AUG 27, 2012: Some of the most difficult passages to learn involve what I call "near-repetition." That means that it's almost exactly the same---with a few small changes by the composer. In a literal repeat, the near-repetition could be the second ending. It's critical to make the difference in your mind between the first and second endings, because if you should slide into the second ending before you performed the first ending, you could shorten the composition by a great deal. And if you repeat the first ending, you'll probably need to go all the way back to the repeat sign---and go through it all over again.
In the case of first and second endings, assuming the section repeated is small enough, it might be good to take the whole thing as one unit. Play the first ending, go back and then play the second---at half tempo. And slowly increase your speed until you get up to tempo.
But sometimes the near-repetition doesn't involve repeat signs, because the changes the composer made are too elaborate to be able to use a repeat sign. Then the danger is that in actual performance you will mentally jump to a similar section rather than the one the composer indicated on the score page.
If two sections are totally different, there's no problem in sequencing them correctly. But when they're similar, and particularly when they are nearly alike except for some small details, it's hard to tell them apart if you haven't looked at the music for a while---or even if you have.
Looking at the score away from the piano may help. Or it could be that slow practice on the similar sections is needed. Whatever it is you have to do, make sure you find some way to distinguish one section from the other.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Fast Forwarding
AUG 25, 2012: This technique is good for knowing where you are with a piece of music you have learned at some point. It's particularly helpful if you just learned it and are still a little shaky about some of the fingering, the transitions to the different sections, the bass line in one place, and so on.
Sit in a comfortable place without the score of the piano piece you have learned. Also, make sure you are not too close to a keyboard. The idea is to check the piece using only your brain. You don't need perfect pitch to imagine the sound of the music--even if you're at all close to the actual pitch, it will be enough. Start performing the piece in your head. Imagine your fingers moving, too---preferably without actually moving them. As you listen to the piece in your mind and imagine yourself performing it (fingering, hand motions, etc.) you may find that you're pretty familiar with it all. In which case, you can "fast-forward" the music. See how fast you can get through a section but still get all the notes. When you come to the passages you're not sure of, slow down. Maybe get it even slower than your chosen tempo. Way slow if you need it. If you're not sure what happens in the music at this point, see if you can continue. Latch on to the nearest scrap of music that will get you back on track----and roll with it for as long as you can.
Go back to the keyboard and work on the passages you forgot. Then, try it again. Fast-forward, keep fast-forwarding. When you get to the troublesome spot, slow down just a little, but maybe not as much as the last time. Do this a few times until you can fast-forward the troublesome section and get all the notes.
Now go to the keyboard and play it again to check if it "went in" (your brain/finger complex). If it still didn't, go back again. After a few times, if it still didn't get in there, go to the troublesome spot and isolate hands, fragment the music, isolate its components, take everything super-slow, and be prepared to try the fast-forward technique yet again.
It may not work equally well for everyone, but it's a quick way to discover where your memory lapses are in a piece of music. You can also use it to go over your entire repertoire to see how much of it is up and running and how much of it has "gone to sleep". The great thing about this technique is that you can do it anywhere---sometimes even while other music is playing.
Sit in a comfortable place without the score of the piano piece you have learned. Also, make sure you are not too close to a keyboard. The idea is to check the piece using only your brain. You don't need perfect pitch to imagine the sound of the music--even if you're at all close to the actual pitch, it will be enough. Start performing the piece in your head. Imagine your fingers moving, too---preferably without actually moving them. As you listen to the piece in your mind and imagine yourself performing it (fingering, hand motions, etc.) you may find that you're pretty familiar with it all. In which case, you can "fast-forward" the music. See how fast you can get through a section but still get all the notes. When you come to the passages you're not sure of, slow down. Maybe get it even slower than your chosen tempo. Way slow if you need it. If you're not sure what happens in the music at this point, see if you can continue. Latch on to the nearest scrap of music that will get you back on track----and roll with it for as long as you can.
Go back to the keyboard and work on the passages you forgot. Then, try it again. Fast-forward, keep fast-forwarding. When you get to the troublesome spot, slow down just a little, but maybe not as much as the last time. Do this a few times until you can fast-forward the troublesome section and get all the notes.
