Looking at the Keys

[Essyne]

okay - so . . . one of the things that I'm told when playing is that I should NEVER (!) look @ the keys of the piano, but it's something that I can't help but do! How can I correct this habit?

[thierry13]

Change teacher.

[keymoo]

okay - so . . . one of the things that I'm told when playing is that I should NEVER (!) look @ the keys of the piano, but it's something that I can't help but do! How can I correct this habit?

That might be good for a fun challenge, but I see no reason not to. I think what tends to happen with a lot of people is that they either never look at the keys or they never look at the music. I tend to fall into the latter, and my teacher guides me towards looking at both. He tells me to follow the music, and if I need to look at the keys to make a leap, or any other reason that's fine, as long as I can return to the score with my eyes and not get lost. I tend to often get lost because I've memorised the piece.

[gyzzzmo]

Show that 'teacher' of yours youtube movies of Zimmerman, Kissin, Horrowitz etc. Then laugh alot and fire him 

Gyzzz

[timland]

Get the book Super Sight-Reading Secrets by Howard Richman.

[thierry13]

I stick with what I said. Your teacher does not play the piano and you should change NOW if you want to achieve something at the piano someday.

[shortyshort]

When I'm learning a piece, I will look at the score and let my fingers find their way.

Once memorised, and my fingers have it sorted, I won't use it again until I'm ready to polish the dynamics.

I could not play any piece while looking at the score.

But that's just my way of learning. I know it's wrong, but it works for me.

[knabe31]

Interesting comments. I look at the score most of the time when learning a piece. Only look down to make large leaps into the bass notes or whenever necessary to find my way as I learn. Once memorized I will look down at the keyboard but, am not necessarily following each note with the fingers just picking up the movement with the periferal vision. Once memorized you know when and where to look when needed. This maybe makes it a little more difficult to initially learn the piece but, I find since I have learned this way I am much more familiar and comfortable with the keyboard and where my fingers need to go to make the cords etc... I dislike watching people play when the head is constantly bobing up and down as they look from score to keyboard finding their way. Very distracting. 

[rc]

It makes sense that it's more efficient to not have to look at the keys.  The less we have to watch our hands the more energy we can direct to the music.  Besides that you can't watch both hands at once, even if you're watching one hand the other is going around without visual guidance.

In fact, I've come to believe that when learning how to move the fingers it can be harmful to judge visually how it should be done, it's easy to make a mistake when approaching a technique by how it looks.  Probably because so much is going on physically, and trying to make it look right tends to make us focus too much on minutiae that we really don't need to concern ourselves with and actually distracts from what we SHOULD be focusing on - the sound and feel.  I truly don't need to be conscious of what the phalanges of my fingers are doing.

I've had better luck learning by how it sounds and feels.  When I've been practicing without looking sometimes it screws me up to watch my hands.  "Whoa, that's how it looks?"

Oh, but we're talking about looking at the keys...  Yeah I do that too, mostly when performing something memorized.  Probably part if I'm going to look at something it might as well be the keys, but I also suspect I do it as a sort of security because of performance anxiety.

How to practice not looking at the keys?  Just don't look.

I find my mind still wants to visualize what's going on, so I've experimented with different ways of 'seeing' the keyboard in my mind.  I've found it to be an ongoing process of how I visualize it, at first I tended to imagine it as a closed view of just one octave...  But that's obviously limiting so I began to take a scrolling view of wherever the hand is, still a more-or-less 1 octave view.  Now I think I've been seeing it more of a birds eye view of the whole keyboard which seems to be a more efficient process.

I've also wondered about different ways of visualizing while playing.  Is it better to visualize what's being played, or what's about to be played? key-by-key or larger overall patterns?  I don't know.  I suspect larger patterns are easier, but that we also must be familiar with the smaller details in order to get there...

[rc]

Oh, and i've been practicing these visualizations with scales/chords/arpeggios.  It's just an aspect of the practice, after the hands know how to move there's still work to be done experimenting with how the mind thinks.

[dan101]

Never say never! Of course, you occasionally have to look down. However, in practice sessions, it's better to look up as much as possible so that mistakes don't creep in.

Looking down too much is often a result of a student thinking that the task at hand is memorized, when in fact it isn't.

[shortyshort]

I also practice sometimes with my eyes shut. 

[Essyne]

Looking down too much is often a result of a student thinking that the task at hand is memorized, when in fact it isn't.

Could you elaborate a little more, please?

[anna_crusis]

You don't need to look down to find the keys any more than you need to look in a mirror to find your mouth when you eat.

Knowing your scales off by heart takes care of where your fingers go, and the 'sixth sense' of muscle tension tells you where your hand goes (the same sense that allows you to point at something with your eyes shut).

Close your eyes, play something reasonably easy that you know off by heart and imagine the keys in your mind's eye. At first you'll hit a lot of wrong notes but I promise you that within a month your strike rate will improve 500%. It's not really that hard. Your brain and your body are wired to make light work of these sort of things.

I hate looking at the keys. After about 5 minutes the keyboard just starts to look like a zebra crossing to me and, as someone pointed out above, you can't watch both hands at once so you have to dart back and forth with your eyes all the time... very exhausting and counter-productive.

[slobone]

  I have no trouble seeing both hands at the same time, and I'm near-sighted!

When I'm learning a piece, I tend not to look down unless I have a difficult leap. If you lose your place in the music by doing that, you haven't practiced it enough.

In fact, I pretty much memorize the passages where I need to look down. Of course, when you memorize make sure you also memorize the dynamics, pedaling, fingering, etc.

Edit: I tried it today, and actually I can see both hands and the music all at the same time.

But in any event, I think it's good for any student to learn how to play

1) Without looking at the keys
2) Without looking at the music
3) With your eyes closed.

If you learn a piece well enough to perform it for an audience, you ought to be able to do any of the three...

[guendola]

As for changing the teacher: Your teacher might have his reasons to tell you not to look at the keys, perhaps your eyes are fixed to the keys and that prevents you from reading the music.

You should learn to hit the right notes without looking at the keyboard because eventually it won't be possible to watch both hands for this purpose, so even if you memorise every piece completely, you are stuck then. Actually it is part of the learning process to abandon the eagle skydive key finding system, it is way too slow!

[anna_crusis]

I have no trouble seeing both hands at the same time, and I'm near-sighted!

Well so am I but I meant that if one hand is doing something completely different to the other a couple of octaves away then it's impossible to monitor what each one is doing at the same time.