To practice piano hands separately, learn each hand's part of a short section alone until it is accurate at a slow tempo, then combine them at an even slower tempo and build speed with both hands together. The method works because it splits a hard task into two easier ones. It backfires when you stay separate too long, because coordination between the hands only improves when both are playing.
Hands separately, often shortened to HS, and hands together, HT, is the most common practice advice in piano teaching. Nearly every teacher uses it in some form, and Chuan C. Chang's free book Fundamentals of Piano Practice made it the centerpiece of an entire method that circulates widely online. It deserves the reputation. It also gets misapplied often enough that a lot of pianists end up with two well-learned hands that refuse to play together.
Below is why it works, where it stops working, a step plan, and how to tell when to combine.
Disclosure: we make Songscription, and our team also makes Anything Piano, which appears in one section below.
Why Does Practicing Hands Separately Work?
Practicing hands separately works because it reduces how many things you are asking your brain to do at once. With one hand, you can attend fully to the notes, the fingering, and the rhythm of a single line. With two, attention splits between them, mistakes multiply, and you end up rehearsing errors in both hands rather than fixing either one.
There is a second benefit that is easy to overlook. Practicing each hand alone shows you which hand is actually the problem. Many pianists assume a passage is hard because of coordination when one hand does not know its notes yet. Isolate the hands and that becomes obvious within a minute.
It also lets you play the hard hand faster than you could together. That matters because some fingering and hand-shape problems do not show up at slow tempos. A run that feels fine at half speed can need a different fingering at full speed, and you find that out more cheaply with one hand than with two.
When Does Practicing Hands Separately Backfire?
It backfires when the separate stage has no end. If you polish each hand for weeks and then try to combine, you discover that playing both together is a new skill you have not practiced at all. It also backfires on music where the hands depend on each other rhythmically, since the part you most need to learn is how they fit.
The first problem is the common one. Each hand alone becomes fluent and automatic, then combining them feels like starting the piece over. That is not wasted work, but it is a sign the hands should have met days earlier.
The second problem is about the music itself. Some textures only make sense as a whole: a melody passed between hands, a stride left hand under a syncopated right hand, or a ragtime or Latin pattern where the hands deliberately land off each other. Learning each hand alone teaches its notes but not the rhythm that relates them. For that kind of passage, separate practice should be brief and the combined slow practice should start early.
The third is time. Separate practice of an already secure hand is pleasant, because it sounds good. It is also the practice that does the least.
A Step Plan for One Section
Work on one short section at a time, about four to eight bars. Learn the harder hand first, then the easier one, then combine them at a slower tempo than either hand managed alone and raise the speed in steps. Move to the next section only when this one is clean with both hands.
- Choose the section and decide the fingering. Write finger numbers in if you are working from sheet music. Our guide to piano finger numbers covers the system, and the piano fingering generator adds suggested fingerings to a score automatically. On a piano roll, Anything Piano shows finger numbers when you turn on Fingering.
- Play the harder hand alone, slowly. Use the same fingering every time. Stop when it is accurate twice in a row.
- Play the easier hand alone. Usually the left, and usually quicker. Do not skip it because it seems simple.
- Push each hand alone a little faster. Check that the fingering still works near the target tempo. Change it now if it does not.
- Combine at a tempo slower than either hand alone. Half the speed of your slower hand is a reasonable starting point.
- If combining falls apart, shrink the unit. Put the hands together for one beat, then two, then a bar.
- Raise the combined tempo in steps. Only move up when the section is clean twice in a row at the current speed.
- Connect to the previous section. Overlap by a bar so the join gets practiced. There is more on this in learning a song section by section.
How Fast Should Each Stage Be?
Each stage has its own goal and its own tempo. Separate-hand practice starts slow and can push past the combined target tempo, while hands-together practice always starts slower than either hand alone. The table below summarizes it, with tempos described relative to the speed you are aiming for rather than as metronome numbers, since those depend on the piece.