Now go to the keyboard and play it again to check if it "went in" (your brain/finger complex). If it still didn't, go back again. After a few times, if it still didn't get in there, go to the troublesome spot and isolate hands, fragment the music, isolate its components, take everything super-slow, and be prepared to try the fast-forward technique yet again.
It may not work equally well for everyone, but it's a quick way to discover where your memory lapses are in a piece of music. You can also use it to go over your entire repertoire to see how much of it is up and running and how much of it has "gone to sleep". The great thing about this technique is that you can do it anywhere---sometimes even while other music is playing.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Highlighting Notes
AUG 22, 2012: After learning each section by adding on bars and taking each add-on at about half speed or slower and slowly increasing the speed until you get up to tempo, you should have the sound of the music in your ears. Now, you might want to go back and highlight some of those notes to make sure you have them firmly in your fingers and mind.
One way to do this is to start with the first complete phrase and take the right hand only---at about half speed and keep increasing the speed with a metronome until it is up to tempo. For example, play it at 60, then play it again at 63, then 66 then 69 then 72 etc. Then do the same with the left hand. Then put the two hands together. Repeat the process until you get all the way through the section.
Even after this, some details will evade you, so take those details---by this time you surely know where they are---and work on them slowly, taking the hands separately if necessary. Most pianists are looking at the clock by now and wondering how long it will take to learn the piece at this rate. I think the answer might be that however long it takes you to learn it, this process could make it happen quicker. If you learn the piece too quickly, you might be thinking, "okay, so I've learned it. Now on to the next." When actually your learning of it was superficial.
After this highlighting process, now you can look at the score away from the piano with confidence since you really know it from a finger/brain standpoint. And now you can add other details that you might have missed because you were too busy working on the obvious details.
One way to do this is to start with the first complete phrase and take the right hand only---at about half speed and keep increasing the speed with a metronome until it is up to tempo. For example, play it at 60, then play it again at 63, then 66 then 69 then 72 etc. Then do the same with the left hand. Then put the two hands together. Repeat the process until you get all the way through the section.
Even after this, some details will evade you, so take those details---by this time you surely know where they are---and work on them slowly, taking the hands separately if necessary. Most pianists are looking at the clock by now and wondering how long it will take to learn the piece at this rate. I think the answer might be that however long it takes you to learn it, this process could make it happen quicker. If you learn the piece too quickly, you might be thinking, "okay, so I've learned it. Now on to the next." When actually your learning of it was superficial.
After this highlighting process, now you can look at the score away from the piano with confidence since you really know it from a finger/brain standpoint. And now you can add other details that you might have missed because you were too busy working on the obvious details.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Start With Simple
AUG 20, 2012: If there's a piece of piano music you would like to learn---but you find it overwhelming because of its length or its difficulty or both---you might want to look at it away from the instrument and identify the easy passages. Most piano pieces are not uniformly difficult unless you're talking about some sort of study---like the Chopin etudes. Barring that, there will be stretches of music that any reasonably accomplished player can tackle without putting in too much time or effort.
On the other hand, there may be pieces of piano music that are relatively easy for you to get all the notes and rhythms---except for a few bars of intricate passagework. Often, those few bars discourage even the most enthusiastic of performers. In that case, the opposite may work: learn everything but the intricate passage. Then, only after you've completely learned the music, minus that passage, start to work out the difficulties of that dreaded tangle of notes. Work it out slowly and you may find it's not nearly as difficult as you thought.
That's true of any piece of music that's new to you. It almost always seems more difficult at first than it actually is. Usually the individual gestures are not so hard---so isolating those during your practice session is probably a good thing----but it's putting those gestures together in sequence that's always the tough part. You may have to do gestures 1, 2 and 3 in the space of a single bar, a fast bar to make it even more frustrating.
But you'll notice that after you put the gestures together and can play them without straining your mind, you may be able to play it so effortlessly that you wonder why it was so much trouble to have learned it.
Each piece of music you learn--no matter how ancient the actual date of it is---has some new problems to solve. Each problem solved can be applied to the next piece. And the next.
On the other hand, there may be pieces of piano music that are relatively easy for you to get all the notes and rhythms---except for a few bars of intricate passagework. Often, those few bars discourage even the most enthusiastic of performers. In that case, the opposite may work: learn everything but the intricate passage. Then, only after you've completely learned the music, minus that passage, start to work out the difficulties of that dreaded tangle of notes. Work it out slowly and you may find it's not nearly as difficult as you thought.
