Practising the accompaniment of a piano piece on its own makes the physical task easier. Yet the smoother the left hand becomes, the harder it can be to place the melody when both hands return. The difficulty is not always coordination. The accompaniment may have been learnt as a self-contained sequence of movements, with the sound it was meant to support missing from the player's hearing.
Take a slow melody in the right hand over a repeated broken-chord pattern in the left. While playing only the left hand, know where the long melody note would enter and where the phrase would breathe. The bass need not weigh the same on every beat; each chord need not fill all the available sound. Sing the right-hand line softly first, then continue hearing it inwardly while playing the left. The aim is not to replace playing with both hands. It is to check whether the accompaniment still makes time and space for a line that is temporarily silent.
Research on musical auditory imagery does show links between pianists' auditory and motor learning, with imagery ability affecting memory outcomes in some experiments. It does not establish that inwardly singing the melody while practising accompaniment will help every adult learner. This is a practice judgement to test at the piano: when the hands come together, does the melody arrive where you expected, and does the accompaniment stop rushing ahead of the phrase?
If you need both lines of the score in view throughout this passage, <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scoreflow/id6796205656">ScoreFlow</a> lets you import your own piano score and keep it visible. It can help you follow the two lines; the listening decision still happens at the instrument.
Sources:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-011-0177-x
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1452179/full
Discover more from Geoffrey Chen
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.