Advice on practising left hand and right hand effects

[esmeralda]

Hi, am new to this forum. Am an adult learner who has been playing for over 12 months and planning to prepare for first exam.
I wonder if anyone could help me with something. How do you get your left hand to play detached notes while the other plays flowing ones. Not sure if that is the proper way to describe it. Hope you can understand what I mean. I just don't seem to be able to start to even practise as both hands just want to play with the same style.
Thanks in advance
Es

[Moonlight]

How do you get your left hand to play detached notes while the other plays flowing ones. Not sure if that is the proper way to describe it.

Hi

Detached notes are know as staccato and notes that are played smoothly and blend into eachother are called legato .

You could first try a little exercise I did myself when I wanted to play like that, put your hands in 5 finger position:

Put the right hand on C ( finger 1 ) D ( finger 2 ) E ( finger 3 ) F ( finger 4 ) G ( finger 5 ) and the left on C ( finger 5 ) D (finger 4 )
E (finger 3 ) F (finger 2 ) G (finger 1 ) an octave lower. Then very slowly play the notes C to G and down again in the right hand legato while the left hand plays the same notes staccato. Then swap the touches so right plays staccato and left legato.

After that you can try practicing your scales in the same way (slowly), eventually you can swap the touches between the hands at will.

Note: for ABRSM grade 2 exam pieces these kind touches played at the same time in both hands do occur in one piece I know of, as for grade 1 pieces I don’t think you do theses touches together at that level.

Hope this helps I'm not a teacher btw!

[Ingersoll]

Good idea, i am at a similar stage and i am also struggling to play staccato and legato together - this practice may help!