Thanks for your reply!But don't you think it's more about knowing well the keyboard? I had the opportunity to watch pianists sight read and they just set and kept their eyes on the score and their hand went to the right places all the time. It's like as if a person closes his eyes and know where everything in his room placed. I want to be able to do that with the piano.
Try to think more in terms of phrases of music than actual measured formula. Se runs, see melody phrasing. It may be half measure or half a line of music. Just look ahead to where you are going. It's like riding a bicycle or driving a car, you don't look where your front wheels are at as you go down the road, you look a 1/4 mile ahead, or through the next intersection and then more smoothly drive there accordingly ( or ride in the case of the bike). Same thing, in time your mind will train to be ahead on the written page.
But of course there are parts where I need to look. But I have noticed that I'm getting better at finding my way back, so I guess practice helps with that too. What I find most difficult is playing pieces that are partly memorized...I just cannot make myself follow the score when I already know what to do. Finding my way back after a line or two is just impossible...
Memorized parts and returning to the score ? Try ( its working for me) this, just glance your mind ahead that you need to go to such and such a spot, visualize the spot you need to go to. Not the notes but location on the page. That becomes a little flash card event in your mind or it has for me, at about two bars ahead of switching back to reading. It takes deliberate action and the faster the piece the more you have to be aware of the timing. I use a fingering event as the trigger spot to think of the spot on the page where I will pick up the reading. My eyes move to the page as I finish up the last measure of memorized material, more or less that is. The eyes go to the page in the correct location then you pick up the notes or phrase and you are ready. It sounds very drawn out to type this or to read it, the action is micro though.
When I do things I tend to work much on intuition (not just piano). I often don't even know that I've memorized something, it just happens when I play that I stop reading the score without me noticing it...and the place may change the next time, because I suddenly can remember another part. It's not conscious memorizing, but something that comes automaticly.So trying to figure out the places on the score is difficult...just like it's a pain for me to write down fingerings, I just have no conscious idea what I am doing when things go smoothly and cannot go back to analyze what I did. I can only try again until I manage to figure it out... Other example is that I tried to figure out if I am looking ahead or not when sight reading goes well, but I really don't know, everything just happens...my mind works in odd manners
Other example is that I tried to figure out if I am looking ahead or not when sight reading goes well, but I really don't know, everything just happens...my mind works in odd manners
Not so odd. I'm never really conscious of where I'm looking, only that it's at the page. I even do page turns without being conscious of them (if the damn book cooperates).
In a way playing the piano was always very natural and intuitive to me. I guess that is why I have so much trouble with actually concentrating on what I am doing. When I would need to concentrate, it's damn difficult. Same with technique, it has been really difficult to try to find out what I am doing and how to do it differently.
I tend to think that there is a normal range of intuitive capability for humans, and that so far as piano, anything beyond a certain level does not fall in that range.
But surely we learn to walk, and learn to hop, skip, dance and do pirouettes too in some cases. I think the range can be significantly expanded by practice in everyone. How much may be biologically determined.