How to practise piano without looking at the keyboard

[eliza1976]

Hi, I have been practising my piano for upcoming exam next year. My progress is fine and I am so happy I can nail down the exam songs BUT I realize I play smoothly and without mistakes only when I look at my hands when playing. I was advised by my piano teacher not to memorize the notes but to look at the score when playing. Then, the 'disaster' comes. I   always land on the wrong notes. I almost feel like giving up. I have been practising 2 hours everyday and I still land on the wrong note at times. How do I practise ?

[lostinidlewonder]

Ask your teacher to give you easier material to practice sight reading with. Tell them that that the current repertoire you are learning doesn't allow you to play without multiple errors and the need to look at your hands. There is no point banging your head against a wall with works that just perplex your sight reading skills, it is most important to experience many successful reading attempts without errors shackling you then you can slowly raise the bar of difficulty.

Also it can help to keep the sheet music not too far away from the keyboard. If the sheets are too high up and you have no peripheral vision of the keys at all it is more difficult to see where you are. Also if position movements are within or near a position you are holding feel the fingers replacing or moving adjacent or at intervals from one another, you should easily be able to do that without any sight at all.

[ignomike]

Are you missing because of big jumps or small movements?

Quick and fun exercise: Close your eyes. Place one hand anywhere random on piano in standard 5 finger position. Nominate a finger and try to name that note, you can't move your fingers off their respective notes but you can slide into the piano/deeper on the notes.

You will find every hand position is unique and can be ID'd non-visually very quickly by the feel of the black notes. The exercise is abstract and a little unrealistic but it really does work to build a sense of keyboard geography and is a good first step.

Also practise your scales and arpeggios without looking - try to visualize the keys and the location of your hand as you play.

Improvise - the quality really doesn't matter but just make up single hand music with the aim of only playing notes that you are targetting. This is good as you can make it as hard or easy as you like.

If you need to make a big jump without looking the important notes are the edge black notes. You can use these as guide notes and instantly find any note of the piano. It's hard to describe the technique but by just clipping the black notes as you move with a long finger 2/3/4 and finding the right angle you can guide your hand to any edge black note every time. It takes practise but allows you to play any jump without relying on sight.

[geopianoincanada]

I'm a 4th year mature student and I still have difficulty with this too. Tactile memory is slow at best. I guess only continued practice will help.

[ranjit]

I learned how to do this eventually by constantly trying to visualize my playing, to develop the "piano away from the piano" by trying to recreate myself playing the piano, in as much detail as possible, in my head.