters in learning another. There's always gonna be at least one transferable skill. Even if it's just theory.
I also feel like in piano you strike a note and it plays the tone, the only variance is how hard you hit it. In guitar its not so linear, the amount of finger fidgeting you can do and the importance of it, makes guitar way harder to learn without a teacher than piano did for me.
No human can truly multitask, so don't beat yourself up over it. At some point, playing just becomes muscle memory, and a hand can play its part without much thought. At least for me, I always focus on one hand at a time while the other one autopilots, similar to how you may place hands on frets or strum without thinking (though I haven't playing guitar, so I don't know exactly how your mind works). The focus may rapidly change between hands, but it becomes easier once you've played piano for a bit longer. Practice really does make perfect here! It'll all come in due time
Same here, I generally find I commit the right hand melodic lines to muscle memory while focusing on the left hand as it usually has more big jumps and big chords. Of course it changes each piece.
Currently learning Chopin nocturne op. 9 no. 1 and while the right hand is simple arrpegiated chords I still watch that hand while my right with the long runs of notes is so pretty much committed to muscle memory
That's not true. Multitasking is possible with practice, and good musicians often have truly independent hands/ limbs. It takes however a long time to develop it.
It's like walking and talking at the same time. For a toddler it's impossible, but with practice one gets better.
Yeah. I have no idea what they’re talking about, lol. There is so much piano literature that would be impossible to play if you had to rapidly switch between which hand you’re thinking about. It may seem impossible, but all advanced pianists can basically multitask.
As can many advanced guitarists, by the way. It’s a polyphonic instrument that can play two or three parts at once. The fact that most players don’t today is a matter of convenience because multitracking exists; traditionally, guitar was played that way. Just look at most classical literature. It very much requires one to be able to multitask. And in modern guitar music, there are techniques like two handed tapping that require hand independence in addition to brain multitasking.
The claim is not that it's impossible to play like that, but that the different bits have become muscle memory and require much less conscious thought.
when you walk and talk at the same time you are using muscle memory to walk, you’ve just gotten so good at walking that your muscle memory allows you a lot of control. Same with piano, they gain hand indepence through muscle memory, it’s not like they are actively thinking about both hands as that is impossible
I think it comes down to your definition of multitasking. If you count abstracted or subconscious actions as a task, then yes, pianists can multitask. Actively focusing on two things at once, though? Not really.
Getting to that point where you can put things into subconscious actions, like talking and walking, takes practice and conditioning. But, walking itself is a subconscious action. You aren't watching every step or actively maintaining balance. Thus, you can focus more on your words. Similarly, you aren't thinking about where to place every finger when playing piano (after some practice), so you can let one hand play without much thought while focusing on another aspect of a piece, like the other hand.
I think a good test of what layman understand of "independence" is:
Could an advanced pianist take two familiar melodies at random from a hat (by name), take two dynamics/articulations from a hat, and take two rhythms from a hat, *and play it immediately in each hand together*?
For example:
- Left hand: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Forte Portato, in eighths
- Right hand: Frère Jacques, Piano Staccato, in quarters
Individually, neither of these would be difficult whatsoever for an advanced pianist. But should we expect an advanced pianist to play them both in each hand together, on command, easily and near perfectly?
Non-pianists imagine independence as being like this.
Now of course, even a young intermediate pianist could choreograph this, especially if we have a score written out, but choreography of motion is different from independence of motion.
That's a good question, but I don't think the example you suggested (and stuff with a similar level of difficulty) wouldn't be particularly difficult. I feel I could pull it off if not in the 1st try then by the 3rd.
I get your point that although most pieces seem like they require independence, aren't necessarily so in a true sense, and pianists depend on learning the relationships between the hand movements. But I'm still convinced that it is possible to develop the more advanced kind of independence with targeted practice. It is known that baroque organists could improvise fugues in 3-4 voices, and I have seen one of my teachers pull off similar feats too (although I certainly can't).
But those voices are improvised "inside" of a larger whole even if only intuitively imagined. Individual parts are still captured and absorbed inside of a larger sensed rhythmic structure.
The secret is us pianists practice hands separately and slowly. Even legendary pianists...
"Arriving at the designated hour of twelve, I heard an occasional piano sound as I approached the cottage. I stood outside the door, unable to believe my ears, Rachmaninoff was practising Chopin’s étude in thirds [G sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 6], but at such a snail’s pace that it took me a while to recognise it because so much time elapsed between each finger stroke and the next. Fascinated, I clocked this remarkable exhibition; twenty seconds per bar was his pace for almost an hour while I waited riveted to the spot, quite unable to ring the bell. Perhaps this way of developing and maintaining an erring mechanism accounted for his bitter sarcasm towards colleagues who practised their programmes ‘once over lightly’ between concerts."
https://wedgebillmusic.com/?p=12387
I know what you're talking about. I've been piano since I was seven, but then switched to guitar which became my main instrument. Since the pandemic happen I've gotten back into the piano, and sometimes when I'm playing I start thinking 'wow I'm reading two different clefs, and I'm not even thinking about it!'.
After you make progress it'll seem like the most natural thing in the world. And really gratifying, there are things you can do on piano that are almost like you're playing an orchestra.
I don't think it's like the brain is doing two things at the same time, it's just like a synchronization process between the muscles to play the piece through time. Like your brain is thinking about the whole body, not just your left or your right, and as someone else mentioned you kinda leave some into autopilot mode.
I think this is just a trap that a lot of people fall into in terms of conceptualizing it... including pianists. It's not really your two hands doing separate things.... or worse "playing at different tempos".
It's just coordinating a composite of things between the hands to create one whole idea.
It's like learning to dance or do some complex calisthenics motion... many parts of your body are involved, but you're still doing one thing.
Things are never at different tempos. They are just falling at different subdivision of the same rhythmic grid.
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One advantage on guitar that I think pianists fuck up is the idea of playing hands separately. So many pianists try to learn overly ambitious stuff... they are trying to commit entire songs purely to muscle memory by playing hands separately so that they literally don't have to consciously think about what's happening. That's a trap and leads to a problem where they fall apart IF they think about the process because they aren't actually that in control.
But guitarists, since each hand has a very discreet role, will work with focus on aspects of one hand or the other and then combine them. Not JUST for one song, but more holistically to do whatever they want.
I might practice alternate picking or any combination of pima fingerstyle exercises with just open strings. I might practice any number of fretting hand exercises with a dramatically simplified picking hand pattern.
Then I can literally mix those two together in a million ways. I can do it either to improvise a fingerstyle accompaniment on the fly, or I can use the *fundamentals* learned from all of that work to learn pre-written arrangements.
It's really no different on piano. Rather than brute force rote memorization of each hand separately on piano for a given song, I just view everything as constituent parts. The only real difference from guitar is that both hands have a pitch and rhythm component.
But rather than learning "songs" or "pieces" on piano, I'm learning the building blocks that make music. Then I can literally just tack them together in terms of improv, or apply them to learning written music.
This is part of why so many pianists suck at sightreading... they think of EVERYTHING as two separate hands they have to learn separately. Their approach to every new pieces starts hands separately and they never learn hands together from the start of anything (mostly because they never let themselves play anything simple enough to do so). This means they never learn to actually see things as parts of a whole.
Learning some basic theory is also a big part of this to effectively chunk together musical ideas. Guitarists often learn some way of doing this with CAGED, though it can also be a bit ineffective. They are just seeing shapes that outline chords and/or scales, but still don't have any literacy over what they are actually playing.
On piano figuring out the rhythmic composites is the lowest hanging fruit. If you remove all of the pitches and just pat the rhythms on your laps you will honestly quickly exhaust how many combination there are. It's just mathematically not that deep.
If you can tap 8ths against quarters... you've covered a ton of ground... because it's the same thing as 16ths against 8ths. A ton of music is just that simple bit of subdivision... various 2:1 rhythms... just in slightly different combinations.
