Sight reading with silent keyboard problem examined.

[lostinidlewonder]

I like putting myself in beginners shoes since I teach piano. I have been experimenting with playing on silent keyboard to pretend to be a beginner who absolutely cannot hear anything he does. My ability level dropped and I found some interesting reasons for it.

When sightreadng with a silent keyboard ( eg: digital piano with zero volume) I find it much more difficult to maintain timing and how to move at they keyboard. For example if the Lh must move its 5 down to a new position it is difficult to gauge the movement without the sound of the notes giving some assistance. The difference in the frequency of the notes helps guide the distance of the movement, it is a sound space I feel, the distance the hand moves correlates to the anticipated sound and with a silent keyboard this is taken away.

Also anticipation of sound is taken away when you cannot hear what you are playing which forces you to notice more detail in the writing. This is the key problem for developing sight readers that they cannot hear what they are playing and anticipate what will follow this need to read more detail. Without the sound guiding us the reading certainly becomes much more mechanical and inefficient since more needs to be consciously processed as fingering rather than automated response in the hand as we draw from past experience.

You also have a big problem of not hearing if you play a wrong note, this throws out the orientation of the hand based on what the score asks of you. If you are wrongly positioned you have more chance of error following that and if you cannot hear it you will catch the error as you read then consciously require to correct it which hinders the reading. This is of course a big problem with students who do not notice wrongly played notes.

It is almost impossible for me to play a complicated memorised piece on a silent keyboard I need the sound to cue certain movements, things like volume dynamics go totally haywire if you can't hear what you are doing!

[chopinlover01]

Well, when you practice having completely removed any thought or priority of the end goal at all, you tend to get negative results.

[lostinidlewonder]

Not being able to hear does take away the sound production but there are other goals you can achieve quite successfully without the sound guiding you. Reading positions which does not require a lot of movement from a single position, you can completely appreciate the coordination quite easily. But not being able to hear what you play is almost exactly like turning off the sound completely, how do we notice when we are no longer hearing what we play and using that to guide our hands? What instances in our playing requires the sound to let us know that the end goal was achieved? Obviously we don't need our ears for every single issue but there are times when it is required. Starting positions should be no problems even without sound guiding you and start of many phrases throughout also.

It is interesting to experience what it is like to not hear what we play to feel what beginners feel since more advanced pianists can easily forget about it (which can be a problem if you are a teacher). Beginners are often so caught up over the movements of their body while playing that they have little attention to the sound. The problems that come and limit one with the lack of listening can easily be experienced when sight reading on a silent keyboard.

It is interesting to record myself playing on a silent keyboard and then play it back with the volume on, I really see how being deaf would be a curse as a performer. All dynamics and articulations are so consciously produced that when you listen back you can really hear that they are very mechanical and not commanded by sound, something that can really be a problem for developing pianists I've found.

[dogperson]

You might want to look at the link below which is, among good blogs and  tutorials, articles about playing and composing by the hearing impaired ---

https://www.grandpianopassion.com/

[lostinidlewonder]

That's a good link thanks dog! It is funny to think that those even with perfectly fine hearing can find it challenging to hear themselves play while they play.

[outin]

I sometimes practice with my silent piano without sound and it is always greatly beneficial. But it's SO hard! My memory runs on the auditory feedback as well, so it's almost like starting the piece from the beginning. So I don't often have the patience to do silent practice. But whenever I do, I see immediate results.

Sometimes silent practice also helps with physical problems, when I am freed from the obsession to sound good, I can really concentrate on finding the best movements and how it feels to play something.

Sight reading without sound seems like something totally impossible though.

There are so many great methods of practice, but so little time to implement them all...sigh...