This topic will certainly have varying degrees of opinions. Some teachers will tell you that you should never look at your hands and others will say you must always look at your hands. I think there is an ideal situation for looking at your hands or not looking at your hands depending upon what type of music you are performing.
There are two distinctly different types of piano playing when it comes to classical music. There is solo music and chamber music. When it comes to solo music, generally you play from memory. With chamber music you will typically be reading a score since there are other musical parts of the other musicians you must be aware of.
When it comes to solo music, there can be leaps that will require you to memorize your scores so you can watch your hands as they make those leaps around the keyboard. It’s extremely difficult to do this without looking at your hands. There are also page turns to deal with which can be a real pain!
Chamber music is a little different because it involves more instruments then just the piano. The piano score actually contains the parts of the other instruments so when you’re playing it’s very important to see what is going on. If you are playing chamber music with other musicians you really should never have to take your eyes off the score except for quick glances – you should be following along the whole time. There might be sections you want to memorize because they have large leaps but typically you don’t want to take your focus off of the score in front of you.
With enough training you can learn how to play piano without having to look at your hands. It might seem impossible but it can be done and there are many fine blind pianists out there who prove it’s possible. You can learn to negotiate large leaps in your music through your peripheral vision as well.
When it comes to solo music, if you have your music memorized I don’t really see any reason why you wouldn’t want to look at your hands. It gives you the opportunity to keep your eyes on the keyboard and make sure that you are hitting the correct notes and have your hands in the right positions.
Generally if you have sheet music you will want to keep your eyes on the music and when you are performing solo piano music you will want to focus on your hands. Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729
8 thoughts on “Should You Look at Your Hands When You Play Piano?”
Never have been a skilled memorizer, although I can teach my students to memorize. It’s a time/commitment thing, I guess. As a professional accompanist and sight-reader, I tend to play the music in front of me and never check the keys except for the occasional glance for jumps, as mentioned above. As a matter of fact, although I can see the keyboard in my head, when I actually LOOK at the keyboard, I seem to be in foreign territory! I can really confuse myself by taking a passage I know very well, and try to play it, focused on the keyboard. Crazy.
It would be great to learn to play long leaps without looking at my hands. I can’t do it yet, but it sure increases my respect for the stride players of the early 20th century, like James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. They could play two octave leaps all night long without looking.
What I’m working on now is how to look mostly at the sheet music, and just look at my hands to check leaps. The trick to that is knowing where to come back to on the page. Time in music marches on, so it’s not where you departed from. It’ll be a little farther. So, I try to have a landmark, like a chord change, memorized to look back to.
— J.S.
I remember attending a masterclass by Yo-yo Ma, where he was talking about remembering the kinesthetic feel of the distance between the notes he was playing. I have my students practice with their eyes on the music, on the keyboard, closed (and “seeing” in their minds the hands on the keys, and “seeing” in their minds the music on paper), and even in a completely dark room, in turns. It allows you to practice with your brain and ears focused differently. You come out of the experience, knowing the piece from many vantagepoints – by sight, by ear, by feel.
The piano isn’t quite like a typewriter keyboard where the hands can afford to stay in a static guide-key position all the time. Have to see where the ideas above lead.
But it’s surely dreadful to have one’s eyes permanently glued to any one thing – keyboard, music, damper pedal while playing.
But I read this with some amusement as I put together the final touches on my fibreboard-based design for a supplementary music copy holder for the Roland F-130R piano, to prevent the bottoms of thick album pages from obscuring the view of black notes and wayward fingers.
Thank you Robert!
This makes sense to me. As a beginner, it didn’t make sense (to me) to glue my eyes to the page while trying to negotiate the jumps in prelude 20 – especially since I had it memorized. However, there is some level of learning that takes place when I try it without looking. I have found that my fingers (and brain) learn how to ‘creep’ around the keyboard and feel their way. As you mentioned in previous videos, I have found it important to save the pedal for last, and try to get the changes as smooth as possible without it first.
Steve
Hi – interesting, thanks. I’ve noted that almost all piano soloists play from memory (only one who didn’t was playing Bach Art of Fugue). In comparison, most pipe organ soloists play with music score – and sometimes with a page turner, who in some cases also changes registration.
There is definitely a neurophysiological difference in the way the brain processes musical and performance information depending on what the visual input is. This may be mostly “psychological”, but I think there are subtle (maybe significant) differences in the way one plays depending on where the eyes are.
One of my own challenges is to get my focus “out of my head” in order to be more conscious of the sound that is being produced. “Unfocusing” my eyes or even closing them does free up some brain power to focus on the music, the acoustics, and how the piano “speaks” in the room. For me, looking at the hands focuses my mind on what I’m doing physically, and distracts me ever so slightly from the musical and acoustical results. When looking at my hands, I seem to hear what I “think” or “expect” that I sound like, rather than what I actually sound like. I even sense time more accurately when I’m not watching the hands.
As you have pointed out before, it’s important to be conscious of your audience. You sense the audience’s reaction better and can relate to the audience on a personal human level if you occasionally look at them. Otherwise, you’re only relating to them in the abstract via the music. Nothing wrong with that (if you’re really good), but non-musical aspects of a performance are also important.
So for me, looking at the hands less is better. Better yet, be able to play either way at any moment, and be facile at switching back and forth as the situation demands.
Good sight reading skills require to keep eyes on the score except for leaps.