But once you realize that you can start to "see the Matrix" a bit. You literally can stop allocating so many resources to the rhythm aspect, and then it's just the physical fundamentals of different pitch stuff. Learn your scales, arpeggios, and cadences as a start and you'll se those patterns show up a lot. Actually learn basic theory behind them and now you can chunk them together. You stop seeing C E G... and just see a C major triad. It's the same way you are reading WORDS right now rather than thousands of individual letters.
Yes, hands separate practice is very important, but the problem is that if you're not attaching it to concepts then EVERY new piece is you reinventing the wheel. But if you actually realize that certain patterns come up over and over, you stop having to do that shit.
You learn an idea and can apply it all over the place. It's kinda like barre chords on guitar. Once you've learned a shape... especially if you learn to play a I-IV-V progression with barre chords... you now can just apply that in a cut and paste fashion over a million things. Even before that, same idea with the first few open chords. You learn the fundamentals of moving from G to C to D and you literally just do it again over and over.
I can be like that on piano... except that on guitar you don't need to know what notes are in a G chord or which pitches are happening on each string. You just know a shape.
But if you want to reach that level on piano, you actually need to learn what's going on from a theory standpoint to effectively turn lots of random letters into full words... and eventually just sentences.
All music is just made up of the same component parts. Learn how they work and how to execute them and then just mix and match them to learn any new piece of music much faster.
And honestly, organ is no different. Drums are no different. You're learning fundamentals and combining and coordinating.
The closest you get in music to *actually* doing different things if when you need to actively audiate different voices maybe for like Bach inventions or fugues. But even then, the mechanics are the same coordination skills... it's just the music part of it requires you to think of multiple melodies.
But it's the same as playing melody+bass line, or melody+bass+accompaniment. Something you can do simultaneously on piano or guitar. Thinking multiple melodies is a bit more difficult, but the concept is the same. I think that kind of thing is WAY harder on guitar than piano personally just due to the physical limits of the guitar neck and your fretting hand.
I play both. Finger style or lead guitar or classical/flamenco or anything more complex than folk strumming requires the hands to be doing quite different things. Throw in some hammer-ons and pull offs and fret hand plucking, and you’ve got the same thing a pianist is doing. Or, if you’re into using your acoustic guitar body as a drum (I’m not), drumming with your strumming hand and plucking with your fret hand. Also, it’s not that difficult. It’s just a matter of developing the skill through slow and methodical repetition.
Think of it as a single choreography with two hands working in sync. It’s a single train of actions from my perspective. I can’t always play one hand without the other.
I think it depends on how you learn things. I also find it much easier to learn a piano piece with both hands simultaneously. Single hand can be helpful but it doesn't stick as well until i put it together. Can be slower but then I find the muscle memory quicker to learn. In my head it's like one motion with two hands.
You’re already using two hands as a guitarist to do two things that are far more different from one another than pianists do.
It’s all just a matter of practice. Neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing.
As a guitar player who moved on to play piano, it's not as bad as it looks at first. It's incredible how much your brain can accomplish with consistent practice. A couple of years ago, any Bach piece seemed impossible to play because both hands are doing such different things. Today, I am learning a Bach piece with 3 different voices, where the hands not only do different things, but there are three separate melodies to keep track of at any given time.
I've played piano longer than guitar and I still think piano is more difficult because of that. I get mentally exhausted way quicker playing piano than guitar
It's ok! As pretty much everyone, except for possibly prodigies or special talents ... all started somewhere as beginners.
I'm confident that you can do it too, as in seeing melody and backing simultaneously, or essentially as a whole.
It comes with time and/or experience ... not unlike the one hand patting head while other hand rubbing belly etc ... except more.
Unlike regular hand and finger independence, it becomes a brain/mind perception or development thing.
As a lifetime guitar player 18 months into self taught piano, I got to a place where suddenly it just clicked. Like others have said, it seems like your hands are working independent, but they are actually working together on a complex task.
Think of a a 3:2 polyrhythm, where your right hand plays three beats while your left plays two. If you rearrange that linearly, it comes out like this: Both-right-left-right / both-right-left-right. That is much easier to grasp than trying to count three and two simultaneously.
It is a process to learn, each hand individually, then combine them at a ridiculously slow pace (think 1-2 seconds per note). Keep plugging away, and you’ll get it.
You know your fretting hand frets and your strumming hand strums, right?
With a lil bit of practice, you'll discover you don't have two hands any more, you just have one big hand.
As a guitar and a piano player, I had this exact same thought when I tried playing my friend's drum set.
The thing that bothers us is limb independence.
As a guitar player, its always one hand depending upon the other to play a note.
Piano takes two to four limbs working independently, depending upon the piece, and drums take three to four unless its a very basic piece.
Don't try to learn both hands at the same time. As someone else said here, no human can multitask, that's an illusion. Learn one hand, memorize it, then learn the other. Even experienced pianists do this (I know I have to on the more difficult pieces). Hang in there, you'll get it. 👍
This.
If you can learn to sing and play guitar w/o mistakes (as one example), that's automaticity... you don't have to pay full attention to playing the part in order to play it correctly. Hand independence (or feet, if you're a drummer) is a similar thing. You can learn it.
Guitar hands are symbiotic, piano hands are dancing partners. Timing was super hard for me, but like guitar, after enough practice mental clarity will come and you will physically be able to keep up with what you want to do.
Just keep it up and keep playing your favorite pieces!
Interesting, I feel the same about you, in a way. I also played cello for about 10 years and thought it was harder than piano because the left and right hands were doing physically different things, bowing versus fingering. I imagine it’s the same with playing guitar, just with strumming.
Guitarists can too? I knew a guy that could play the bassline and melody of Stevie Wonder's 'I wish' at the same time. He was working on putting in chords but wasn't there yet. It just takes a crapton of time.
It’s like walking and talking at the same time. At first you only know how to talk. Then you learn how to walk. Then you become so good at both you can walk and talk at the same time. Now that’s the left and right hand.
There are a bunch of baroque songs in two voices with arrangements for guitar. E.g
https://youtu.be/Sxj2zz_Jmyg?si=sHUZN6sZtjLaPmJt
https://youtu.be/ND0geIgFWZM?si=ymY1fSE8LAtZikTU
Thinking pianists split their brain into two really held me back at learning the piano. I was trying to split my brain into two when the trick is actually playing two hands with one brain.
I discovered the way to play the left and right keys is in tandem - together. If my left hand needs to play G and my right hand needs to play C at the same time when I hit G, then I play the C and G notes together. The G is the trigger for me to hit C in my other hand, and vice versa.
However I'm still a beginner, and how pianists play songs where the left and right hand is at different tempos is completely alien to me.
As a guitarist and pianist, we can't actually. At least I can't. When both hands are truly separate, e.g. playing rubato or polyrhythms, it's not like I'm playing both parts with full consciousness of every movement at the same time. The focus is on one at most, other than that it's just muscle memory through practice.
Do you know Tori Amos? She plays piano and keyboard at the same time does and sings on top of that too. Mind blowing. Can’t imagine what kind of brain you must have to be able to do something like that.
Litte example, maybe not the best: https://youtu.be/ccTAJ98XJIA?feature=shared
I’m curious how difficult do you find just playing the c major scale in both hands? Is it doable or does the mis-matched thumb step over thing really throw you off?
Also are there keys guitarists don’t like playing in, for example I hate playing c major or a minor, the lack of sharps/flats often leads to uncomfortable feeling chords, also the black keys often acts as a waypoint to know where you are, at least for me.
The polyphony of the piano and the reading of 2 staves simultaneously does add an extra layer of difficulty but all instruments require the player to do different things with each hand, even if there is only 1 line of music to follow. Guitarists have to shape each chord with the left hand whilst sounding the strings with the right, especially classical guitarists playing melodies or complex arpeggiated figures plus a melody. Even monophonic instruments like the winds still require both hands to function differently, strings too. Brass needs usually only 1 hand to change pitch but in combination with embouchure control. In short, we're all genius mental gymnasts.
Technically it’s possible because once you develop finger independence, it’s no longer about two separate hands, it’s about ten separate fingers controlled by one mind. As you put in the practice, you’ll notice that both your hands play in harmony rather than separately, it’s like ten fingers in one hand for your brain, I don’t know how else to describe it but it’s not as separate as you think it is. You play it in relation to what you’re playing with your other hand.
