You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Ways to Work on Your Hand Independence

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

You can't be a great pianist if you don't have independence of the hands, so today, Peter and Adam offer 4 methods you can use to build this essential skill. (And here's that YouTube video Peter and Adam mention at the end of this episode)Social distancing might mean going to concerts is out of the question, but Open Studio is still keeping the live music going! Peter is performing solo piano every Friday evening at 8:00 PM EDT on YouTube. To watch tonight's performance, use this link.In light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Is this Groundhog Day or Independence Day? Because this is the third time we've done this one. Okay, well, we'll talk about that. But no, it's Independence Day. I can't wait for July 4th, which is Independence Day. Very big holiday here in the U.S.

Did you know that? I did know that. Do you think we'll be able to be on a blanket watching fireworks on Forest Park with the symphony playing on July 4th? I think so. It might be a very spread out symphony, and we might be spread out, but I'm very hopeful for that. I'm looking forward to that. But actually, we're going to talk about hand independent.

Manis. What? Give me a hand. Give me a hand. I'm looking for a hand up, not a handout. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily music advice, coming at you. Coming at you today. There's no Andrew to go, come on, Andrew. When things like this happen, like we don't record the audio, that's no one's fault but our own. Well, do you think you can handle doing this episode again, Mr. Man.

Here comes the hand puns. Yeah, I think I'll feel it out We should tell people what happened We just recorded pretty much this whole episode And it was kind of brilliant If we have one fault We record endless brilliant Conversations

Well, the one fault is I forgot to press record On my end Oh, it was brilliant and no one will ever hear it No, no Although we could put out like an alternative version of today's which is just you talking And then nothing for me Like, because you recorded on your head, right?

What's the sound of one hand clapping? what's the sound of one podcaster podcasting talking. What if people are like, wow, that's actually 90% as good as it normally is. We'll totally know that I'm 10% of this equation and you're 90%. Well, people are going to miss out of the conversation about my balls, my stress balls. Yeah, I'm really jealous. So, okay, it's just so folks can know this is an audio-only version. We're doing YouTube like what, usually once a week or so.

But we can see each other, which is great. We're across from each other here. We've got the keyboards. We're going to get into some of that kind of stuff. But I'm looking at Adam. He looks footlo. loose and fancy free as he tosses. I thought he was practicing juggling before, but then tell him what's in your hands. Well, so we had our episode with Dr. Charles Goldfarb of the Washington University Medical Center,

and he's a hand specialist. He's a hand surgeon. And we were talking about hand health, and he had mentioned stress balls. And you would mention that you, when you were younger, used to have stress balls. You had the steel balls, and then you had stress balls, too. And I've never really had any stress balls. They're just little, like, balls filled with stuff and you squeeze them or whatever. So yeah after hearing Dr. Chuck say like yeah stress balls actually can kind of make your hands stronger whatever. I was like well well I'm sitting here at my desk doing my open studio live streams I might as well put some stress on these stress balls you know what I'm saying? Did you buy any chance? Oh so you had them already or did you open up another tab and say Amazon.com

prime shipping couple of stress balls through 99 from China as we were recording with Dr. Chuck I literally ordered these amongst a you know a plethora other of eight dollar purchases I've had on Amazon in the last two months. You know what I mean? So fun fact, we can tell everybody, the one magic tip to making more money on your gigs is when you're not doing any gigs, like none of us are doing now,

don't make a whole bunch of Amazon $8 purchases across the month. It comes back to bite you. It comes back to bite you. I'll take a $3.50 happy hours a month. You know what I mean? Exactly. That we take too far over 15,

Amazon stress ball purchases a week. Right. Okay, so today we are talking about hand independence. Yes. And so very topical for pianists, of course. And in the first version of this episode, we'll see if we can recreate it. Now we don't need to recreate it. We're so good we can just do it again.

But the idea is that, and we're going to give you four ways to specifically work on your hand independence. But we were definitely thinking that the concept of hand independence on its own is not enough. Like you can develop this. And look, this is a tricky skill. I mean, tricky in that it takes, it can be sort of lagging behind other things like with your general musicianship, maybe working on your ears, working on your groove, working on your time. The hand independence for a lot of people can come much slower. And, but I really want to encourage everybody that I am a firm believer.

I don't have, I haven't done a scientific study of this, but I really believe that everybody can develop this. So I hear a lot of like, I can't get my hands together. I can't. I just don't have that skill. It's like, no, you got to keep working on it. Sometimes people that seem to be talented in this area. We mentioned Jeff Kieser, who's definitely talented in this area. Yeah.

Okay, I just screwed up with the recording again. So hopefully this was a seamless edit. Let's get right into this. Come on, Andrew. Huh? Come on, Andrew. All right. So let's get into our first of our four ways to work on your hand independence.

And this is Numero Uno walking baselines, but we're going to say half notes only exclusively, A little restricted practicing. Just like we have restricted shelter at home. We're going to do some restricted practicing here with the half-nose. Can I give a little example? Is that cool? Please do. So the idea is that we're not doing any...

No anticipations, nothing but half-nose. You know, I don't always get dogmatic, but when I do, I like to be very dogmatic. So if you're going to have your hands as independent, they have to really... you have to work on them being independent. So the idea is don't play anything too challenging that you can't keep those half notes going with your right hand. But then you do have to start to push yourself with the right hand at a certain point, right?