That's true of any piece of music that's new to you. It almost always seems more difficult at first than it actually is. Usually the individual gestures are not so hard---so isolating those during your practice session is probably a good thing----but it's putting those gestures together in sequence that's always the tough part. You may have to do gestures 1, 2 and 3 in the space of a single bar, a fast bar to make it even more frustrating.
But you'll notice that after you put the gestures together and can play them without straining your mind, you may be able to play it so effortlessly that you wonder why it was so much trouble to have learned it.
Each piece of music you learn--no matter how ancient the actual date of it is---has some new problems to solve. Each problem solved can be applied to the next piece. And the next.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Learn First Then Memorize
AUG 17, 2012: Here is another way to memorize a piece of piano music. First of all, divide the piece you are learning into sections as described on the first post (July 14). Once you have learned all the notes and rhythms this way, then you can start memorizing. You'll find, probably, that you have memorized a great deal of it already just by going over it the way it's explained in that opening post.
Now the fun begins. You get to try different shades of dynamics. For instance, the composer writes mF, which means "medium loud". What is medium loud, anyway? You have to decide that. You also have to decide which accents are to be really accented and which can be done gently. Or should they all be done gently? There are no easy answers, and if the composer was there standing in front of you, you might get a simple explanation or you might get an ambiguous one. At any rate the composer is usually not standing there, particularly if this work you are learning is over 80 years old.
You can change your ideas about this as you memorize. Memorize away from the instrument, and it should be easy to hear the music in your head as you read along, because you now have a powerful associational link between the printed page and the sounds it actually produces. Now you can look for inner voices, for melody and harmony, for bass line and phrase structure--apart from your performance of it. You can look at the music in the abstract. And as you're looking, you can remember what comes after what. Memorize by phrase, by bar, by line, by page, whatever. Just make sure that the process makes sense to you and that you can put the individual gestures of the music together---in correct sequence.
Since you've already gone through the process of listening to this music over and over again in small segments, you've acquired the technique for putting the stuff together mentally. So now, read along at your desk and do it--it shouldn't be too hard. After this, your playing of the music should get away from any mechanical qualities it might have had when you first learned it, because now it's making sense to you as music and not just some black dots on a page filled with horizontal lines. The music's really what it's about, not the details you see in print.
Now the fun begins. You get to try different shades of dynamics. For instance, the composer writes mF, which means "medium loud". What is medium loud, anyway? You have to decide that. You also have to decide which accents are to be really accented and which can be done gently. Or should they all be done gently? There are no easy answers, and if the composer was there standing in front of you, you might get a simple explanation or you might get an ambiguous one. At any rate the composer is usually not standing there, particularly if this work you are learning is over 80 years old.
You can change your ideas about this as you memorize. Memorize away from the instrument, and it should be easy to hear the music in your head as you read along, because you now have a powerful associational link between the printed page and the sounds it actually produces. Now you can look for inner voices, for melody and harmony, for bass line and phrase structure--apart from your performance of it. You can look at the music in the abstract. And as you're looking, you can remember what comes after what. Memorize by phrase, by bar, by line, by page, whatever. Just make sure that the process makes sense to you and that you can put the individual gestures of the music together---in correct sequence.
Since you've already gone through the process of listening to this music over and over again in small segments, you've acquired the technique for putting the stuff together mentally. So now, read along at your desk and do it--it shouldn't be too hard. After this, your playing of the music should get away from any mechanical qualities it might have had when you first learned it, because now it's making sense to you as music and not just some black dots on a page filled with horizontal lines. The music's really what it's about, not the details you see in print.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Repetitions
AUG 15, 2012: With enough repetitions---going slowly enough to get everything---the pianist can learn just about anything within that pianist's skill level, and maybe even a little beyond the current skill level. If it's way over the skill level of the performer, either adjustments might need to be made (taking the whole thing slower, leaving out notes, making a simplified version) or the performer could wait until further mastery of the instrument has been achieved and then try re-learning the music.
If you have to practice hours just to keep it correct at a certain tempo, then the piece may be beyond your present skill level, but there's no harm in stretching your ability to perform difficult music, provided you take it slowly enough to get all the notes and all the music written on the page.