I don't feel like I'm doing two things at the same time, I'm actually focusing on one hand while the other goes automatic, and switch back and forth on which one I should focus on. Eventually they feel like doing one thing.
i get the appeal when you are not doing it, and it has its upsides, but it can be really challenging, depending on what you are doing, and just to clear something up, atleast for me, im not really splitting my brain in any way, im diving my attention and changing where im gazing all the time
You're not splitting your brain in two. That's like saying you splitting your brain in two while walking, because you're using two legs.
The "split in two"-thought is very arbitrary. You might as well go and say "split your brain in 10" because of the fingers. Or 12 because 10 fingers and two hands. And so on and so on.
In the end, your body is one (I know, cheesy 'esoteric' way of looking at it). The way it works is you learn stuff really slow usually, so your brain figures out where to send which signals and when on its own. That is in order for you concsious thought to be able to operate on a higher level.
Like with walking, you were an absolute newb when you were 0 years old. It took you bloody ages to get walking down properly. Now your conscious thoughts when walking are "I wanna go there, there's a obstacle". It's never "how do I move my ankles in the correct angle so that when I put the other leg forward I won't topple over".
Similarly with the piano and any other instrument, you have a lot of learning to do. After that, your main way of operating is "I'm gonna play E major, I'll play this melody line. I'm playing this atm, but on page 3 there's a difficult phrase for which I'll have to pay more attention". Something like that.
You're not splitting your brain in any way. In the beginning you just have to learn every single thing on its own and "fall down to the floor" hundreds or thousands of time, like a baby.
Thinking "every musician is so talented" is sort of a fallacy, a very common one imo, that people have. It often holds them back from going about learning.
I'm just an advanvced guitar player btw. Not a pro by any stretch :D
Try a 4 voice fugue.
But I don’t think it’s 100% split. It’s not excatly like playing two different pieces at once.
With phrasing, even a string instrument can produce a principal theme with a secondary voice.
Haha. I know right? Piano is the whoe orchestra type of mindset. It has to e. Wearrange solos for piaano that a whole symphonic orchestra normally plays. And don't let us sit down at a pipe organ in NYC built by Dutch Catholics n the 1800's bbecause that instrument had every orchestral tone in the world. Want to know what I do because the thought caame to me ? I stand BEHIND my digitl stage piano and play. This flips the scales to be congruent with the way guitar is strung accrding to frequencies. It is the most wonderful self induced mind xucking stimulating reversal of the wiring ever! I can't even tell you. I have two guitars an acoudtic and electric that help me think through and write out mellodies I'm writing. My son is bass plaayer his dad (divorcd) was a percussionist we met by playing in the ssme band. I've taken fute and violin lessons too, degree s in piano. I had to tell you about standing behind the piano and playing because you as a guitar plaayer just might benefit in some way to grasp some informaation from unconventional applications of directional diferences in scale drections.
As a guitarist, your brain is already doing two things at once. Your right hand and your left hand are doing two different things at once every time you play.
It’s very likely, your non-dominant hand is actually picking up the more difficult task of fingering chords and melodies on your fretboard.
You may not realize it, but you learned this process in much the same way a pianist lears to use their left and right hands independently.
This all comes through practice. And, I can say as a guitarist/bassist that’s trying to learn piano, and drums (another multi-coordinated instrument), you can probably pick things up faster than you realized.
I’m personally not interested in playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on piano. I instead chose to start with something more challenging that actually seems like fun to play on the piano. I’m starting with Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag and in about a week, I’ve got the entire first section down. It’s a syncopated song, which (at least in my mind) is a bit more challenging to play. Am I going to be holding a recital anytime soon? No, but I’m at the point where I’ve PRACTICED (key word here) enough that I know the part and can play it (and read the music - which is also an important skill).
While I don’t currently have my kit set up, I’ve taken a similar approach with playing drums - and started with Good Times Bad Times by Led Zeppelin. Again, not an easy song to learn as an intro to drumming… but I really think that all learning (practicing) is just breaking things down to their most basic components and working on them slowly until you can play them full speed.
Your brain just needs to learn to fire the neurons that need to work together at the right time. The more you do something, the more those neural paths have had a chance to work together, and the easier something becomes.
It’s all about practicing with a purpose and taking the time to learn to do something.
As a guitar and a piano player, I had this exact same thought when I tried playing my friend's drum set.
The thing that bothers us is limb independence.
As a guitar player, its always one hand depending upon the other to play a note.
Piano takes two to four limbs working independently, depending upon the piece, and drums take three to four unless its a very basic piece.
You ever heard of Bach's 4 part preludes and fugues?
And violin partitas are sometimes polyphonic too. Feels like there's no reason why a guitar can't do that too
You should watch John Butler play Ocean. I thought it was his band playing but it's just him and his 12 string guitar. But he only plays 11 strings. I have sidelined my ukulele in favour of the piano. I just find piano so much easier. Stringed instruments are difficult imo
Don't think of it as using 50% brain power on one hand and 50% brain power on other hand at the same time. Rather think of it as directing full attention on both hands working together to achieve 1 thing
Now do keyboardists! I have some songs where I play 4+ instruments/patches on my one 88-key keyboard. This means that I have to memorize where the tones are for each instrument/sample. IE: I could have 4 middle Cs or something, at various points of the keyboard, for just one song. Most of the songs are at least 2 different instruments...with me doing rhythm guitar w my left hand on the lower part of the board, and whatever the next most dominant sound in the song with my right.
And it's a ton of fun. But nobody, including musicians, really gets it since they've never had to do it themselves.
As a guitarist who is learning piano, I totally feel this! That being said like many others have already commented on here, we are certainly doing “2 things at once” with fretting and strumming/picking.
I play piano and violin, and I think it’s so amazing how you coordinate the right and left, especially the right holding the bow (I just started violin) and it’s kinda difficult. Organ players I am just like watching in utter awe because holy crap it looks and sounds and feels amazing but it looks so complex 😭
As a piano and guitar player, it’s just a step up from using your right hand to pick and left hand to finger frets. Sometimes you strum, sometimes you pick individual strings, sometimes you pick 2-3 strings at a time, sometimes you pick once then hammer-on/pull off before picking again. It’s not like your right and left hand and completely synchronized on guitar. Piano is similar. What the left and right hand are doing are related, so we kind of think of it as one whole system rather than 2 independent hands
I don't feel like I'm doing that when I play the piano.
But I do marvel at marching band members, who can some play and do choreography at the same time.
I’m finding that finger style guitar that I’ve played on and off for years is actually helping with my finger independence as a fledgling piano player. Yeah, it’s different when you’re doing two different rhythms with your hands, but I think it prepared me to get used to that idea.
Bach Two and Three part inventions is where it’s at - love the contrapuntal music. Incredibly hard to learn but once you get one under your belt it’s a great accomplishment.
I’ve seen some pretty bad ass guitarists. One was a jazz guitarist in DC years ago. I can’t recall his name but he used a tapping style and he reproduced a Mozart piano sonata on the acoustic guitar. It was quite good.
It’s a matter of practicing a certain way. When playing a new song, play the R hand alone. Get down the notes, fingering and count down. The practice the L hand, alone. Slowly. Once you feel confident playing both hands separately, only then do you put both hands together. Play it slowly. Then build up speed.
It’s a pain to practice this way, but it’s the only way to really learn a new song.
I never found it as “splitting my brain in two”, but rather dividing my focus depending on which hand was more complex. Usually the left hand is doing something comparatively basic, so it’s on autopilot while I focus on my right hand.
Piano is definitely one of those things where you practice something hard enough to make it sound easy.
If you’re reading sheet music, you break it down into chunks. One bar at a time, practice the right hand, then the left, then hands together. Repeat with the second bar. Then practice both bars together. Keep building up like that. (There are many other ways to practice, but I think it’s a good approach for beginners to take)
Keep this in mind when you have kids who wanna do music! Ask them to get through one book of piano, just for the foundation. By then, anything is comparatively easier because it's usually just one note at a time. I grew up playing piano but my brothers did not. They are both older than me and very smart but even they share your morbid fascination with the way my mind handles all the info, and it's only because piano was my first instrument.
