
When a melody passes from the right hand to the left, or back again, every pitch may be correct and the line can still sound like two people taking turns to speak: one half stops and the other restarts. The seam is often not in pitch but in a changed attack, the true duration of the preceding note, the dynamic level, or the direction of the timing. If the player thinks only, “the hand changes here”, the body can treat the handover as a new beginning.
The more useful principle is that melodic continuity is first an auditory goal and only then a coordination task. Practise just four or five notes around the handover while singing the entire line, and compare the attacks made by each hand. The receiving hand should not wait until its note before preparing; it needs to approach the required position early. The departing hand must not hurry away either, or it will shorten the previous note. The aim is not for both hands to work harder, but for one to release while the other continues the same direction of sound.
Research describes performance as an interaction between auditory imagery and action planning. It does not prescribe a particular fingering, but it helps explain why watching the hands alone may leave the problem unchanged. The final test is to listen to a recording without looking. If the exact hand-change note is unknown but a sudden brightness, weight or pause remains audible, the seam remains. Technical success is not a visually smooth movement; it is a melody that no longer reveals the boundary between actions.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00320/full
When practising such a passage with <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scoreflow/id6796205656">ScoreFlow</a>, use “the handover is inaudible” as a specific listening check rather than recording only whether the notes were correct.
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