Ok here's the thing: I've been playing piano since I was 6. I'm now 19 and can't make one hand louder than the other. Any thoughts?

Try playing the softer hand as if your tickling the piano, and the loud hand normally. That's how I do it anyway.

I find thinking really helps. (That isn't meant to sound insulting, by the way!) Start by playing something really simple like "Twinkle, twinkle" with repeated chords in the other hand, and think the melody very loudly in your head - for me, this makes the melody-playing hand louder. Work on it until you really feel you can do it, then try it in your pieces.

When you play your pieces, think the melody line all the time, including shaping, and feel that the rest is just background - this works even where the melody is tossed from hand to hand. Bach is really good for this, as the melody shifts around the keyboard and you have to bring out the themes all the time.

Have you been having lessons all those years or just playing for fun? Surely a teacher would have taught you this by the time you were 10!

playing scales 2 hands in similar otion, on e hand crescendoing the other decrescendoing, one loud one quiet. etcc.

I do that alot, and the same for staccatoe and legato.

i apoliges for the aweful spelling... im incredible tired

No its something that he's tried to teach me and given me loads of methods that don't seem to work. I have my grade 7 but now I kind of just play for fun. I will try out your ideas though. Thanks for your help.

Here are a few things to try:

1. Practice it v-e-e-e-e-r-r-r-y-y-y-y s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y
2. Start both hands quiet. gradually make one louder while keeping the other quiet
3. Play a few bars one hand at a time of one hand quiet, other hand loud, first hand quiet, other hand loud, then without pausing play a few bars of both hands.
4. Sit away from the piano and simply think through the section you want to play. In your mind hear the two separate parts, one loud, the other piano. Imagine the different feelings in the LH and RH. Then go to the piano and play it.

<--- note the impeccable control of tone

I think it might help to think about how the piano works. To play a soft sound the key needs to go down slower than for a louder sound - not to be confused with the tempo of the piece. If you clap slowly you will get a soft sound while if you clap quickly it will be louder. You could try tapping a table top with each hand going at different speeds. You will feel a difference in weight.

Try putting your hands into a basic C position an octave apart. Play a C going quickly down on the note in the RH on beat one followed by a C going slowly down in the LH on beat two and then LISTEN hard holding them both down for a long pause. You should hear a loud C followed by a soft C and the sounds will balance out. Gradually bring the timing of the notes closer together playing the second one between the beats until you can synchronise them together. It takes a lot of practice for the slow one to catch up with the faster note but it is possible. You would then carry on through each note of the scale/five finger position and then reverse the process.

This exercise is explained in full in 'Piano Lessons Book Two' (Waterman).

When you know a piece well with a nice cantatible section I agree with Berkshire Mum that thinking the sound you want is also very effective.

Try taking things just one beat at a time. You need to think a long time, before actually playing the notes, and if they don't come out with a difference between the hands, take it slowly and try again.

Also, you could try playing one hand as normal, and playing the other literally on the surface of the keys, without actually depressing them. This is an exaggeration of what you are trying to achieve, and with movements that require such fine motor control, you often need to start with a big difference, and gradually refine it down.

Slow practise is the most helpful thing for this, you can't go too slowly, lots and lots of mental preparation to control the differing key speeds, and lots of good listening to critically evaluate the result.

Good luck.

I always start practice by warming up with very simple both-hand five-finger exercises - no hand shifts, no clever stuff, just patterns up and down. To stop this getting boring, once I'm warmed up a bit I start putting as many different effects in as I can - various dynamics and articulations, then different dynamics/articulations in either hand, always trying to make it musical (which is less bonkers than it sounds if, like me, you practice in a nice acoustic and once had a total obsession with Steve Reich!).

What I love about starting so simple is that it's relatively easy to do complicated things on top, and makes me that much more aware of tone, dynamics and articulation. I'm sure it makes the same technical challenges in an actual piece of music much easier to take in my stride - much more than trying really hard to get them right in the piece itself.

Might be worth a try to help with your dynamic problem. Good luck!