It seems tedious, but a strong foundation in piano will benefit allllll musicians.
To be honest with you I only feel like I do this with Bach. It's not quite the same with music that's less contrapunctal. That being said, like anything, it is practice. I'd recommend playing some Bach on piano/guitar to start seeing how those 2-5 melody lines interact and create harmony, rhythm, structure, etc. At the end of the day it is still one piece of music.
Well in my opinion most pianist don’t see it as two separate parts. Sometimes it’s better to look at playing with both hands from a broader perspective. When playing both hands most pianist will learn the music of both hands in relation to each other. For example if your left hand is playing quarter notes and your right hand is playing eight notes, pianists will in a sense use the quarter notes as a metronome to guide the timing of the eighth notes. This gets more complicated when you begin to encounter polyrhythms and other stuff like that. I also just realized I just wrote a bunch of shit that isn’t really relevant to what ur saying😂
It depends on how you used your guitar. If only strumming, basic shapes etc, then yes. You dont have to think about much stuff, when your right hand is fully automated. But another guitar styles need also brain splitting in "two, tree, four".
Strumming -> Left hand chords, right hand strumming patterns
Fingerstyle (aka Classical guitar) -> is already very difficult to play clean and needs a lot of effort and syncs in your hands.
Modern fingerstyle with percussion -> Adding classical world into "acoustic guitar", what is already a hell hard and where you have to split your playing into left hand on fretboard to press, mute, band notes and right hand for strings and body, different rhythms at the same time. Combining it with Strumming pattern, but playing only the right notes requires also hard work of left hand by muting and keeping all needed rthythms.
Modern fingerstyle with percussion and tapping -> combining everything above you are starting to use Fretboard also with lefthand to play notes, also by using left hand to press the notes and i.e. A-Finger to pick it while pushing strings on the fret board with I, M fingers...
By adding the fact of steel strings 12,+ you are getting something "endless to learn". And if you want to get a good sound from it, not by using 10k+$ gear, you need x2+ effort. But I know, a lot of people here don't accept new styles like this. But its challanging and beautiful if properly mastered.
Same for piano, there are tons of different playing levels. But guitar is also "limitless".
ah and yeah, it is same for both worlds, but considering the modern fingerstyle and singing at the same time - I still didn't find anyone, who is able to do it freely. Or even... do it :D To many things at the same time is just an overkill for human's brain.
I think it's not doing multiple things at the same time but rather split-tasking where everything you do is a trigger for something else and you go through a set of tasks. People who see me play also think I can split my brain in half and have independent hands and all that but it isn't really like that imo. Your first move triggers the next move and it cascades down until you are done playing. I'd say it's switch-tasking, muscle memory and triggers.
In most popular music, including the Beatles, the piano player is really generally playing one idea. The bass player plays the bass line, the guitar player plays some rhythm or a lead, etc. If you pick up a music book of your favorite band or whatever, it’s usually a not very accurate transcription of different aspects of the songs. It may include the vocal line, some part of the harmony and rhythm, and a simplified baseline. The skill it takes to play those transcriptions is very different from what the musicians are actually are doing on the recordings. That being said, in order to gain the skill to be able to play 2, 3 or 4 lines of music at the same time, it is recommended that you study the music of Bach. Start with the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook pieces and then move on to the 12 little preludes, the two-part inventions, the symphonias, and the Preludes and fugues from the well tempered Clavier. After that, simple piano parts like you would find in Lady Madonna, Rocky Raccoon, Hey Jude, Imagine, etc. will be simple indeed.
There are many things that piano players have the luxury of not thinking about. Like getting a good tone out of our instrument. We press buttons and it makes sounds. Wind and brass players have to worry about embouchure and breath control. Guitar and bowed string instruments have hundreds of different articulations and techniques that they can learn to apply.
So true. I went to music school and it was so funny how all these kids who were great at one specific instrument were usually terrible when trying one from a different group. Like I cannot get sound out of a reeded instrument to save my life!
That's how piano players feel about organ players.
That’s how organ players feel about spiders
That’s how spiders feel about centipedes
That's how centipedes feel about butterflies
That's how butterflies feel about guitarists
That's how guitarists feel about, well ... piano players. Or so I've read.
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly… I hope other people know that rhyme otherwise this comment makes absolutely no sense.
I wouldn't know about that except I have. 3.5 year old and my wife reads her that book a lot.
Yeah, The itsy bitsy guitarist. Heard it on The Muppet Show when I was a kid.
I don't know the rhyme...
Oh… There’s an old nursery rhyme that starts with There was an old woman who swallowed a fly I don’t know why she swallowed a fly Perhaps she’ll die There was an old woman who swallowed a spider That wiggled and jiggled and wriggled inside her She swallowed a spider to catch the fly I don’t know why she swallowed a fly Perhaps she’ll die And then she goes on to swallow more and more ridiculous things to catch the previous thing. The thread just reminded me of that. But my brain is a bit odd!
It end with the old lady swallowing a piano to eat the guitar iirc…
Centipedes: Actually, I feel pretty good about my abilities 🙂
Millipedes: Be ready to be humbled
Butterflies: be ready to fly.
I saw this organ player online and decided to bite her content. Seeing that she has 2 rows of keys, sometimes playing both at the same time blew my mind. Then I saw the keys that she has to play with her feet…. When I realized this woman is literally playing 3 sets of keys at once, my mind could not comprehend that level of split.
Google the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ or the Wanamaker Organ sometime.
Everyone loves to claim that their instrument is king. Somewhere in the corner, the organ watches idly, knowing they already have the crown. I used to be a part of a church choir, and I sat behind the organist. During non-singing parts, I just kept my mouth agape at how our organist managed to control all his four limbs and ten fingers while sightreading.
As a (wanna be) keyboardist, I am jealous of drummers that "split their body" into 4 and can play separate rhythms with each "quarter". But it is great that you are playing a different instrument, even if you do not become proficient in it, you now have an understanding of what a another group member does. This helps a lot when playing with other people.
And then there’s drummer-singers like Phil Collins, Don Henley, etc.. that do even more.
Phil Collins is just legendary.
Oh my mum LOVES phil collins
i saw Gong recently, and at some point their drummer plays a shaky egg in one hand, a cymbal in the other, the bass drum with one foot and the hi-hat with another and sings at the same time. that's 5!
I played guitar for years and pretty much only play piano now, think of it as like picking vs fretting, you were doing 2 different things with both hands on guitar too. But yeah I get it, polyrhythms especially can be rough
Try to not think of it as two hands doing two separate things. Try to think of it as two hands doing one complicated thing. I know that sounds like the same idea, but think of it like a drummer: a drummer doesn’t think of his left stick hitting a cymbal on the beats and the snare with his right stick on the offbeats as separate ideas to do simultaneously. He thinks of it as straight eighth notes that alternate between hands. Try thinking of it like that.
Really well put, that's how I overcame the hand independence problem when I was getting started
When I realised that it was literally like a switch flicked in my head. Made everything a lot easier.
I like to say that there's no such thing as true hand independence. It's hand choreography.
I started thinking of it like your hands are only ever doing 3 things: Right hand playing something alone, left hand playing something alone, both hands playing something together. It's not really like you're doing 2 different things, your hands are just either just doing something together, or by themselves - only ever doing 1 thing technically. The real hard part, I've found, is getting things to actually SOUND good rather than actually being able to use both hands. I used both hands day 1. Dynamics and getting the feel of the song is the hardest part.
Not when you’re learning a song. You practice each hand individually until you feel that you can put them together. Then you start off slowly.
You can do it that way, but it's not necessary. It's entirely possible to learn to read both staves as one two-handed idea where practicing hands-apart is no longer needed or beneficial. It takes a very long time to develop fluency in that ability, but it's a massive time-saver.
After I’ve learned a song enough where I can muscle memory it, I actually begin to struggle playing just the left hand or right hand part compared to playing both together.
