How can I synchronize my left hand trill with my right hand playng a melody on the piano?

Question

Whenever I have to play a trill with my left hand and a melody or trill with the right hand, my left hand is either playing slower or can't synchronize with what my right hand is doing. This is so annoying 'cause there are many pieces, especially some of Bach's fugues and preludes that I really like and I don't play because of this problem. Is there any solution to that? Thank you!

Answer 1

The problem (one that I see all the time) is that your two hands are not independent of one another. You need to find a way to separate them. One very good way is to play each hand alone while tapping or banging out the beats with the other hand. This forces the big muscles to separate. As you get good at this, keep working on smaller and smaller muscle groups until your fingers are the group you are working on. This is not finger-training, this is brain-training. When you get really good at it, you should be able to play scales, arpeggios, or any such thing in one hand while the other holds the trill. Remember to go from big muscles to small muscles.

Good luck!

Answer 2

I always found it helped to identify which notes of an embellishment were part of the melody (or harmony) and to focus on those. So, define which note of your trill is still part of the harmonic progression underlying your melody and put the emphasis on those notes. This always helped me to move toward those notes without getting bogged down by all the extra notes (that's why ornaments are usually written with little teeny notes :^D).
So how does this help you? Well, along with slowing down (as another poster recommended), know which notes of your trill are the most important to your melody and put your energy into making sure they that they sound strongly (not necessarily loudly) and in tempo, and treat the other note as what it is, an embellishment. That way you can devise a fingering that dedicates your stronger finger to the important note, helping you to keep tempo better. Not sure if this helps everyone, but it worked for me.

Answer 3

I know how you feel; Bach is my favorite, and this used to be a problem for me. The left hand is often my problem (I'm right handed) with synchronizing.

Usually, what my teacher tells me to do is play each one separately at the speed they should be at together. I do this for a while until I can even play with my hands together. I am constantly doing them separately so I can master them at that speed first. Then, I try and play them together. Obviously, at first i may not get it right. But I just imagine I am playing them separately again, making it easier to play them at the speed I have to. Now, before you play them together at full speed, it's much easier to start out trying to synchronize them at a slower pace then the speed they should be. After you get it at a slow pace, go a little faster each time, until you get to your required speed. It works for me!

Answer 4

SLOW DOWN... practice the phrases at a greatly reduced tempo - slow enough so that you can play them correctly, then slowly increase the tempo until you are at tempo - trick I learned to play guitar faster, but it works for piano too. And remember to RELAX when you do it - tension is counter-productive.

Answer 5

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