After a certain amount of repetiton, the passage should feel natural enough so that you can perform it without strain or concern. But that doesn't mean you don't need to concentrate. One test you can use as to how well you know the work is to get away from the music and the keyboard and try to imagine the way the piece feels on a keyboard and the way it sounds. If there are holes in that knowledge, you can then go back to the passage or the bar where your memory is fuzzy by consulting the score and then playing it over. This may be the place that needs real work.
At any rate, once you get everything worked out, it should sort of click into place. At the very least, you need to know what's coming up in the next ten seconds or so at any point in time so that you're prepared to perform it.
If you have to practice hours just to keep it correct at a certain tempo, then the piece may be beyond your present skill level, but there's no harm in stretching your ability to perform difficult music, provided you take it slowly enough to get all the notes and all the music written on the page.
After a certain amount of repetiton, the passage should feel natural enough so that you can perform it without strain or concern. But that doesn't mean you don't need to concentrate. One test you can use as to how well you know the work is to get away from the music and the keyboard and try to imagine the way the piece feels on a keyboard and the way it sounds. If there are holes in that knowledge, you can then go back to the passage or the bar where your memory is fuzzy by consulting the score and then playing it over. This may be the place that needs real work.
At any rate, once you get everything worked out, it should sort of click into place. At the very least, you need to know what's coming up in the next ten seconds or so at any point in time so that you're prepared to perform it.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Run-throughs
AUG 14, 2012: Once you have all the sections of a piece worked up, you might try playing them in sequence and then connecting them as if you were performing it. The best way to do this, I think, is at home or a comfortable place. Some sections may defy your memory, so you'll need to go back and work on those places. Now you know where they are, so that makes them easier to focus on.
Once you get them technically ready to play, you can add everything: pedals, dynamics, nuances. And you'll keep getting new ideas about playing the piece the more you go over it. This is the final stage before actual performance.
The more you perform it from beginning to end, the more ready you are for an actual audience. You might even pretend that an audience is in the room while you are doing this. Otherwise, you will need to break it in with real audiences, and then things can be unpredictable. With enough repetitions, you should be able to get all the pattern of the music in your head. And then you can be able to perform it in front of a real audience with confidence.
Once you get them technically ready to play, you can add everything: pedals, dynamics, nuances. And you'll keep getting new ideas about playing the piece the more you go over it. This is the final stage before actual performance.
The more you perform it from beginning to end, the more ready you are for an actual audience. You might even pretend that an audience is in the room while you are doing this. Otherwise, you will need to break it in with real audiences, and then things can be unpredictable. With enough repetitions, you should be able to get all the pattern of the music in your head. And then you can be able to perform it in front of a real audience with confidence.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Intricate Passages
AUG 8, 2012: Here's a question: what do you do when there's a passage so full of detail, where the hands cross or have so many awkward things to do, that you simply can't play it at a slow speed and slowly work it up to tempo?
This has got to be one of the more frustrating things about practicing the piano. It seems that no matter what you do you'll be working on this passage for weeks if not months and with minimal results. So, first of all, it might be good to step back a bit and see what's actually going on in the music, isolating the different lines, looking at the score closely for the main melody and the sub-melodies, or the bass line if that applies.
I don't think there's anything damaging about going to one specific measure and breaking it down. Even if you get three notes correctly, you've done something. And it doesn't matter about tempo; you can deal with the correct tempo later on.
One of the most effective strategies might be to take the hands separately. If you can play one hand slowly and take it up to tempo, that's a great start. But supposing you can't. Then what? I'd say, simplify the passage yourself. Go one step further from understanding where the main events are in that bar and actually re-edit or even re-compose the bar keeping it as close to the original idea as possible. Redistributing the notes so that the left hand takes some of what the right hand was going to do---or the other way around---is an excellent way to achieve simplicity and clarity. Sometimes composers think orchestrally when they write piano music. That's because it's easy to conceive of a piano as a small orchestra. Unfortunately, they often leave you, the performer, with a lot of grunt work in terms of realizing what they want. In other words, their directions are not always simple and crystal clear. Your response might be, "okay, if you're not going to be clear about how this is to be realized, I'll step in and get the passage to work for me." To put it another way, this is probably not the time for being "faithful" to the score. Maybe the composer wasn't even sure what being "faithful" to the score was. You don't always know.
Being able to roll with an intricate passage and be willing to work with the details of that passage is a skill unto itself. And it's a skill worth working on. Because sometimes, when you get past the details, the general effect is really simple.