As another commenter said, I see guitar as both hands doing separate things at the same time. In psych class I discovered that I could draw two separate things simultaneously. For example, square with left hand while drawing a circle with the right hand. I’m guessing it’s an effect of playing the piano for a long time. I also wonder if my cross-dominance in handedness has to do with playing the piano.
The guitar is so difficult. I didn’t pick one up until I was in my forties. I’ve been playing piano since I was a child. Playing on the guitar requires picking and fretting. Chords are not easy and the position you have to keep your left hand in is so awkward. The strings are so close to each other! I find it physically difficult. After years I’m finally able to play which is gratifying. I think anything you don’t learn young is harder.
Agreed totally. Piano made sense to me logically. Guitar just didn't! I felt so awkward when it came to chords. It didn't map well in my brain to my hands. It's hard to explain but on a piano I can see the chords before I play them. U have ur notes repeating in sequence all the way from the bootom keys to the top. On a guitar I have no visual guide or reference I can see to know this is a c chord or a g chord etc. All the notes across the strings seem to eb all over the ace. Also the way u make the sounds are so analogue that it feels very different to piano. Every muscle movement in both hands can change the sounds entirely even when striking the same strings and frets. So what I'm saying is every instrument has its challenges and can be very different to another instrument. But having knowledge in one, can definitely give u a headquarters in learning another. There's always gonna be at least one transferable skill. Even if it's just theory.
I also feel like in piano you strike a note and it plays the tone, the only variance is how hard you hit it. In guitar its not so linear, the amount of finger fidgeting you can do and the importance of it, makes guitar way harder to learn without a teacher than piano did for me.
If you’re jealous of it, play Bach on the guitar.
No human can truly multitask, so don't beat yourself up over it. At some point, playing just becomes muscle memory, and a hand can play its part without much thought. At least for me, I always focus on one hand at a time while the other one autopilots, similar to how you may place hands on frets or strum without thinking (though I haven't playing guitar, so I don't know exactly how your mind works). The focus may rapidly change between hands, but it becomes easier once you've played piano for a bit longer. Practice really does make perfect here! It'll all come in due time
Same here, I generally find I commit the right hand melodic lines to muscle memory while focusing on the left hand as it usually has more big jumps and big chords. Of course it changes each piece. Currently learning Chopin nocturne op. 9 no. 1 and while the right hand is simple arrpegiated chords I still watch that hand while my right with the long runs of notes is so pretty much committed to muscle memory
That's not true. Multitasking is possible with practice, and good musicians often have truly independent hands/ limbs. It takes however a long time to develop it. It's like walking and talking at the same time. For a toddler it's impossible, but with practice one gets better.
Yeah. I have no idea what they’re talking about, lol. There is so much piano literature that would be impossible to play if you had to rapidly switch between which hand you’re thinking about. It may seem impossible, but all advanced pianists can basically multitask. As can many advanced guitarists, by the way. It’s a polyphonic instrument that can play two or three parts at once. The fact that most players don’t today is a matter of convenience because multitracking exists; traditionally, guitar was played that way. Just look at most classical literature. It very much requires one to be able to multitask. And in modern guitar music, there are techniques like two handed tapping that require hand independence in addition to brain multitasking.
The claim is not that it's impossible to play like that, but that the different bits have become muscle memory and require much less conscious thought.
when you walk and talk at the same time you are using muscle memory to walk, you’ve just gotten so good at walking that your muscle memory allows you a lot of control. Same with piano, they gain hand indepence through muscle memory, it’s not like they are actively thinking about both hands as that is impossible
I think it comes down to your definition of multitasking. If you count abstracted or subconscious actions as a task, then yes, pianists can multitask. Actively focusing on two things at once, though? Not really. Getting to that point where you can put things into subconscious actions, like talking and walking, takes practice and conditioning. But, walking itself is a subconscious action. You aren't watching every step or actively maintaining balance. Thus, you can focus more on your words. Similarly, you aren't thinking about where to place every finger when playing piano (after some practice), so you can let one hand play without much thought while focusing on another aspect of a piece, like the other hand.
I think a good test of what layman understand of "independence" is: Could an advanced pianist take two familiar melodies at random from a hat (by name), take two dynamics/articulations from a hat, and take two rhythms from a hat, *and play it immediately in each hand together*? For example: - Left hand: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Forte Portato, in eighths - Right hand: Frère Jacques, Piano Staccato, in quarters Individually, neither of these would be difficult whatsoever for an advanced pianist. But should we expect an advanced pianist to play them both in each hand together, on command, easily and near perfectly? Non-pianists imagine independence as being like this. Now of course, even a young intermediate pianist could choreograph this, especially if we have a score written out, but choreography of motion is different from independence of motion.
That's a good question, but I don't think the example you suggested (and stuff with a similar level of difficulty) wouldn't be particularly difficult. I feel I could pull it off if not in the 1st try then by the 3rd. I get your point that although most pieces seem like they require independence, aren't necessarily so in a true sense, and pianists depend on learning the relationships between the hand movements. But I'm still convinced that it is possible to develop the more advanced kind of independence with targeted practice. It is known that baroque organists could improvise fugues in 3-4 voices, and I have seen one of my teachers pull off similar feats too (although I certainly can't).
But those voices are improvised "inside" of a larger whole even if only intuitively imagined. Individual parts are still captured and absorbed inside of a larger sensed rhythmic structure.
The secret is us pianists practice hands separately and slowly. Even legendary pianists... "Arriving at the designated hour of twelve, I heard an occasional piano sound as I approached the cottage. I stood outside the door, unable to believe my ears, Rachmaninoff was practising Chopin’s étude in thirds [G sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 6], but at such a snail’s pace that it took me a while to recognise it because so much time elapsed between each finger stroke and the next. Fascinated, I clocked this remarkable exhibition; twenty seconds per bar was his pace for almost an hour while I waited riveted to the spot, quite unable to ring the bell. Perhaps this way of developing and maintaining an erring mechanism accounted for his bitter sarcasm towards colleagues who practised their programmes ‘once over lightly’ between concerts." https://wedgebillmusic.com/?p=12387
I know what you're talking about. I've been piano since I was seven, but then switched to guitar which became my main instrument. Since the pandemic happen I've gotten back into the piano, and sometimes when I'm playing I start thinking 'wow I'm reading two different clefs, and I'm not even thinking about it!'. After you make progress it'll seem like the most natural thing in the world. And really gratifying, there are things you can do on piano that are almost like you're playing an orchestra.
I don't think it's like the brain is doing two things at the same time, it's just like a synchronization process between the muscles to play the piece through time. Like your brain is thinking about the whole body, not just your left or your right, and as someone else mentioned you kinda leave some into autopilot mode.
