What is a successful way to relieve frustration for beginners learning piano when playing hands together?

November 9, 2020 Leslie Young

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There must be many students and teachers who have situations when they need to use a successful way to relieve frustration. Sometimes beginners are playing hands together experience a bit of brain confusion that may cause frustration. For instance, the spaces on the bass staff look exactly like the spaces on the treble staff. So the brain is probably thinking, “Hey, you just told me this is treble space F and now you’re telling me it’s bass A? They look just the same!!”

A successful way to relieve frustration is for the student to recognize and understand why the confusion is happening. The teacher can remind the student that playing the piano is like speaking two different languages at the same time. There will be moments when the brain stalls as it tries to determine which language/clef is to be played with which hand. This is why in the Revolutionary Piano Method only the right hand treble clef is introduced first. This is also why the student is required (under teacher supervision) to say each letter name aloud as the key is played in order to reinforce learning to long-term memory. Short-cuts (not saying letters) cannot happen at this point, or learning will not sufficiently occur.

Be Positive!

When a student experiences a brain stall, I like to point out that the misread error is actually correct – in the other staff for the other hand. That particular note recognition is making its way into long-term memory – yay, congratulations! That alone can relieve some pressure and frustration with self-performance, especially for Type A personalities who always strive for perfection.

Don’t Use Shortcuts

Yes, the first exercises are easy to play, but verbally attaching a letter name to a key and its line or space on the staff – and moving forward and backward within the alphabet – is much more difficult. Skipping the identification process will cause frustration quickly when hands are combined since learning never concretely took place with each hand’s staff in the beginning. The student must not use shortcuts in the thinking process. However, the teacher should point out that the student won’t have to say letters aloud forever – and will be playing without thinking of letter names at all!

If the student was faithful in saying aloud letter names and correctly locating each on the keyboard, he will still have some moments when the brain stalls. Doing any two things simultaneously can be tricky. The teacher should remind the student that two languages are being played at the same time. When stalling occurs, have the student choose one hand first, identify and locate the correct note, and then repeat the thinking process with the other hand, and only afterwards play hands together.

There Really are Two Languages!

I tell my students to think of the right hand treble clef as being “German” and the left hand bass clef as being “French” – both are foreign languages to the student. Each has a different “language” of spaces: F-A-C-E for treble and All-Cows-Eat-Grass for bass. Draw a smiley face near a treble clef sign and write/draw “cow” near the bass clef sign. “We want our FACE to be above a cow, not underneath a smelly cow, so think of the right hand staff as being on top of the left hand’s staff.” Over weeks of lessons, this visual does help remind the student of the orientation of keyboard to staff.

So when stalling occurs, tell the student to first find one hand’s note (I prefer treble), then find the other hand’s note, and then play them together. When the student remembers that two different languages are being learned, and the procedure of one hand first – then the other – then together, this usually greatly lessens frustration. It’s a learned process that takes some time.

In this link, Dr. Jon I. Young has provided an overview to the theory of Instructional Design. He describes how the essence of designing an educational approach to learning a specific skill is to work backward.

What is the desired end result?
What is to be acquired at each specific learning task?
What is the basic skill and/or knowledge essential to acquiring each specific learning task?
What is the best sequential arrangement of learning tasks needed to acquire the end result?

These vital points are very time consuming to consider, write, and proof by testing. The Revolutionary Piano Method has been adjusted and fine-tuned over years of application by students. Simply put: It works!

What Would the First Lesson for a Young Student Look Like?

What Would the First Lesson for a 6 to Teen Look Like (video)?