Well, this is the thing is you can start off literally very simply. Just very, nothing too complicated, everything, like right to groove. And then just gradually like ramp up. You can ramp up the complexity as you get better at it. But you can literally just start off with like, like two notes practicing those kind of independent lines it's like it's like the bach two-part inventions you know box starts out fairly simply and then ramps up the complexity as it goes along i mean they're all just beautiful compositions but that idea of two notes and what you can do with them you will

you will if you haven't done this yet you will progress very quickly with your hand yeah absolutely and then when you can tell you're starting to kind of push the envelope a little bit with your right hand is if your left hand is starting to link up with it. That's when you want to kind of scale back as much as you're doing. But it's a great way to practice because every day you can try to push yourself and you will start to see progress. I mean, you're going to be some plateaus and some ebbs and flows. But you should, if you're doing this correctly, see some progress there.

That's awesome. All right. Number two is to do something you normally do, but differently in both hands. So you might walk a diminished scale in the left hand and then improv a diminished scale in the right. Yes. Okay. So with this, I was thinking,

you know how do we practice diminished scales usually parallel maybe in tense or whatever but you're still kind of linked up in terms of like independence of the hand so let's take that and then similar to number one

we're only pushing it as much as we need to if you're if you could just go it just has to be so the restriction is and what you are doing together is you're playing over the diminished scale with both hands but you're delinking you're decoupling the two hands but still within that restricted

zone. And that could be any scale. That could be a major scale. It could be a pentatonic scale. It could be the whole tone scale. It really doesn't matter what scale it is. In fact, you want to switch up what scale you might do or what concept you might do. The idea is that both hands are doing the same concept just in different ways. I love it. So number three kind of flows right from that. Switch things up. So you could do that same diminished scale exercise and do the scale in your right hand. I need some work on that. See, that's it's good. It's challenging to play the scale in your right hand and improv in your left hand. Switch up what you do.

You have here improv in the right comp or improv in the left, comp in the right, baseline with the right, melody with the left hand. This is something, you know, if you're an open studio member with the piano access pass and you have access to these Jeffrey Keiser courses that we have, he talks about that a lot, passing the melody in sections between the right hand and the left hand, comping with the right hand and playing the melody with the left hand or walking a baseline or comping with the right hand and soloing with the left hand.

Yeah, and it's very much, you know, this really starts to activate the mental aspect of this, which I think is the most important. Like the actual independence of the hands, the physical thing is not as big of a thing about our mind getting in a way that it can do two different things at the same time. And really, a lot of times it's about the left hand

being automated. So like the one I was just doing, that's just about like, do you know the scale good enough in the left hand that it can kind of go on automatic pilot while you're a little bit more creative, you know with your right hand but I think with you know with anything and I'm not a I'm not a neurosurgeon or a master of neuroscience by trade are you sure I'm let me check my

diploma no I'm not but the thing is when you switch what you normally do on our custom to doing between the hands you immediately activate the independence because they have to think for themselves so if we go improv and left hand comping and right hand and maybe we'll just stay over this diminished for the fun of it So, and I'm starting out just comping in between, right? It's still independent of the hands, right? But then maybe,

and then you can even, I'm switching the hands over here, comping, putting my right hand over. So I'm comping, this is my right hand. Let me do something a little easier, a blues so I can make it sound a little better. See, you can't see it, but Peter Martin has his hands crossed over each other. That's our number four is reverse the hands.

You can practice like that with your hands crossed. I think that's a great way to get hand independence going. And I would say I was kind of the level, the quality of my improv. There was a little potato quality, to be honest there. No, but here's the thing is you start off. What's great about the hands crossed is it's a similar concept of doing the opposite in each hand, you know, like doing something you normally don't do.

But you get to hear it like you normally hear it, right? You get to hear the comping in the same range, even though it's in the right hand. It's down where the left hand normally would play. And you get to hear the soloing in the same range as the right hand normally would play with the left hand. I think that's the important part about that exercise. Yeah, I mean, really, like five minutes of that is painful a day, but you go a long way. That's like that part of the workout that you get where you're like, oh, this hurts. It's only five minutes, but it gives you some of the biggest benefit, you know.

Now, if you do that a lot on stage, an old head might come up to you and be like the circuses down the street. Exactly. Exactly. Because you see your hands crossed over before you hear the notes that are coming out, right? This is fun, man. We get to ask a lot of questions about hand independence. We should do more on this and we should continue the discussion. If you have ideas about hand independence, please send us the way. I've been loving the new Zoom setting. So I'm going to put a link here. Peter shared with me a great video by, I'm guessing a Canadian musician. Just by the way, he said, the new Zoom setting. So I'm going to put a link here. Peter shared with me a great video by, I'm guessing a Canadian musician. Just by the way, he said, the word against. But it's a great video on kind of adjusting your Zoom settings to be able to communicate with musical instruments. And if you're on Zoom like we are a ton and you're on Zoom with pianos and keyboards and stuff or guitars or saxophone, if you're on Zoom like the rest of the world, presently.

Yeah, you're going to want to check out this video and change some of your settings so that you can hear each other better. Yeah, because we were convinced that Zoom was just not optimized for music, it was optimized for voice, which it is, actually. But there's some set. But it turns out we're just not optimized for Zoom. Exactly. One other little bonus one I'll just throw out there.

This is sort of a variation or combination, a couple of them. And this is a way to practice scales, and you can certainly layer this in with the creative scale practice stuff that we always talk about. But just to change up the tempo of what you're doing. So if we're going just a D-flap major scale. So we can go. And it doesn't even have to be specific. It can kind of be random like that.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'm giving you a hand. You know, I told you I'm looking for a handout, not a hands up. I don't know. Hands. Hand up that. Anyway, until tomorrow.

You'll hear.