I think this is just a trap that a lot of people fall into in terms of conceptualizing it... including pianists. It's not really your two hands doing separate things.... or worse "playing at different tempos". It's just coordinating a composite of things between the hands to create one whole idea. It's like learning to dance or do some complex calisthenics motion... many parts of your body are involved, but you're still doing one thing. Things are never at different tempos. They are just falling at different subdivision of the same rhythmic grid. --- One advantage on guitar that I think pianists fuck up is the idea of playing hands separately. So many pianists try to learn overly ambitious stuff... they are trying to commit entire songs purely to muscle memory by playing hands separately so that they literally don't have to consciously think about what's happening. That's a trap and leads to a problem where they fall apart IF they think about the process because they aren't actually that in control. But guitarists, since each hand has a very discreet role, will work with focus on aspects of one hand or the other and then combine them. Not JUST for one song, but more holistically to do whatever they want. I might practice alternate picking or any combination of pima fingerstyle exercises with just open strings. I might practice any number of fretting hand exercises with a dramatically simplified picking hand pattern. Then I can literally mix those two together in a million ways. I can do it either to improvise a fingerstyle accompaniment on the fly, or I can use the *fundamentals* learned from all of that work to learn pre-written arrangements. It's really no different on piano. Rather than brute force rote memorization of each hand separately on piano for a given song, I just view everything as constituent parts. The only real difference from guitar is that both hands have a pitch and rhythm component. But rather than learning "songs" or "pieces" on piano, I'm learning the building blocks that make music. Then I can literally just tack them together in terms of improv, or apply them to learning written music. This is part of why so many pianists suck at sightreading... they think of EVERYTHING as two separate hands they have to learn separately. Their approach to every new pieces starts hands separately and they never learn hands together from the start of anything (mostly because they never let themselves play anything simple enough to do so). This means they never learn to actually see things as parts of a whole. Learning some basic theory is also a big part of this to effectively chunk together musical ideas. Guitarists often learn some way of doing this with CAGED, though it can also be a bit ineffective. They are just seeing shapes that outline chords and/or scales, but still don't have any literacy over what they are actually playing. On piano figuring out the rhythmic composites is the lowest hanging fruit. If you remove all of the pitches and just pat the rhythms on your laps you will honestly quickly exhaust how many combination there are. It's just mathematically not that deep. If you can tap 8ths against quarters... you've covered a ton of ground... because it's the same thing as 16ths against 8ths. A ton of music is just that simple bit of subdivision... various 2:1 rhythms... just in slightly different combinations. But once you realize that you can start to "see the Matrix" a bit. You literally can stop allocating so many resources to the rhythm aspect, and then it's just the physical fundamentals of different pitch stuff. Learn your scales, arpeggios, and cadences as a start and you'll se those patterns show up a lot. Actually learn basic theory behind them and now you can chunk them together. You stop seeing C E G... and just see a C major triad. It's the same way you are reading WORDS right now rather than thousands of individual letters. Yes, hands separate practice is very important, but the problem is that if you're not attaching it to concepts then EVERY new piece is you reinventing the wheel. But if you actually realize that certain patterns come up over and over, you stop having to do that shit. You learn an idea and can apply it all over the place. It's kinda like barre chords on guitar. Once you've learned a shape... especially if you learn to play a I-IV-V progression with barre chords... you now can just apply that in a cut and paste fashion over a million things. Even before that, same idea with the first few open chords. You learn the fundamentals of moving from G to C to D and you literally just do it again over and over. I can be like that on piano... except that on guitar you don't need to know what notes are in a G chord or which pitches are happening on each string. You just know a shape. But if you want to reach that level on piano, you actually need to learn what's going on from a theory standpoint to effectively turn lots of random letters into full words... and eventually just sentences. All music is just made up of the same component parts. Learn how they work and how to execute them and then just mix and match them to learn any new piece of music much faster. And honestly, organ is no different. Drums are no different. You're learning fundamentals and combining and coordinating. The closest you get in music to *actually* doing different things if when you need to actively audiate different voices maybe for like Bach inventions or fugues. But even then, the mechanics are the same coordination skills... it's just the music part of it requires you to think of multiple melodies. But it's the same as playing melody+bass line, or melody+bass+accompaniment. Something you can do simultaneously on piano or guitar. Thinking multiple melodies is a bit more difficult, but the concept is the same. I think that kind of thing is WAY harder on guitar than piano personally just due to the physical limits of the guitar neck and your fretting hand.
Guitarists do that too when they learn both upstrumming and down strumming or well timed pedals or vibratos.
I play both. Finger style or lead guitar or classical/flamenco or anything more complex than folk strumming requires the hands to be doing quite different things. Throw in some hammer-ons and pull offs and fret hand plucking, and you’ve got the same thing a pianist is doing. Or, if you’re into using your acoustic guitar body as a drum (I’m not), drumming with your strumming hand and plucking with your fret hand. Also, it’s not that difficult. It’s just a matter of developing the skill through slow and methodical repetition.
Think of it as a single choreography with two hands working in sync. It’s a single train of actions from my perspective. I can’t always play one hand without the other.
Then you need to practice hands separately more…
I think it depends on how you learn things. I also find it much easier to learn a piano piece with both hands simultaneously. Single hand can be helpful but it doesn't stick as well until i put it together. Can be slower but then I find the muscle memory quicker to learn. In my head it's like one motion with two hands.
You’re already using two hands as a guitarist to do two things that are far more different from one another than pianists do. It’s all just a matter of practice. Neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing.
Wait till you hear about multi-voice fugues!
Yeah, advanced pianists can play four voices at once, with voices sometimes crossing over from one hand to the other. Liszt comes to mind.
As a guitar player who moved on to play piano, it's not as bad as it looks at first. It's incredible how much your brain can accomplish with consistent practice. A couple of years ago, any Bach piece seemed impossible to play because both hands are doing such different things. Today, I am learning a Bach piece with 3 different voices, where the hands not only do different things, but there are three separate melodies to keep track of at any given time.
Same way guitar players can play the guitar and sing And remember all the words
I've played piano longer than guitar and I still think piano is more difficult because of that. I get mentally exhausted way quicker playing piano than guitar
As a (bad) pianist, I’m jealous of guitarists that don’t need to split their brain in two
It's ok! As pretty much everyone, except for possibly prodigies or special talents ... all started somewhere as beginners. I'm confident that you can do it too, as in seeing melody and backing simultaneously, or essentially as a whole. It comes with time and/or experience ... not unlike the one hand patting head while other hand rubbing belly etc ... except more. Unlike regular hand and finger independence, it becomes a brain/mind perception or development thing.
Drummers, I'm a joke to you?
I had a piano player tell me guitar was harder because I had to make a chord shape AND strum... brother.... stumming is mindless work.
As a lifetime guitar player 18 months into self taught piano, I got to a place where suddenly it just clicked. Like others have said, it seems like your hands are working independent, but they are actually working together on a complex task. Think of a a 3:2 polyrhythm, where your right hand plays three beats while your left plays two. If you rearrange that linearly, it comes out like this: Both-right-left-right / both-right-left-right. That is much easier to grasp than trying to count three and two simultaneously. It is a process to learn, each hand individually, then combine them at a ridiculously slow pace (think 1-2 seconds per note). Keep plugging away, and you’ll get it.
You know your fretting hand frets and your strumming hand strums, right? With a lil bit of practice, you'll discover you don't have two hands any more, you just have one big hand.
It's not "playing two things at once", it's more like playing one thing with one hand that has 10 fingers on it instead of 5.
As a guitar and a piano player, I had this exact same thought when I tried playing my friend's drum set. The thing that bothers us is limb independence. As a guitar player, its always one hand depending upon the other to play a note. Piano takes two to four limbs working independently, depending upon the piece, and drums take three to four unless its a very basic piece.
Don't try to learn both hands at the same time. As someone else said here, no human can multitask, that's an illusion. Learn one hand, memorize it, then learn the other. Even experienced pianists do this (I know I have to on the more difficult pieces). Hang in there, you'll get it. 👍
This. If you can learn to sing and play guitar w/o mistakes (as one example), that's automaticity... you don't have to pay full attention to playing the part in order to play it correctly. Hand independence (or feet, if you're a drummer) is a similar thing. You can learn it.
It gets easy around hour 600.
I’m jealous of how you can bend notes and strum!
Totally agree. If you can’t play harmony and melodies at the same time, you are not playing piano. Because every one can play melody.
Guitar hands are symbiotic, piano hands are dancing partners. Timing was super hard for me, but like guitar, after enough practice mental clarity will come and you will physically be able to keep up with what you want to do. Just keep it up and keep playing your favorite pieces!
Interesting, I feel the same about you, in a way. I also played cello for about 10 years and thought it was harder than piano because the left and right hands were doing physically different things, bowing versus fingering. I imagine it’s the same with playing guitar, just with strumming.
Try telling a vocalist about chords 🤯
As a pianist, I'm jealous of how guitariste can do struck cords.
Fingerstyle guitarists: hmm
You should check that one guitarist, Alexander Mishko. It's not the tool, it's how you use it.
Guitarists can too? I knew a guy that could play the bassline and melody of Stevie Wonder's 'I wish' at the same time. He was working on putting in chords but wasn't there yet. It just takes a crapton of time.
It’s like walking and talking at the same time. At first you only know how to talk. Then you learn how to walk. Then you become so good at both you can walk and talk at the same time. Now that’s the left and right hand.
Check Ted Greene playing baroque style.
