The value of playing hands alone before together has become really clear to me off late! As with seemingly all young girls, Ann is in love with the song Fur Elise, and wants to play it for recital even though its pretty far above her regular level. She has the A section down beautifully, but even though we've been working on the rest of it for months, it still sounds pretty awful ;)

The reason for this is that even though I keep requesting that she practice it hands alone, she's still putting it together. What happens is that she ends up pausing and stuttering every time a difficult transition comes up. It seems that no matter how well she learns the various sections, the transitions never get any better. I think its because she's trying to process them every time, and that with so much going on, its too much for her to really study and *learn.*

So today we spent a painful lesson, where I made her play the blasted sections hands alone, and go back to the beginning every time she stuttered or paused. And I explained to her that this is serious and she's not going to have the song in time for the recital if she doesn't break things down and learn them correctly.

Worst case scenario is that I only have her play the A section for the recital, but that would be a shame since she's so close on the rest of it and has been working on it for so long.

Anyway, while I grew up learning songs hands alone myself and teach that way with my students, its been good for me to have a demonstration of why its so important ;) Basically, the human brain can only process so much at once, so if you break down and preprocess parts, then you can put more together in the end.