Co-ordination on the Piano is one of the hardest tasks you will come across as a beginner, but once you have learnt this skill, it will be with you forever. It's like when you first learn to ride a bike, it's a bit tricky to start with, but with a little bit of practice you finally click and then there is no stopping you.
See below ten tips to help and improve your co-ordination skills on the Piano: -
Make sure you are 100% confident of what each hand needs to play. Practise hands separately until you can play it with your eyes closed or not looking down at the keys. This will engage your senses and help you use other senses to detect where the notes are, i.e...Touch and Feel senses.Break your song down into small sections, so after learning each part hands separately, start playing it hands together in sections, so try the Intro, then once happy with this, move onto the Main Verse, and so on. Once you are happy with two sections, bring those together and then move forward.Keep the song slow, lots of people try to run before they can walk, but what happens with playing too quickly is you lose the technique and you are likely to make easy mistakes, so take your time. You can increase the speed once you've learnt the song correctly.If you are struggling with one particular section when trying to put it hands together, break it down even smaller, so maybe just one bar, and repeat this about 20 times. The old saying practice makes perfect is true.Try the following exercises to warm up: -Play three chords in your right hand, so C Major F Major and G Major are a good easy example, and play each chord twice holding them for one beat at a time,
A pattern like this will work well: -
C MAJOR X2/F MAJOR X2/G MAJOR X2/F MAJOR and repeat this.
For your left hand, play C F and G, so when you change chords in the right change your bass notes also.
For a bit of variety you can change the rhythm of the bass, so from holding it for 2 beats, like the above exercise, play each bass note for 1 beat each, and then you could change it and speed it up to half beats.
6. With co-ordination it is also very important to make sure you are using the correct fingering, so beware of this if you are teaching yourself and avoid getting into bad habits by using just a couple of fingers.
7. Listen to an original version of the song you are learning. This will help you pick up how the rhythms fit in hearing it by ear.
8. Try playing along to a copy of the song. See if your teacher can record a copy of the Piano version for you with it broken down into Left Hand & Right Hand sections and then together. This will really help you with your co-ordination if you can actually hear what it should sound like
9. Get yourself a scale book, The Associated Board of the Royal School of Music - Scales arpeggios and Broken chords are a good place to start, along with Hanon Exercises. These are great for improving your technique and your co-ordination.
10. The most important tip is to do lots of practice. But do it little and often, so practice every day for at least 20 minutes at a time, have a break then do another 20 minutes. Set yourself out a realistic practice plan to follow.
There are some great free courses to teach anyone from complete beginners to advanced pianists to Learn How to Play Piano. A great way for beginners to learn is to start off with some really Easy Piano Songs which will get you started and help build that all important confidence.