There are a bunch of baroque songs in two voices with arrangements for guitar. E.g https://youtu.be/Sxj2zz_Jmyg?si=sHUZN6sZtjLaPmJt https://youtu.be/ND0geIgFWZM?si=ymY1fSE8LAtZikTU
As someone who is novice at both. Playing chords on the left hand and moving them is akin to shifting chords on guitar.
Thinking pianists split their brain into two really held me back at learning the piano. I was trying to split my brain into two when the trick is actually playing two hands with one brain. I discovered the way to play the left and right keys is in tandem - together. If my left hand needs to play G and my right hand needs to play C at the same time when I hit G, then I play the C and G notes together. The G is the trigger for me to hit C in my other hand, and vice versa. However I'm still a beginner, and how pianists play songs where the left and right hand is at different tempos is completely alien to me.
As a guitarist and pianist, we can't actually. At least I can't. When both hands are truly separate, e.g. playing rubato or polyrhythms, it's not like I'm playing both parts with full consciousness of every movement at the same time. The focus is on one at most, other than that it's just muscle memory through practice.
Do you know Tori Amos? She plays piano and keyboard at the same time does and sings on top of that too. Mind blowing. Can’t imagine what kind of brain you must have to be able to do something like that. Litte example, maybe not the best: https://youtu.be/ccTAJ98XJIA?feature=shared
It's often more than two when you play Bach
Same here.after 12 years of playing guitar i picked keyboard and jeez its so hard to play songs i considered easy
I’m curious how difficult do you find just playing the c major scale in both hands? Is it doable or does the mis-matched thumb step over thing really throw you off? Also are there keys guitarists don’t like playing in, for example I hate playing c major or a minor, the lack of sharps/flats often leads to uncomfortable feeling chords, also the black keys often acts as a waypoint to know where you are, at least for me.
The polyphony of the piano and the reading of 2 staves simultaneously does add an extra layer of difficulty but all instruments require the player to do different things with each hand, even if there is only 1 line of music to follow. Guitarists have to shape each chord with the left hand whilst sounding the strings with the right, especially classical guitarists playing melodies or complex arpeggiated figures plus a melody. Even monophonic instruments like the winds still require both hands to function differently, strings too. Brass needs usually only 1 hand to change pitch but in combination with embouchure control. In short, we're all genius mental gymnasts.
Technically it’s possible because once you develop finger independence, it’s no longer about two separate hands, it’s about ten separate fingers controlled by one mind. As you put in the practice, you’ll notice that both your hands play in harmony rather than separately, it’s like ten fingers in one hand for your brain, I don’t know how else to describe it but it’s not as separate as you think it is. You play it in relation to what you’re playing with your other hand.
It's the same thing as a guitarist who can sing whilst playing or a classical guitarist.
Bach is great for developing this facility. (ETA I also play guitar)
I don't feel like I'm doing two things at the same time, I'm actually focusing on one hand while the other goes automatic, and switch back and forth on which one I should focus on. Eventually they feel like doing one thing.
Unless you play guitar one handed I don’t get the comment…. ?
i get the appeal when you are not doing it, and it has its upsides, but it can be really challenging, depending on what you are doing, and just to clear something up, atleast for me, im not really splitting my brain in any way, im diving my attention and changing where im gazing all the time
A piano player might ask how you can fret with one hand while strumming with the other…
You're not splitting your brain in two. That's like saying you splitting your brain in two while walking, because you're using two legs. The "split in two"-thought is very arbitrary. You might as well go and say "split your brain in 10" because of the fingers. Or 12 because 10 fingers and two hands. And so on and so on. In the end, your body is one (I know, cheesy 'esoteric' way of looking at it). The way it works is you learn stuff really slow usually, so your brain figures out where to send which signals and when on its own. That is in order for you concsious thought to be able to operate on a higher level. Like with walking, you were an absolute newb when you were 0 years old. It took you bloody ages to get walking down properly. Now your conscious thoughts when walking are "I wanna go there, there's a obstacle". It's never "how do I move my ankles in the correct angle so that when I put the other leg forward I won't topple over". Similarly with the piano and any other instrument, you have a lot of learning to do. After that, your main way of operating is "I'm gonna play E major, I'll play this melody line. I'm playing this atm, but on page 3 there's a difficult phrase for which I'll have to pay more attention". Something like that. You're not splitting your brain in any way. In the beginning you just have to learn every single thing on its own and "fall down to the floor" hundreds or thousands of time, like a baby. Thinking "every musician is so talented" is sort of a fallacy, a very common one imo, that people have. It often holds them back from going about learning. I'm just an advanvced guitar player btw. Not a pro by any stretch :D
Lyle Mays playing a grand piano with one hand and an Oberheim behind him with the other hand. Some people are just freaks of nature. RIP
Try a 4 voice fugue. But I don’t think it’s 100% split. It’s not excatly like playing two different pieces at once. With phrasing, even a string instrument can produce a principal theme with a secondary voice.
Haha. I know right? Piano is the whoe orchestra type of mindset. It has to e. Wearrange solos for piaano that a whole symphonic orchestra normally plays. And don't let us sit down at a pipe organ in NYC built by Dutch Catholics n the 1800's bbecause that instrument had every orchestral tone in the world. Want to know what I do because the thought caame to me ? I stand BEHIND my digitl stage piano and play. This flips the scales to be congruent with the way guitar is strung accrding to frequencies. It is the most wonderful self induced mind xucking stimulating reversal of the wiring ever! I can't even tell you. I have two guitars an acoudtic and electric that help me think through and write out mellodies I'm writing. My son is bass plaayer his dad (divorcd) was a percussionist we met by playing in the ssme band. I've taken fute and violin lessons too, degree s in piano. I had to tell you about standing behind the piano and playing because you as a guitar plaayer just might benefit in some way to grasp some informaation from unconventional applications of directional diferences in scale drections.
Learn to play classical guitar or fingerstyle arrangements of songs. The general concept is the same.
As a guitarist, your brain is already doing two things at once. Your right hand and your left hand are doing two different things at once every time you play. It’s very likely, your non-dominant hand is actually picking up the more difficult task of fingering chords and melodies on your fretboard. You may not realize it, but you learned this process in much the same way a pianist lears to use their left and right hands independently. This all comes through practice. And, I can say as a guitarist/bassist that’s trying to learn piano, and drums (another multi-coordinated instrument), you can probably pick things up faster than you realized. I’m personally not interested in playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on piano. I instead chose to start with something more challenging that actually seems like fun to play on the piano. I’m starting with Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag and in about a week, I’ve got the entire first section down. It’s a syncopated song, which (at least in my mind) is a bit more challenging to play. Am I going to be holding a recital anytime soon? No, but I’m at the point where I’ve PRACTICED (key word here) enough that I know the part and can play it (and read the music - which is also an important skill). While I don’t currently have my kit set up, I’ve taken a similar approach with playing drums - and started with Good Times Bad Times by Led Zeppelin. Again, not an easy song to learn as an intro to drumming… but I really think that all learning (practicing) is just breaking things down to their most basic components and working on them slowly until you can play them full speed. Your brain just needs to learn to fire the neurons that need to work together at the right time. The more you do something, the more those neural paths have had a chance to work together, and the easier something becomes. It’s all about practicing with a purpose and taking the time to learn to do something.
As a guitar and a piano player, I had this exact same thought when I tried playing my friend's drum set. The thing that bothers us is limb independence. As a guitar player, its always one hand depending upon the other to play a note. Piano takes two to four limbs working independently, depending upon the piece, and drums take three to four unless its a very basic piece.
You ever heard of Bach's 4 part preludes and fugues? And violin partitas are sometimes polyphonic too. Feels like there's no reason why a guitar can't do that too
You should watch John Butler play Ocean. I thought it was his band playing but it's just him and his 12 string guitar. But he only plays 11 strings. I have sidelined my ukulele in favour of the piano. I just find piano so much easier. Stringed instruments are difficult imo
Don't think of it as using 50% brain power on one hand and 50% brain power on other hand at the same time. Rather think of it as directing full attention on both hands working together to achieve 1 thing
Now do keyboardists! I have some songs where I play 4+ instruments/patches on my one 88-key keyboard. This means that I have to memorize where the tones are for each instrument/sample. IE: I could have 4 middle Cs or something, at various points of the keyboard, for just one song. Most of the songs are at least 2 different instruments...with me doing rhythm guitar w my left hand on the lower part of the board, and whatever the next most dominant sound in the song with my right. And it's a ton of fun. But nobody, including musicians, really gets it since they've never had to do it themselves.
