Feedback please?

[Muad’Dib]

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaACc2Ca6to

[AnotherScott]

Here's my suggestion.

 

First I'll mention that I am going to slightly simplify the song by making believe the left hand pattern in Ab alway repeats identically (in fact, there's a bit of variation, but we'll ignore that for the purpose of this exercise).

 

Don't try to do everything at once. Your issue right now is getting the hand/timing independence. So I'd start by simplifying the right hand. Just play the melody, forget its same-hand lower harmony for now. Still try to play it with the 3rd/4th/5th fingers, since those are the fingers you'll eventually have to play those notes with... and if it helps, you can even cheat a bit and "anchor" your right hand into place by placing that thumb on the surface in front of the keys... the idea being to make the RH part as effortless as possible to play, without looking at those fingers at all, so you can focus your mental and visual energy on your left hand.

 

Start slow, slow enough to be able to be aware of when the one hand's notes are falling "in between" the notes of the other hand's part. Maybe metronome at about 100 or so (where each beat is a note of the initial part of the riff or the melody). So at the beginning, once both hands are playing, you'll notice that the fourth bass note plays with NO melody note playing, and the 6th right hand note plays with no new bass note playing. Just practice that first pattern, those first 6 notes of each hand. Play that tiny part over and over, until it feels natural. You might even want to over-emphasize that 4th left hand note (the second low Ab, the one with no right hand note playing with it) to kind of force yourself to focus on that note and be sure NOT play something else with it. You can smooth out your dynamics later. ;-)

 

Now do the same for the next phrase, which is easier, there are only two RH notes, and they both hit on the bottom notes of the left hand pattern, so this one should come more easily. Just keep repeating that tiny part (6 left hand notes, two right hand notes).

 

Now play the two patterns in sequence, and keep repeating them as a pair.

 

Now let's add the next two patterns. The first one is identical to the first pattern, except the right hand only plays the first four of the six notes it played the first time. The pattern after that is even easier, because the right hand plays nothing at all, it just holds the last note it played.

 

Now play the entire sequence so far. And keep repeating that entire sequence.

 

Then continue in similarly small chunks. The next pair is identical to the very first. The pair after that is different . Take each pair by itself until it feels natural, then append it to what's come before.

 

Once this entire section (up to where the whole pattern starts again) has come together, you can add back the missing right hand notes. But I wouldn't worry about that for some time... don't let trying to do too much stop you from getting really solid on the basic feel of how the hand inter-relate. You should be able to play it up to speed pretty comfortably before you even think about adding those other notes.

 

I hope that helps, and I'll wait to see if someone else chimes in and says, "no, no, no, I wouldn't approach it like that at all!" ;-)

[cphollis]

An alternate suggestion?

 

Play the left hand part by itself until it's 100% muscle memory, it sounds great to you, and you don't have to even think about it, or look at your hands.

 

A good 5-10 minutes should do it.

 

At the point you don't have to think about your left hand any more, add in the right hand. That's how I did it.

[Muad’Dib]

Thank you for the feedback!

[stoken6]

In these syncopated/cross-hand-rhythm scenarios, I find it helpful to chart out what notes in each hand fall simultaneously with, or between, other notes. Having got each hand down separately, try and correlate where the hands coincide, and where they "alternate". In Linus and Lucy, the first three "events" involve both hands playing together, while the fourth "event" is the LH playing the low Ab on its own.

 

Play to that point. Four events. As slowly as you need to to.

 

So that's Ab/C+Ab, Eb/Eb+Bb, Ab/Eb+C, Ab (LH on its own). Make sure you're comfortable with that.

 

The next four events are two "togethers", one RH (ending the descending three-note phrase), and one LH (kicking off the variation ostinato pattern with F at the top). If you can get to that point, you'll probably be good to continue under your own steam. It will still need practice, but I suspect the mental block will be gone.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Al Quinn]

I remember learning this song the way Mike described, which worked fine.

 

In recent times I"ve resorted to tapping the LH and RH rhythms on my legs when working on syncopations that challenge me. The idea is that tapping the rhythms away from the piano removes the complication of playing the piano and isolates that main challenge (at least for me) which is playing the LH and RH rhythms independently without struggle. Once the rhythms are internalized by tapping, playing the notes on the piano adds a much smaller challenge and isn"t very difficult. The overall concept is that if I can"t tap the rhythms independently and with ease away from the piano there"s no way I"ll be able to play the LH and RH notes independently and with ease on the piano.

 

I agree with Scott"s suggestion to play just the melody in the RH. Once that"s mastered you can consider adding the harmony notes. I find it impossible to play the melody and harmony legato so I play the melody legato and the lower harmony notes as legato as possible but at a lower volume than the melody notes. Doing this creates the illusion of more legato than is actually being played.

[Muad’Dib]

Thank you Mike!