Looking at hand positions

[piano_learner]

I suppose this is along the same lines as sightreading. I have been learning piano with a teacher since February this year, but due to the nature of shiftwork, I may go for two or three weeks without a lesson. My question revolves around a balance between learning where the notes are and sightreading. I can’t help looking away from the sheetmusic and looking down at the keyboard to get my finger positions correct when moving hand positions during a piece. Is this a bad habit?

[bernhard]

Yes, it is.

Train yourself to find the keys by touch.

To do that you must rely on the black notes.

I am guessing here, but how do you know where G is? If you have to find C and then walk up the alphabet to get to G, this is the real root of your problem: You are referring to the white keys. Instead you want to think of the G as the white key that is in the left middle of the three black keys. Learn all positions by reference to the black keys: C is to the left of the two black key group. D in in the middle, C is to the right. And so on and so forth.
You may start visually.

Once you know that, move on to do it by touch.

Also, search through the forum. Sight reading is a very popular subject.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[piano_learner]

Bernhard,

I am afraid that my playing is going to take a step backwards now :-(
I am close to being able to play the 3 pieces necessary for the Grade 1 examination (I am still deliberating about whether I will be ready for in Nov/Dec) but I can only play certain bars by looking at the keyboard. I practice scales by looking at the keyboard as well.

[super_ardua]

Ah...

Practice in the dark : keep a lamp next to the piano,  get into your seat,  and turn off the light.

The best place to start doing this is your scales.

Don't worry,  when I was doing my grade 1 ,  I would grind my molars automatically and puff out my cheeks when I would come to the tricky bits.

[bernhard]

It’s OK. You don’t need to do it suddenly. Acquire the skill gradually, step by step.

Super Ardua advice is good: scales are the best place to start.

Try this for a couple of minutes everyday:

1.      Close your eyes, and with both hands find the group of two black notes. You are going to play them with fingers 2 and 3. Use your touch and investigate by touch the neighbouring keys until you find a group of two black notes for the right hand, and the group of two black keys for the left hand one octave lower. It is easier if you flatten your fingers and use the full extension of the fingers (and the palm of the hand if it helps) to feel the contours of the keyboard rather than just the tips of the fingers. Take your time and make sure you got the correct black keys. Then put your hand in playing position (natural curvature of the fingers, only tips on the keys) and press together the two groups of two black keys. You can now open your eyes and check if you got it right. If you got, move on, if not try again. You can also have someone looking at you doing this, and checking for you if you got it right, this way you do not need to open your eyes. Eventually you will be able to tell by ear if you got it right or not.

2.      Now close your eyes again and try to do it for the group of three black keys. Use fingers 234.

3.      Once this is easy, try to go through three or four octaves playing hands together the groups of two and three black keys with closed eyes. Don’t use the thumbs, use fingers 23 for the two black keys and fingers 234 for the three black keys.

4.      Once this gets easy, use the thumb to play the B (white key) and the E (white key). So, with the right hand you will be playing B with the thumb, then C# and D# together with fingers 23, then E with the thumb and F# - G#-A# with fingers 234. In order to locate the whit keys, your hands must be well into the black key area, so that the thumb can touch the black keys and find the B and the E by reference to the neighbouring black keys. This is important and you should insist on it form the beginning: It is the black keys that allow for geographical orientation on the keyboard. Now do the same with the left hand and then hands together. You are of course playing the B major scale.

5.      Do this sequence for 2 – 3 minutes everyday (everyday is more important than 3 hours doing it). In a couple of weeks you should detect a huge difference. Come back for more then.