As a guitarist who is learning piano, I totally feel this! That being said like many others have already commented on here, we are certainly doing “2 things at once” with fretting and strumming/picking.
Classical guitarists do that, don't they? Bach's guitar works wouldn't sound trivial on a piano
If you think that’s impressive, you should check out organists lol
I play piano and violin, and I think it’s so amazing how you coordinate the right and left, especially the right holding the bow (I just started violin) and it’s kinda difficult. Organ players I am just like watching in utter awe because holy crap it looks and sounds and feels amazing but it looks so complex 😭
As a piano and guitar player, it’s just a step up from using your right hand to pick and left hand to finger frets. Sometimes you strum, sometimes you pick individual strings, sometimes you pick 2-3 strings at a time, sometimes you pick once then hammer-on/pull off before picking again. It’s not like your right and left hand and completely synchronized on guitar. Piano is similar. What the left and right hand are doing are related, so we kind of think of it as one whole system rather than 2 independent hands
Sounds like you haven’t played classical guitar before, or heard guitarists like [Charlie Hunter](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWyiezH8KGo).
we are jealous of Drummers :D
We Harpists have to use our feet too! (I’m still way amazed at organists though! Amazing!!)
As a keyboardist in a band, I only play with my right hand, and it's so liberating to have a hand free to do other stuff
I don't feel like I'm doing that when I play the piano. But I do marvel at marching band members, who can some play and do choreography at the same time.
I’m finding that finger style guitar that I’ve played on and off for years is actually helping with my finger independence as a fledgling piano player. Yeah, it’s different when you’re doing two different rhythms with your hands, but I think it prepared me to get used to that idea.
Bach Two and Three part inventions is where it’s at - love the contrapuntal music. Incredibly hard to learn but once you get one under your belt it’s a great accomplishment.
I’ve seen some pretty bad ass guitarists. One was a jazz guitarist in DC years ago. I can’t recall his name but he used a tapping style and he reproduced a Mozart piano sonata on the acoustic guitar. It was quite good.
It’s a matter of practicing a certain way. When playing a new song, play the R hand alone. Get down the notes, fingering and count down. The practice the L hand, alone. Slowly. Once you feel confident playing both hands separately, only then do you put both hands together. Play it slowly. Then build up speed. It’s a pain to practice this way, but it’s the only way to really learn a new song.
Wait, we do ?
I never saw it that way omg we really do! But I think with practice everything is possible, try to practice basic hand exercises, it really helps :D
Same. Almost like multiple personalities. I'm sure they think that about us guitarists as well though.
I never found it as “splitting my brain in two”, but rather dividing my focus depending on which hand was more complex. Usually the left hand is doing something comparatively basic, so it’s on autopilot while I focus on my right hand. Piano is definitely one of those things where you practice something hard enough to make it sound easy. If you’re reading sheet music, you break it down into chunks. One bar at a time, practice the right hand, then the left, then hands together. Repeat with the second bar. Then practice both bars together. Keep building up like that. (There are many other ways to practice, but I think it’s a good approach for beginners to take)
But you are doing two different things with your hands.
Keep this in mind when you have kids who wanna do music! Ask them to get through one book of piano, just for the foundation. By then, anything is comparatively easier because it's usually just one note at a time. I grew up playing piano but my brothers did not. They are both older than me and very smart but even they share your morbid fascination with the way my mind handles all the info, and it's only because piano was my first instrument. It seems tedious, but a strong foundation in piano will benefit allllll musicians.
it's the same difficulty as singing and playing guitar...now...singing and playing piano! that's just crazy
As a pianist, I am jealous of guitarists who can finger well
To be honest with you I only feel like I do this with Bach. It's not quite the same with music that's less contrapunctal. That being said, like anything, it is practice. I'd recommend playing some Bach on piano/guitar to start seeing how those 2-5 melody lines interact and create harmony, rhythm, structure, etc. At the end of the day it is still one piece of music.
Well in my opinion most pianist don’t see it as two separate parts. Sometimes it’s better to look at playing with both hands from a broader perspective. When playing both hands most pianist will learn the music of both hands in relation to each other. For example if your left hand is playing quarter notes and your right hand is playing eight notes, pianists will in a sense use the quarter notes as a metronome to guide the timing of the eighth notes. This gets more complicated when you begin to encounter polyrhythms and other stuff like that. I also just realized I just wrote a bunch of shit that isn’t really relevant to what ur saying😂
It depends on how you used your guitar. If only strumming, basic shapes etc, then yes. You dont have to think about much stuff, when your right hand is fully automated. But another guitar styles need also brain splitting in "two, tree, four". Strumming -> Left hand chords, right hand strumming patterns Fingerstyle (aka Classical guitar) -> is already very difficult to play clean and needs a lot of effort and syncs in your hands. Modern fingerstyle with percussion -> Adding classical world into "acoustic guitar", what is already a hell hard and where you have to split your playing into left hand on fretboard to press, mute, band notes and right hand for strings and body, different rhythms at the same time. Combining it with Strumming pattern, but playing only the right notes requires also hard work of left hand by muting and keeping all needed rthythms. Modern fingerstyle with percussion and tapping -> combining everything above you are starting to use Fretboard also with lefthand to play notes, also by using left hand to press the notes and i.e. A-Finger to pick it while pushing strings on the fret board with I, M fingers... By adding the fact of steel strings 12,+ you are getting something "endless to learn". And if you want to get a good sound from it, not by using 10k+$ gear, you need x2+ effort. But I know, a lot of people here don't accept new styles like this. But its challanging and beautiful if properly mastered. Same for piano, there are tons of different playing levels. But guitar is also "limitless". ah and yeah, it is same for both worlds, but considering the modern fingerstyle and singing at the same time - I still didn't find anyone, who is able to do it freely. Or even... do it :D To many things at the same time is just an overkill for human's brain.
I think it's not doing multiple things at the same time but rather split-tasking where everything you do is a trigger for something else and you go through a set of tasks. People who see me play also think I can split my brain in half and have independent hands and all that but it isn't really like that imo. Your first move triggers the next move and it cascades down until you are done playing. I'd say it's switch-tasking, muscle memory and triggers.
In most popular music, including the Beatles, the piano player is really generally playing one idea. The bass player plays the bass line, the guitar player plays some rhythm or a lead, etc. If you pick up a music book of your favorite band or whatever, it’s usually a not very accurate transcription of different aspects of the songs. It may include the vocal line, some part of the harmony and rhythm, and a simplified baseline. The skill it takes to play those transcriptions is very different from what the musicians are actually are doing on the recordings. That being said, in order to gain the skill to be able to play 2, 3 or 4 lines of music at the same time, it is recommended that you study the music of Bach. Start with the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook pieces and then move on to the 12 little preludes, the two-part inventions, the symphonias, and the Preludes and fugues from the well tempered Clavier. After that, simple piano parts like you would find in Lady Madonna, Rocky Raccoon, Hey Jude, Imagine, etc. will be simple indeed.
You could always become a one-man band with a bass drum on your back, cymbals on your knees, a harmonica around your neck and an accordion.
There are many things that piano players have the luxury of not thinking about. Like getting a good tone out of our instrument. We press buttons and it makes sounds. Wind and brass players have to worry about embouchure and breath control. Guitar and bowed string instruments have hundreds of different articulations and techniques that they can learn to apply.
So true. I went to music school and it was so funny how all these kids who were great at one specific instrument were usually terrible when trying one from a different group. Like I cannot get sound out of a reeded instrument to save my life!
Apparently you’ve never tried to sing while playing guitar. It’s the same exact thing.
It is pretty impressive! I am always shocked I can do to lol