Hi guys, I was wondering if you can give me some tips or advice..
I play the violin and the piano. I`m very good at the violin and I try to play my piano (it`s actually a keyboard) as much as I can. Since I don`t have a personal teacher for piano lessons, I teach myself new things and I practice using all kinds of books. Everytime I get to the parts where I have to use both of my hands, it just gets too hard for me and I go back to the begining.."back to square 1". I don`t know what to do..Can you guys give me some tips or advice??
Thanks!
MAXINE

Practise the left hand on its own, at a slow pace. Try practising groups of notes as chords (even if they clash) because it teaches you were your hand should be. Then keep practising it until you can play it at full speed. Then practise the right hand on its own until you can play it a full speed. Then practise both hands together, very slowly, and hopefully you will learn the hand positions. If you can`t play it slowly, then try taking out every other note with the left hand. Then as you get used to moving your left hand about a bit you can add in the other notes. I`d only recommend this though if you`re having trouble playing it really slowly. It takes a lot of practise but you`ll get it.

And try not to return to the start of the piece when you make mistakes, unless the mistake is in the first couple of bars. If you slow down a lot around there then keep going over it, again and again, until you can play it right. If it`s just a little mistake, like pressing the wrong key, you should try to carry on. It`s good practise for things like concerts. Like you, I didn`t have a piano, only a keyboard, and I had to paly the piano in a school concert. I practised at school as much as I could but when I played it on the piano I still made quite a few mistakes. Still nobody noticed. The problem I found with playing the keyboard is that if you change to piano (I did after 2 years) then you have to get used to the piano. I found that I was very `lazy` on the keyboard because you don`t need to press very hard and when I tried playing the same pieces on piano each note was a different volume and my fingers were too weak to play it. You can still play the piano after a keyboard if you want to, but I`m just saying that it takes a bit of learning.