Stages of hands-separate and hands-together piano practice, with the goal of each stage and a starting tempo relative to the target
| Stage | Goal | Starting tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Harder hand alone | Correct notes and a fixed fingering | Slow enough to make no mistakes |
| Easier hand alone | Correct notes and a fixed fingering | Slow enough to make no mistakes |
| Each hand pushed alone | Check the fingering holds near full speed | Close to target, briefly |
| Hands together, small units | Get the hands to land correctly with each other | Half of your slower hand, or less |
| Hands together, full section | Play the section without stopping | Slow, then raised in steps |
| Hands together, connected | Join this section to the one before | The tempo you reached in the section |
How Do You Know When to Put Hands Together?
Put your hands together when each hand can play the section accurately, with a consistent fingering, at a slow steady tempo, twice in a row without stopping. You do not need either hand at full speed or memorized first. Combining early, then returning to a single hand only for the spots that break, is faster than perfecting both apart.
A useful rule is to treat separate practice as a repair tool rather than a phase. Once the hands are together, keep playing together, and when one spot keeps breaking, take that hand out, fix the two or three notes, and put it straight back. Most experienced pianists practice this way most of the time: largely hands together, with short separate visits to specific bars.
The signal that you have overstayed separate practice is that each hand sounds good alone and you have not tried them together yet. Combine that day, even if it sounds rough.
Practicing One Hand at a Time With an App
Most piano learning apps let you practice one hand while the other plays automatically or stays silent, which is the digital version of covering half the score. The difference between apps is mainly which songs you can do it with. Course apps offer it on their catalog songs; a few apps let you bring your own.
The Anything Piano app lets you choose the right hand, the left hand, or both, on any song you load from an audio file or YouTube link. Anything Piano shows the part as a falling-notes piano roll and listens through the microphone on an acoustic piano or through a MIDI keyboard, marking which notes you hit and missed, and you can slow the song down and loop a section for the combined stage. It breaks songs into parts, so you can work one section at a time and move on when it is done, and Wait mode holds the roll until you play the right note, which suits the slow, hands-separate first pass. Turn on Fingering and it shows finger numbers on the piano roll, so you can keep the same fingering every time. That makes it a practical way to follow the plan above with songs that are not in any catalog.
Where it is weaker: it shows a piano roll rather than sheet music. If you work from paper, Songscription's easy piano sheet music and fingering tools cover that side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I practice piano hands separately or together?
Separately first, for any passage where either hand alone is not yet easy. Learning each hand alone lets you get the notes and fingering right without splitting your attention. Then combine early, as soon as each hand can play the passage slowly without stopping, because coordination between the hands is its own skill and only gets practiced when both hands play together.
How long should I practice each hand separately?
Until each hand can play the section accurately, at a slow steady tempo, twice in a row without stopping. For a short passage that might be one session; for a dense one, a few days. Practicing a hand alone long after it is secure wastes time, since the hard part of the piece is now the coordination, and that only improves with both hands playing.
Why can I play each hand alone but not together?
Because playing with both hands asks your brain to run two patterns at once, and that coordination has to be learned separately from either pattern. The fix is to combine at a much slower tempo than either hand managed alone, sometimes half or less, and to put the hands together a beat or a bar at a time. It nearly always comes together with repetition.
Is there an app that lets you practice one hand at a time?
Yes. Anything Piano lets you practice the right hand, the left hand, or both together on any song you load from a recording or YouTube link, and it listens through the microphone to show which notes you hit and missed. Most course apps such as Simply Piano and flowkey also let you practice hands separately on the songs in their catalogs.
Final Thoughts
Hands-separate practice has survived generations of piano teaching because it is correct about something important: a hard task gets easier when you split it, and most mistakes come from asking your attention to do too much at once. What gets lost in the retelling is that splitting is only half the method. The other half is putting the pieces back together early enough that the coordination gets practiced, because that is usually the part of the passage that is actually difficult.
So give separate practice a finish line rather than a calendar. Accurate, slow, twice in a row, then combine, and come back to one hand only to repair the bar that keeps breaking. If you practice that way for a few weeks, you will notice the separate stage getting shorter on its own, which is the clearest sign the method is doing its job. For how much time to set aside for all of this, see how long to practice piano a day.
