Looking at my hands too much

[pianocat3]

Maybe there is an old post about this, but the search function didn't work for me on this website.

I sight read pretty well for my level (early advanced?) but I look at my hands way too much! My teacher (I am an adult and a few months ago re-started lessons at age 50) says this will limit how far I can go with piano and I should not in general need to look except for jumps.  I am a very poor memorizer.

So far what I am doing is I made a cardboard shield to put over the keyboard so I cannot see my hands, and playing music far easier than my usual while the shield is in place, but then I can't use my peripheral vision at all.  I have practiced this way for 15 minutes a day (about) for 3 weeks and no improvement really. Idk. Maybe a little bit of improvement. Hard to know. My accuracy is not very good even moving intervals less than an octave. It's very frustrating! These are late beginner early intermediate pieces I am doing, stuff without big jumps (or I just skip that part). I also forget the notes I just played, so I have to go back and read them again in order to figure out where to go for the next notes.

I also have some books from the teacher that have a person move over intervals while shielding the keyboard, but by the end, even though I am pretty accurate, I have no idea what note I am on and I am supposed to know. (example: LH: Start on E. Go up a third. Go down a fifth. Go up a sixth. Go down a second. What note are you on?) LOL my finger will be on the correct note, but I have no idea what note I am on. I have forgotten all! She thinks this problem, forgetting where I am at and having to re-read, will probably just fix itself on its own as I get more fluent in reading music, but she says the constant looking is a habit that's hard to break and just keep plugging away on that project as I am already doing.

Any other ideas what to do? Or do I just need to keep plugging away for a long time? thanks!

[brogers70]

I'm about your age and I had this problem, too. I did a couple of things. First I started practicing all my scales and arpeggios with my eyes closed. And everyday I spent 10 minutes or so reading through very easy pieces without looking at my hands, no matter how slowly I had to go. I also spent a little bit of time with my eyes closed thinking up random notes (e.g. E flat two octaves above middle C) and finding them by feel. I did those things for a few months and then went back to practicing my pieces normally. Then one day I noticed that I just wasn't looking at my hands very much at all. I'd been very worried about the problem and it had disappeared after fairly little effort. It took about a year between the time I decided I had to try to do something about it and the time I noticed the problem was mostly gone.

My advice would be not to worry too much about it. Do a few of the exercises I suggested for a few minutes every day, and just be patient. Eventually you'll find you are not looking at your hands much at all.

[dcstudio]

so are you looking at your fingers or are you looking at the keys themselves?   your teacher is right your eyes will slow you down...if you use them to try to "watch" your fingers into playing the right notes.

if, however, you use your eyes to recognize groups of keys... this is very beneficial.  I teach my students to recognize simple chords and I relate them to a familiar shape... i.e. C minor is a triangle.. the two white keys with the raised black key in the middle--they get it... then I teach them to identify the block chord on both clefs--and "play the triangle" C minor... it works wonders. Adults benefit from this too even though it seems kind of babyish.  What it does it teach your eyes to remember the "stack" of notes as one entity and included in that is the sound, shape, location and feel of the chord--all together.  your eyes can call up the image of the triangle on the piano--your hand can remember what it feels like--your ear remembers what it sounds like--and your brain knows where it is on the page...as well as a name to call it...C minor.

you are far less likely to forget something that is this reinforced.

[pianocat3]

Thinking about it, I think I do NOT look at my fingers at all, I think that I am looking at the keys. I think I am forgetting what I just played, even to the point where I don't realize oh, I am just moving a 5th. . . or something like that. Not really sure what I do since the sight reading is automatic enough that I am not sure if I am note reading or interval reading unless it's really obvious like a jump (read the note) or a run of notes close together (intervals). That in between stuff, I am not sure what I do. My teacher says by developing this bad habit (she says it's really common!) I do not internally know how it feels to move say, a 5th, good enough to rely upon it without looking. Now, if I concentrate hard, I can do it, but I utterly lack confidence so I am always looking even when I honestly don't need to. Other times, I do need to look, for intervals that it shouldn't be necessary. I even look sometimes when it is only a 4th, which is just plain ridiculous. I don't need to look to do that fine. As I said, a habit. Constantly losing my place in the sheet music.

I think I can move around between chords without looking. I have the feel of most of them in me and my teacher is having me do chords as part of my scales.  I love playing chords with both hands just for fun, since they are so pretty. Especially those minor chords :-)

I haven't been playing scales and arpeggios eyes closed, that's something I can do, and that will add another few minutes of not looking practice time per day! Play chords eyes closed, too.

Hey thanks!!!

