Looking At Your Hands While Playing Options

[teoani]

I have to look at my hands when I keep getting notes wrong. After I get them right, I will proceed to trying to remember where they are, and the sensations in the hand and fingers to hit the right notes.

One thing I found useful up to Grade 5 (to cure the looking at hands problem that hurt my neck a little as I was too tense), was to play slow-moving pieces with the eyes closed. It was possible for one of the simpler exam pieces. Playing scales with the eyes closed after the notes have been mastered also helps improve fluency. But that is of course, quite tough for me right now, as I have to speed my scales up first!

[madbassoonist]

I also try to play some of my pieces with my eyes closed, but not just the slow ones - sometimes I attempt the fast ones! Needless to say it sounds awful... I can play all my Grade 6 pieces with or without the score, although with those ones I do find that I need to glance down at my hands occasionally, especially as there are some quite big jumps.

I think it is a good idea to practise pieces in the three ways that Robodoc suggested - looking at the music, not looking at the music, playing with your eyes shut. Although it may be difficult to begin with, you should slowly get better at playing (mostly) without looking at your hands.

[maggiemay]

All useful stuff I think - remember a mistake is information *.

I get some of my beginners to practise jumping eg octaves without looking - the first few goes may be inaccurate but it improves quite quickly, and it's a useful distance to 'memorise' the feel of, and builds confidence when they don't always have to look down to see where they are going.

*apologies to whoever first quoted that phrase on their signature - I can't remember who I should credit!

[Mad Tom]

I have to look at my hands when I keep getting notes wrong.

Not so!!

You may prefer/choose to work that way but there is no "have to" .

If you hear a wrong note you can figure out by ear how much higher or lower you need to be, and find the right notes by feel.

[kerioboe]

I have to look at my hands when I keep getting notes wrong.

Not so!!

You may prefer/choose to work that way but there is no "have to" .

If you hear a wrong note you can figure out by ear how much higher or lower you need to be, and find the right notes by feel.

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I am most likely to get a note wrong when I'm sight-reading and have no muscle memory to know where I should be going and this is precisely when I don't want to look at my hands because I am concentrating on the music.

My piano teacher used to make me close my eyes and then tell me to play a particular note or an interval or a chord.

[bean52]

Thanks all for a lot of helpful comments. I must admit since making the original posting I have religiously practiced my pieces with only minimal glances at my hands. I tried the tea-towel routine but quickly had to drop that because the physical presence of the cloth on my hands put me off. So I've been looking straight ahead or even closing my eyes, and I'm pleased to say that it's gone a lot better than expected and I've improved a lot in just a couple of days! I think I was just being a bit lazy before as I'm still a relatively new learner and so the pieces I play can be quickly memorised, thereby lessening the incentive to look at the music. But even so I think I recognise now the importance of getting a feel for where you are on the keyboard rather than relying on your eyes so I shall stick with this and hopefully it will pay dividends when I move on to more complex stuff.