This has got to be one of the more frustrating things about practicing the piano. It seems that no matter what you do you'll be working on this passage for weeks if not months and with minimal results. So, first of all, it might be good to step back a bit and see what's actually going on in the music, isolating the different lines, looking at the score closely for the main melody and the sub-melodies, or the bass line if that applies.
I don't think there's anything damaging about going to one specific measure and breaking it down. Even if you get three notes correctly, you've done something. And it doesn't matter about tempo; you can deal with the correct tempo later on.
One of the most effective strategies might be to take the hands separately. If you can play one hand slowly and take it up to tempo, that's a great start. But supposing you can't. Then what? I'd say, simplify the passage yourself. Go one step further from understanding where the main events are in that bar and actually re-edit or even re-compose the bar keeping it as close to the original idea as possible. Redistributing the notes so that the left hand takes some of what the right hand was going to do---or the other way around---is an excellent way to achieve simplicity and clarity. Sometimes composers think orchestrally when they write piano music. That's because it's easy to conceive of a piano as a small orchestra. Unfortunately, they often leave you, the performer, with a lot of grunt work in terms of realizing what they want. In other words, their directions are not always simple and crystal clear. Your response might be, "okay, if you're not going to be clear about how this is to be realized, I'll step in and get the passage to work for me." To put it another way, this is probably not the time for being "faithful" to the score. Maybe the composer wasn't even sure what being "faithful" to the score was. You don't always know.
Being able to roll with an intricate passage and be willing to work with the details of that passage is a skill unto itself. And it's a skill worth working on. Because sometimes, when you get past the details, the general effect is really simple.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Practicing Without Pedal
AUG 6, 2012: If it's possible for you not to use the pedal when you practice, I'd say that's the best way to go. Some people feel so uncomfortable practicing that way that they may use the pedal in places anyway. The reason I think it's a good idea is that you can hear every note with the pedals off. But there are sections of certain pieces of piano music which make no sense unless you do pedal shadings (or hold the right pedal down) even in the beginning stages of learning.
Here's another solution if not using the pedal while practicing bothers you: try practicing it without pedal for a while---and then add the pedal for a while. In other words, do your practicing in two versions: one with pedal, one without. Even if a certain passage doesn't make sense without pedal, you'll still hear things you wouldn't ordinarily hear this way.
What may happen if you choose to practice without pedal is that you'll develop a taste for really clean playing---and you'll refrain from using pedal in places where you would use it routinely. At any rate, when you finally do add the pedal---to get the piece ready for performance---you'll hear it differently, and possibly more accurately, than before.
Here's another solution if not using the pedal while practicing bothers you: try practicing it without pedal for a while---and then add the pedal for a while. In other words, do your practicing in two versions: one with pedal, one without. Even if a certain passage doesn't make sense without pedal, you'll still hear things you wouldn't ordinarily hear this way.
What may happen if you choose to practice without pedal is that you'll develop a taste for really clean playing---and you'll refrain from using pedal in places where you would use it routinely. At any rate, when you finally do add the pedal---to get the piece ready for performance---you'll hear it differently, and possibly more accurately, than before.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Bar by Bar
AUG 2, 2012: This method I'm about to describe will work best if you've already learned the piano piece you wish to bring back into your repertoire. It is an interesting alternative to either re-memorizing at a desk or crawling up the metronome notch by notch with each section.
Assuming the piece is not too difficult (a slow movement with few obvious technical problems), start by playing over the opening bar at a comfortable tempo---where you can play all the notes. Play it eight times correctly. As an option, you might try playing that first bar from memory. If you've learned the work before, this should be no problem. Then do the same with the second bar. Then try playing the first and second bar together. No metronome is required for this.
At the third bar, repeat the procedure and play it eight times correctly. Then play the bar before it and the bar you're currently working on together as a unit (this would be bar 2 followed by bar 3), and play those two bars together correctly at least four times. This is to insure that you have those two bars linked in your mind and fingers. Then, start from the first bar and play up to bar 3. Then take bar 4, play it correctly eight times at whatever tempo is comfortable and playable for you, and then link on bar 3--and play bars 3 and 4 correctly four times. Then start from bar 1 and go all the way to bar 4. Then take bar 5 and etc. Keep repeating this procedure until you reach the end. The end of what? The end of a section, the end of an entire piece, whatever you need to go over. Often, it would just be a short passage that you've forgotten. This will bring it back quickly.