[dcstudio]

  you're welcome.. of course.

your teacher is right this is very common.  In my experience it's because your brain has nothing to grab onto--like "move a 5th" or  "play a c minor chord"    so it wanders and it messes with you.  Your visual memory also gets sketchy so you can't remember the visual sequence of events with confidence and again..you cake. When you close your eyes you cancel out the "eye power" and sometimes you cake far less, don't you?  I have spent years researching why we cake..lol.. can't say I have all the answers or I certainly wouldn't be spewing them out here...but I can say with utmost confidence that there is a connection between better playing and training your thoughts to behave when you are at the piano.  Make up words to the melody of your piece and sing them in your mind.  I do it to store information...like the chord changes... or anything I need actually.  It works.. I am 51.. when you get this far in... you come up with some tricks. Forcing my often wandering "thinking" brain to be a full on participant in the music really helps me.  It clears away a lot of the fog.  

[indianajo]

My teacher taught me to look at the audience and smile faintly as I played.  Good practice for concerts; you can't be Bob Ralston on TV unless you look at the camera and smile. I can't believe the winners of the Van Cliburn piano competition hunched over the keyboard staring at their hands- I would have downgraded for that.   
It is true, kinesthetic sense should be enough feedback to allow you to play consistently without looking.  The conciousness should not be involved at all if you practice enough.  Piano, after enough practice, is done with the lower brain, the muscle control circuits. Words, intentions, they are all superfluous except maybe for the emotional connection to the overall flow.   So if you are missing notes looking or not, you haven't practiced enough. And if you are making mistakes at all, you are going too fast.  Practicing the wrong notes is worse than not practicing, my teacher said.  Practicing the wrong noes, you learn how to play the wrong ones instead of the right ones.  One note per second, one note per two seconds, whatever speed it takes to give yourself time to play it right EVERY TIME. And repeat short passages until you get them right before going on to the next.  I did a lot of one hand alone practice in the beginning of pieces, -still do in fact, the hard ones. 
Now I have to quibble.  At 51, you should be able to do this.  At 65, I've had to start looking at the keyboard  again.  The stiffness of the muscles became variable around age 60, where what positions felt right on one day was not right for some other day. So on pieces with a lot of jumping around, I have too look now, at least with my peripheral vision. I stare vaguely at the middle of the music rack with my head up and neck straight.  The peripheral vision is enough to give me some feedback of my hand position to my motor circuits.    But at 51, you shouldn't have to.  Stare at the music rack even if you are not reading the music anymore, never let your vision drop.  If you can't do it on art pieces, do it on rudimentary stuff like Schmitt or Edna Mae Berman exercises.   So many teachers now let you advance to  the candy (artistic pieces) before you've had the vegetables course (exercises). 

[happyhacker]

It would be funny if looking at the audience smiling faintly then miss a note. They would see that look change a bit! "joking" apart, my teacher tells me off for looking at the notes but when I have practically memorised a piece I find it easier to get through it with less mistakes but the downside is possibly loosing the timing a bit. I am starting to practise the scales in double 3rd, 6ths and octaves apart and that does help get pairs of fingers aligned. At the end of the day it's down to practice and playing all types of music then slowly the brain will form an image of the keyboard and placing the hand in the right place will be second nature. I'm a complete beginner at 69 and didn't think I had any cells left to spare for this but it's coming together slowly! I also think it's a great past-time for an older person as it helps with the motor skills. Practice, practice and then some more.

[pianocat3]

Thanks for all the comments and moral support! My husband has been watching, and he says I am clearly looking less at the keyboard than I used to. So that's good to hear, but the progress feels glacial and I get so irked when I mess up finding the wrong key with easier music! I am trying like heck not to look down at my hands while learning my new piece, Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, and so far so good.  I am not sure I even had this habit when I took lessons as a young person - I played for fun for many years with no teacher, and probably developed it then. My new-to- me piano has the higher rack like on a lot of grand pianos, and so peripheral vision is harder to use. I don't like that feature at all but it is a really nice piano and I love the sound and the keyboard action (I can play so soft on it!!! Yeah!! I had a junk spinet before and I had to bang away on that thing mf or f, pretty much). I get a crick in my neck looking up at that high rack, though!!! Probably going to make some gadget so my music is at the more usual height. Thanks again for all these helpful comments!

[dcstudio]

but the progress feels glacial and I get so irked when I mess up finding the wrong key with easier music!

that glacier will break up in a little while and you will make a giant leap forward...  every time you hit a wall... it's because you are about to evolve on to the next level. So be happy

[kevonthegreatpianist]

if you type at a regular basis, you'll basically understand

[mapleleafthebard]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this site. I completely understand sight reading issues; from my own experience, friends and students, this has always ben a bugbear!

I'm a piano teacher currently putting together a course designed to help make a dramatic difference in sight reading, providing technical tips and lifting the confidence of the piano student and pick up the sight reading skill.

Right now what I need is to gauge the interest level of this, so who is interested?