Can’t Play With 2 Hands On Piano? Practice These 5 Exercises!

Let me guess, you’re struggling to coordinate your hands on the piano? Guess what, this is a completely normal thing, so you’re not alone. So many beginners struggle with this. So today, I’m going to go over five exercises that are going to help you really coordinate your hands much better. And by the way, I’m Kaitlyn, welcome to the PIANOLY YouTube channel. If you’d like more videos on how to go from zero to playing your favorite songs in months, not years, be sure to hit the bell and subscribe for new videos every week.

All right, let’s get started. The first exercise is called mirroring. This is very much like a warmup to hand coordination. What you’ll do is start by playing a melody in your right hand, and then your left hand is going to mirror that melody. Repeat this back and forth, and slowly increase the speed. So I’ll give you an example. I would do this with what we call the 5-finger scale.

So in your right hand, go first and your left hand is going to be one octave lower. I’ve got my thumb on C and my pinky on C in my left hand. I’m going to do the 5-finger scale like this. And now my left hand’s going to do it. Now for you, it might be really hard, especially that left hand, but keep going and slowly increase the speed over time.

Another great thing to do is an arpeggio to mirror. So right after your 5-finger scale, go into your arpeggio. So the whole thing would look like this. Like I said, this is like a warmup to hand coordination. So that is the first one, mirroring.

Now the next one, number two is called hand independence, and it’s going to really expand upon what we just did with exercise number one, with the mirroring. Your left hand is going to play a chord while your right hand does that 5-finger scale. So watch this. That would be level one of this exercise. Then you can make it a little bit more difficult. And with your left hand, you’re going to play C major, and then you’re going to play G7 like this. B, F, G. That’s an inverted G7.

So you’re going to practice going like this. That’s going to take you a minute. Once you’re ready, play them together like this. Then you could switch your hands up and your left hand plays the scale while your right hand plays the chords like this.

And then the more challenging version. Remember to start… Don’t go as fast as I just did, and then speed up over time. You could even make it even more challenging. So a level three version of this would be like this. Back to my right hand playing the scale, I’m going to play quarter notes in my left hand. So I’m going to go like this. And then you could also flip your hands and do it in reverse.

And exercise number three is called syncopation. Syncopation basically means when we’re playing a little bit off of the beat. So you can see why this might help with hand coordination. It adds a little bit of a rhythmic challenge. So you’re going to try to play a syncopated rhythm in one hand while maintaining a steady beat in the other hand. Don’t freak out. We’re still going to use that 5-finger scale. So here’s an example of what syncopation sounds like.

So we’re going to play that with our 5-finger scale now. And again, you could flip it with your left hand. The left hand one is so much harder. Before we continue the rest of the exercises, let me know in the comments, what is your biggest stumbling block with coordinating your hands? Let me know. All right.

Exercise number four is learning scale patterns. So what we’ve been doing so far is just playing the first five notes of the C major scale. But really to build really good hand coordination, I recommend learning full octave scales. I always recommend to students to learn the D-flat major scale first. And I talk about this a lot in this video, I recommend checking that out. But the reason I tell students to start with D-flat first, is because your fingers are curving around at the same time. So this is what I mean.

Here I am playing the D-flat major scale. My thumbs are going to land on F at the same time, and C at the same time. I’m curving my hands at the same time. But with the C major scale, which is usually people’s first scale, is actually harder because I’m curving my fingers at different times. So watch really slowly, my right hand’s curving first, so they’re not curving at the same time. And that makes C major way harder than D-flat major. So I recommend starting with D-flat first. I also recommend buying this book. I’ve referenced this book many times in my other videos. It is the best scales book. So definitely get this book.

Once you’ve got some scales down, then you can really take it up a notch and play them in contrary motion. So here’s what I mean by that. Again, don’t freak out. Contrary motion is when we’re moving in opposite directions with each hand. I actually do like C major for this, because in contrary motion, your thumbs curve under at the same time. So watch, I’m going to put both of my thumbs on C, and they’re going to both move outwards. I’m going to curve my thumb under at the same time, and then I’m going to come back, put finger three, watch that again. Again, I recommend buying that book because it even has different versions of scales, including those in contrary motion.

My biggest tip for hand coordination is really to be patient with yourself. It is normal. You are not out of the box here. Everyone struggles with this. And the truth is, you’re always going to struggle with it. Even if you’re advanced, you’re going to run into different types of things that your brain’s just going to go…

But my number one tip also is to learn your scales. Learn your scales. Sometimes they’re not fun to practice, but they’re so important for so many reasons, and hand coordination is one of them. If you’re struggling with hand coordination, then you’re probably struggling to learn the piano too.

Doing all of this on your own is only going to take you so far. You need a roadmap and a real plan for success. So I highly recommend to taking my free training. In this training, I’m going to show you the roadmap that I take all of my students on, that helps them go from zero to playing their favorite songs in just a few months. The link is in the description.

And before we go, be sure to subscribe for more videos on how to learn the piano fast, and I will see you next time.