Student looking at keys while playing

[rgh55]

Any suggestions for a student who is constantly looking at the keys while playing. I am always saying "eyes up".  I cover the keys while she plays on occasion and she loses it and tries to look under the cover, totally ignoring what I am trying to do.  She has been taking lessons close to a year and is the Alfred B level.  She is 5 1/2 but slow to catch on.   Maybe I am expected too much.  I don't have this problem with my other young students.  Thanks!

[the89thkey]

Any suggestions for a student who is constantly looking at the keys while playing. I am always saying "eyes up".  I cover the keys while she plays on occasion and she loses it and tries to look under the cover, totally ignoring what I am trying to do.  She has been taking lessons close to a year and is the Alfred B level.  She is 5 1/2 but slow to catch on.   Maybe I am expected too much.  I don't have this problem with my other young students.  Thanks!

Let her look at the keys...I am a professional pianist and sometimes look at the keys when I'm practicing (not for the same reasons though ). Seriously, it doesn't matter if she looks. You can't get a 5 year old to play by feel yet.

[green]

Looking at hands can under-mine the development of aural and tactile touch awareness and the orientation that develops.

I have not tried this with younger than 6-7 year olds, but you might want to experiment and let us know how it goes:

Part of the problem is learning to trust your ears and hands, and the sense of relative 'balance' those two senses give a performer. I used the analogy of a tight-rope walker with a student recently which worked very well, they immediately got it then. Tell her your going to play a game. She is going to pretend she is on a high wire. Elicit some questions, does she know what that is, has she ever seen a circus? If she was on a tight-rope (mimick the wobbly movement of holding the bar..), would she run or go very very slowwly...

So the first thing students do when not looking at hands, is they slow down, they have to slow down, and this is good. Tell them to take as much time as they need.

You can extract this to a five-finger CDEFG HS/HT exercise at first, get her to try it on her own, then sit beside her and play a game of echos, you play the same thing as her one note at a time, C-D-E...and when she hears your first note, she echos it. In this way her attention will really be drawn to listening, then the 'feel' of responding to what she hears by playing.

Ask her to close her eyes and play a passage that she can play while looking at her hands.

Last suggestion, use an apron! This is from an old school of practice, you tie it around the neck, lay over the arms and hands and tuck behind the music board, this really works very well surprisingly but she be used in a fun way, they will often find it very funny, and it works all by itself without having to explain it!

I had great success with a 6 year old recently breaking her habit of looking at her hands, and now her eyes are glued on the music at all times. Her older 9 year old sister has a very hard time with it because she had three years of looking at her hands before I arrived, good to break that habit as soon as possible before it sets in.

Again these might not work with such a young learner, but give them a try and anything else you come up with and let us know how it goes!

[the89thkey]

Looking at hands can under-mine the development of aural and tactile touch awareness and the orientation that develops.

But this is not an issue for a 5 year old...They will learn.

[green]

Not an issue, no, not one that they are conscious of, but I would dare to argue that the principles I outlined here are as much true for a 5 year old as they are for a 50 year old. She is gravitating towards sight as her main way of navigating, and sometimes even just briefly gently bringing her attention to the other senses, which are working, just that she is not comfortable of letting go of the sight controls, can surprising break the reliance she may have on sight, the above suggestions don't have to take much time...but I may be wrong, experiment a little with that, could take just a few minutes, see how she responds to alternative stimuli, it can do nothing less that compliment her excellent visual acuity!

[dinulip]

I teach quite a few 5-1/2 year-olds this year, and all of them are able - and willing - to look at their score while playing - and at their score only.  All I had to do was to repeat many, many times to keep their eyes up.  Sometimes, they relapse - and I repeat again!  But they can definitely do it, believe me.

[cjp_piano]

Just do some short fun little games where she can't look at the keys. Don't make her stare at the book for the whole entire piece.

[teran]

I always look at my hands when playing, but then again I'm too blind to read a score so I have a good excuse.

On the plus side, it's made me very efficient and confident with stuff like leaps to the point that I can just use the very edges of my peripheral vision, or not even look at all and just judge the motion.

So really I don't see the big deal with her looking at her hands, you should allow a bit of both. Sight reading only stuff and times when she can look at her hands.

This is all coming from a place of deep resentment of being told to look up when I was playing as a child. Constantly butting in while I was playing and telling me to look up was more off putting and mistake inducing than actually being lackadaisical at reading the score.

Fight the system!

[pianosolution]

Looking at keys is a good thing. Just like looking at the road when driving. Learning where to look takes many years and ultimately piano repertoire with its big distances of the keyboard requires the ability to just which hand to look at and which finds its own way by proprioception (basically keyboard sense in this context). You can waste alot of time trying to teach sight reading per se when there are more advantageous concerns.

[ben_crosland]

Besides covering up the hands, I use the "Play as I point" technique to be very helpful with this. It enables you to take absolute control of the tempo, and to ensure that they don't get lost.

Personally, I don't have a problem with students looking at the keys while they play, so long as they know what they are doing; but when they constantly stare at their fingers for inspiration when they're still learning the piece, it bothers me, and I refuse to show them by rote. After all, if they don't have the skills to work out what they are doing from the score, how are they supposed to progress outside of the lesson?

[okanaganmusician]

This works better for older students, but you could try blind-folding them.  Pick a really easy piece, because otherwise their frustration level will rise astronomically.  Then let them find their beginning position before blindfolding them.

Given that the student in question is 5 1/2 my assumption is that the pieces they're playing won't involve too many changes of hand position if at all, so that helps.

One other thing - if they are blindfolded they can't see the music either!  So it needs to be a short piece and needs to be memorized.

Sure this tactic doesn't help them keep eyes on music specifically - but it does train the ear and fingers to be completely in sync without extraneous distractions (like looking at the keys) - cause and effect: when I press this finger down, this sound comes out.

As mentioned before, this is more of a performance technique for advanced students, but when used properly it can be effective with young beginners.  Just adjust it accordingly to account for high levels of frustration - which will happen 99% of the time unless you set the environment perfectly for success.

[mtiso]

All she needs is practice,and you will also need to be more patient with her/him.Its only that shes not confident enough and confidence come with practice.

[louispodesta]

Obviously no one here ever saw Rubinstein, Arrau or Horowitz perform.   They all looked at the keys and their hands.   I saw Arrau play the Beethoven 4th on television, and the first thing I noticed was that his eyes were transfixed on his hands.   And, they did not move once until he finished.

However, and I have problems with this myself, it is very important to sit tall and relaxed.  That way, you don't look at one hand over the other.   I have a very bad habit of just looking at my left hand, and feeling for it with my right.

If you sit tall enough with the correct bench height, you can see both hands easily.   It is a gross exaggeration, but Barry Manilow used to sit on a bar stool, which is about as high up as you can go without standing up.

If you can get a copy of the video of Jorge Bolet playing the four Chopin Ballades, they have a camera above his head, and you can definitely tell that he is looking at both hands.

[danhuyle]

I find it so hard to look at the keys while playing. I can look up at the music instead of looking down at the keys, then when I forget what goes next, look at the music, then back down to the keys.

I've always felt that looking directly at the music is easier than looking at the keys while playing. This style of practice helps me with memorizing.

If your student is looking at the keys while playing, pick a beginner piece (like beginner piano books), then get them to practice the habit from that. Also, you could cover their hands (without covering the book). It's almost like blindfold playing?

When I first learned to use a metronome, I practiced with beginner books because there's less things going on. I believe this same process could work for your student.