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[CC]

Excellent question! Not because you've pinpointed a problem, but because the question reveals that you still don't have a good idea of what it means to practice piano. Piano practice is very complicated and you will need to learn lots of things, but let me start with a few pointers. First, looking at hands or not is not something you need to practice consciously because it will come naturally as a consequence of your practice -- practicing it separately just wastes your time that you can put to better use. The trick in learning piano quickly is to practice as many skills as possible while doing ONE thing; ie, killing many birds with one stone.  Most of those learning tricks are listed on my web page:

https://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm

To understand piano practice, you must ask: "What is the absolute minimum I need to do, that I can't avoid?" Answer is that you need to repeat certain lesson pieces a certain minimum number of times in order to train your hands. While doing that ONE THING, you can learn many skills simultaneously. One is learning the positions of the keys and the correct fingerings that go with certain key combinations. Another is memorizing.  If you learn in short sections, first hands separately, you can easily memorize, and by the time you have repeated enough times so your hands can play them, you have memorized them VERY WELL. Thus in one swoop, you have learned 6 skills at once: fingering, key positions, memorizing, your lesson piece, hands separate practice, and learning in short segments. THEN you can put the hands together and start making music.

When you first start, look at music and at hands as necessary -- there is no set rule. After memorizing, look at hands only, and throw music away. As you improve, you will look at hands less when initially sight reading. But, as you now see, this is not important because most of the time you will be practicing from memory, which will automatically teach your hands the locations of the keys.  Later on, you need to practice true sight reading, which is a whole different thread.  Now, since you sometimes do not play for extended periods, this will be a challenge, and there really is no way around that -- in piano, it is important to practice frequently if you want to progress rapidly.

[piano_learner]

Thank you Bernhard & CC for your deeply insightful and very THOROUGH answers.

I just want to clear up  1 point. Although I do not have a lesson every week, I practice EVERY day, even if it is nothing more than 10 minutes at the end of a 12 hr shift. I can't go to bed without touching my piano!

I don't mind practicing specific techniques like Bernhard has suggested. After a long shift, when I can't concentrate too well on learning a piece, I will do less demanding tasks like my 'dozen a day' or scales.

I have more questions, please answer at your own pace, I feel I've taken up so much of your time! Thanks again.

These may appear like stupid questions :-(

Bernhard: If I find the C# & D# keys with fingers 2,3, why do I play B with the thumb and not C? Or do I practice playing both? Do I play E with 4 & F with 5?

CC: Is playing from memory Good or Bad? I had a discussion with a Grade 5 piano player and told him that I practice my pieces so thoroughly that I no longer need to look at the sheetmusic. He said that isn't the best thing because it reduces your sightreading skills. I can almost play my 3xGrade 1 pieces from memory. As a result, my fingers play faster than I can follow the sheet music and so I don't bother looking at it.

[bernhard]

Chang is right: your practice should always cover many levels, the one you concentrate on and several more that will be grasped unconsciously.

So, in the exercise I suggested, you are not only practising playing by touch, you are also learning the B major scale and general scale fingering. You play B and E (both with the thumb) because you are doing the B major scale (B – C# - D# - E – F# - G# - A# - B).

You can of course do the Db major scale. The steps are exactly the same, but this time instead of playing B and E with the thumb, you play C and F with the thumb. The black keys remain the same, but they change names (Db – Eb – F – Gb – Ab – Bb – C – Db)

Finally you can do the Gb major (or F# major) scale. Again the black keys remain the same, played with the same fingers, but the thumb now will play Cb (=B) and F (Gb – Ab – Bb – Cb – Db –Eb – F – Gb). Or if you want to think of it as F# major – the keys are the same, but the notes change name : F# - G# - A# - B – C# - D# - E#(=F) – F#.

Finally, not to answer for Chang, but there is nothing bad with either sight-reading or playing by memory. It is “bad” if you can only do one of these things, since then you will be limited in what you can accomplish, so ideally you should be able to do both. I will say however that true sight-reading is to a great extent playing by ear and by memory anyway. No one can sight read efficiently if they cannot memorise short sections and play them by ear. Have a look at these threads for more discussions on sight reading:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=teac;action=display;num=1048235978
(teaching very small children – pros and cons of sight reading)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=teac;action=display;num=1081187434
(How to teach bass clef)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1081624578
(detailed explanation of the sight-reading process)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1073131731
(discussion of Richman’s book)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1087022500
(more discussion on Richmann’s book)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1071914342
(Cambridge word scramble example)

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1085793013
(tips for not looking at the keyboard, discussion on critical reviews of Richmann’s book)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[rlefebvr]

There's always the old fashion way. Get a Nun to whack your fingers every time you look down.....