I would always suggest, after you get the whole sequence up and running, to then start it at half-tempo on the metronome and take it up notch by notch till you reach the end. That's assuming there's no tempo change in the section or passage you're working on. Somehow, there's always a sort of even and sure touch you get from doing this that is hard to obtain otherwise.
Assuming the piece is not too difficult (a slow movement with few obvious technical problems), start by playing over the opening bar at a comfortable tempo---where you can play all the notes. Play it eight times correctly. As an option, you might try playing that first bar from memory. If you've learned the work before, this should be no problem. Then do the same with the second bar. Then try playing the first and second bar together. No metronome is required for this.
At the third bar, repeat the procedure and play it eight times correctly. Then play the bar before it and the bar you're currently working on together as a unit (this would be bar 2 followed by bar 3), and play those two bars together correctly at least four times. This is to insure that you have those two bars linked in your mind and fingers. Then, start from the first bar and play up to bar 3. Then take bar 4, play it correctly eight times at whatever tempo is comfortable and playable for you, and then link on bar 3--and play bars 3 and 4 correctly four times. Then start from bar 1 and go all the way to bar 4. Then take bar 5 and etc. Keep repeating this procedure until you reach the end. The end of what? The end of a section, the end of an entire piece, whatever you need to go over. Often, it would just be a short passage that you've forgotten. This will bring it back quickly.
I would always suggest, after you get the whole sequence up and running, to then start it at half-tempo on the metronome and take it up notch by notch till you reach the end. That's assuming there's no tempo change in the section or passage you're working on. Somehow, there's always a sort of even and sure touch you get from doing this that is hard to obtain otherwise.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Upper Limits
AUG 1, 2012: If you've tried the method of crawling from a slow comfortable tempo (where you can get all the notes) to a slightly faster tempo and then an even faster tempo, etc. until you reach your designated tempo and can play the passage with accuracy, you already know about the "upper limits". When you reach it, you start to lose coordination and balance.
But trying again isn't necessarily going to solve the problem. If you go back three or four times to the starting point and you still hit a stone wall at your former upper limit, it probably means that something needs to be altered---like your fingering for this passage, or your hand motions. Maybe you need to slow the passage down in your mind instead of trying to mentally rush through the difficulties. Or it could be that you need to slow that passage down just slightly in order to fit in the notes.
There are many difficult passages that can be solved by the working out of maybe two or three small places in the passage. It could be an awkward leap or a place where the fingers get gnarled up.
Taking the hands separately almost always works, particularly if most of the difficulties are in one hand. Then it's helpful to crawl up the metronome with that one hand---and after working out the difficulty, start again but this time use both hands.
If nothing else works, revising the passage is always an option. If you know the style of the music you're playing, and particularly if you find a way to make something sound similar but still leave out certain notes (or other things, like changing the octave register where it won't be noticed, say, in a fast passage) you can generally find a way to make it work. If nothing else, you may have to take the whole piece slower.
But as your technique improves, and it usually does if you keep working at it correctly, you'll find that in the long run you might be able to play the passage as written after all.
But trying again isn't necessarily going to solve the problem. If you go back three or four times to the starting point and you still hit a stone wall at your former upper limit, it probably means that something needs to be altered---like your fingering for this passage, or your hand motions. Maybe you need to slow the passage down in your mind instead of trying to mentally rush through the difficulties. Or it could be that you need to slow that passage down just slightly in order to fit in the notes.
There are many difficult passages that can be solved by the working out of maybe two or three small places in the passage. It could be an awkward leap or a place where the fingers get gnarled up.
Taking the hands separately almost always works, particularly if most of the difficulties are in one hand. Then it's helpful to crawl up the metronome with that one hand---and after working out the difficulty, start again but this time use both hands.
If nothing else works, revising the passage is always an option. If you know the style of the music you're playing, and particularly if you find a way to make something sound similar but still leave out certain notes (or other things, like changing the octave register where it won't be noticed, say, in a fast passage) you can generally find a way to make it work. If nothing else, you may have to take the whole piece slower.
But as your technique improves, and it usually does if you keep working at it correctly, you'll find that in the long run you might be able to play the passage as written after all.
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