Sorry, Catholic upbringing. Could not resist.

[CC]

Once you advance beyond novice level, you should practice everything from memory (but not everybody does for various "crazy" reasons -- no time to discuss them here) . At the beginning, however, you must be VERY careful, and this is where there appears to be so much contradiction between teachers, advice on message boards, etc.  This controversey often extends well into the advanced levels. (1) You must be careful not to become a good memorizer and a very bad reader. If you memorize quickly, you almost never have to read and never get to practice reading. The more you memorize, the less you need to read, and you keep getting worse at reading. (2) The main job of a teacher is to teach you music because, without music, your time is TOTALLY wasted -- sounds reasonable, but music is often the last thing most students learn.  Many teachers are terrified of these two possibilities and will do anything to avoid them.  The reason (2) has to do with reading is that all the musical indications are on the sheet music, but if you "think" that you memorized them, most students miss a lot of them.  The problem is that most students don't even realize what they miss, often even when they are staring at the music. So the teachers can't stress this enough -- she may have to point them out to you before you realize the connection between the markings and what you are doing.  This is why reading is so important.

Conclusion: memorize and practice from memory. However, make sure that you do not neglect practicing reading and make sure that you carefully observe all the musical markings.  Even after you have completely finished a piece and gone on to the next one, open the sheet music once in a while to see if your memory agrees with what is on there -- you will often be very surprised.

[IllBeBach]

You'll find when you start relying on feeling rather than visual senses to find the keys that you will suddenly be playing much more fluently and dare I say...musically than you were before.  At least that's been my experience in the matter.  I realized after reading this that I have apparently gotten into the habit of closing my eyes a lot while I practice by memory--at least when there aren't a lot of leaps  .

[Piazzo22]

Some people (CC) thinks memorizing is looking what keys are you going to play and analizing the piece with theory. But you will only get worse with that method.
You have to play always from the score (hands together) at your reading posibilities. You will memorize the music, that is what you´re looking for, and at the same time the movements of your hands. You don´t have to make a concious effort to memorize, it will come with time, just play your piece (in sections if you need to practice something special), and one day you will try to play it form memory and you will. It´s music!!! not keyboard coreography.
CC always tells you to memorize before practicing small sections hands separate. It is not natural, that is not musical thinking. That way you´re practicing piano key combinations without even knowing how it sounds. You have to make the sound clear in your head! Playing the piano is not making finger games from memory. You have to play ONLY by ear.  

[Maui]

I usually have the WTC for training sight reading and i think its very good because the preludes and fugues have a lot of voices that forces you to read every note and them you practice reading with a little time waste, unlike other musics that have repeated phrases and scales that you only see the whole structure and play without reading one note. Its good to identify structures but it is also good to read every note because if you can do that quickly you can identify structures quickly, and either you can avoid playing wrong notes by thinking its the same notes of the previous bar or things like that.
I recommend that you practice reading just 30 minutes a day or something like that, depends on the time you practice every day. I practice 5 hours so 30 minutes i think its good.

[johnnypiano]

LOOKING AT KEYS

Hand positions are so critical, and the momentary angles of the fingers to the keys so acute, that looking at the keys when practising is part of my practice technique.  It is done VERY SLOWLY, with brain in high gear, and gives me the confidence to play naturally without looking at the keys.  This means memorising short passages as you go along.

If you find yourself always looking at the keys you need to wean yourself away.  Try simple things like playing a scale with your ‘favourite finger’.  C major is too easy; try G major or A minor.  Look at it while you play it a few times, then shut your eyes and go even slower while you imagine the move towards and away from the black key.  You need to explore by looking initially, then shut your eyes and try it.  You could then practise playing every other key (you are allowed C major this time: C E G B D etc.)

The left hand has lots of leaps to do, so try some short ones using just the little finger.  Move the hand with an arching movement and land on top (not at an angle) of the key you are aiming for.  You will soon learn to do easy leaps.  Aim for small results.  A lot of repetition is necessary, but if you find you are aren’t concentrating, move to something else and then return.  Practising when ones brain is nor working 100% is a waste of time

More suggestions from me if you want.  Best of luck.