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I have an extremely hard time looking at my music when I play. Is there any good way to practice this, or any tips or ideas y'all have? I try to not look, but of course I end up looking.

They aren't particularly difficult pieces, so I don't think I really need to look much. And I don't stare at my hands the entire time, but for some reason when I look at the music while I'm playing I fumble all over it.

For me it's a waste of time trying - though my teacher does recommend it for some specific pieces. The key for sight reading is to be able to get back to the correct spot after the few times you actually need to look down.

But of course it's possible if you want to learn how and there are a couple of books with specific exercises. Super Sight-Reading Secrets is one; Lorina Havill's "You can Sight Read" is another.

A big part of it is that it takes time to learn the distances... It's not easily shortcuttable.

Some food for thought:

* often you're just playing a fingering pattern from a static hand position at the keyboard. Identify sections in the piece where this is the case and make sure you don't look down during those short sections

* the more treacherous part of playing is when you have to change hand positions. But pianists have a set of techniques that cope with common position changes; learn how you hand needs to move for going through standard scales and arpeggios. From there, you can notate in your score where those standard techniques apply and then strive not to look at your hands in those sections as well.

* the keyboard has a texture. When playing, try to use tactile feedback to understand where you are. While those just starting the piano tend to like keys like F, C, and G due to the small numbers of flats or sharps in the key signature, keys like Ab (with four flats) can be much more secure under the hand because the chords and scale have much more "texture". It's harder to get lost tactilely. The key of C in comparison is kind of a sheet of glass.

* try playing some scales with your eyes closed. Arpeggios, too. Even some pieces you've memorized!

* most skilled pianists look at the keyboard now and again, particularly when large jumps are required. So if you look now and again, it is not something to fret unduly over. It's just that you want to minimize looking since you can easily lose your place in the score.

It is something which comes with practice and time. A bit like sight reading.

If you look through my posts, about a year ago I was always looking at my hands. I tried forcing by closing my eyes. But it just stressed me out. So I hand watched glancing back and forth to the sheet music. Which caused me to lose my place sometimes.

Today except for large multi octave jumps I rarely look at my hands I keep them in my peripheral vision, but don't look or watch.

I am not sure when it clicked but I just KNOW some how where notes happen to be in relation to the current note. It wasn't conscious.

I'd note I practice scales and arpeggios, and a number of finger drills daily, I do these without looking either and maybe this trained my muscle memory on how wide the key gaps are.... I play a second piano with slightly wider keys and mash it badly!

I've been playing a year btw

My biggest advice if you want to learn how not to look at your hands is, not to look at your hands. Will you make mistakes? Yes. Of course. Just remember that your practice sessions are not the final product. They're practice--and you won't get anything out of practice sessions if you don't actually practice what you need to practice.

That said, do you absolutely have to play without looking at your hands? No. But the more familiar you are with the keyboard, the better off you'll be. And body mapping is a lot easier if you don't look.

I've asked myself the same question that the OP is posing, and your advice makes sense to me.

Could you share some of the finger drills you refer to?

Thanks!

At home I can keep my hands in my peripheral gaze when looking at the music, or I can do a quick check down to the keyboard, but at my lesson the desk is in a slightly different position, and I lose my place frequently.

The idea when practicing is to purposely make the piece harder than it actually is - which is why blindfolded practice is actually a good idea (once the piece is at least partially memorized).

When you are performing you are allowed of course to look down here and there; if you can play cleanly without looking it stands to reason that it will seem even easier to do it later when you are allowed to look.

In certain instances, I've blind folded my students, in order to get them to NOT look at the keyboard constantly. It wasn't a matter of leaning the piece, but a matter of gaining trust and self confidence that they CAN do it

If you have learned a piece by looking at your hands, then looking at the score as you play will be a different set of visual cues for the same music, and will likely throw you off.

Try learning a new piece by NOT looking at your hands (much), and then your visual cues will be looking at the music.

Visual cues are very much a part of learning a piece, which is why beginners can often play the first line of the score, but not the second line, even though they are exactly the same, except that they are on a different position on the page, and thus "look" different.

I have seen that occur many times. Visual cues = very much a part of learning a piece.

I`ve always found this hard to do. I need to start just doin` it, cos I can`t memorise everything. Never could, so I learned to play round my mistakes which isn`t brill, is it?

I would echo what others have said: practice this by doing it! Close your eyes, put on a blindfold, whatever it takes.

Right now I play most of the pieces I have memorized with my eyes closed when at home. As someone already mentioned, this makes practice harder, so it boosts my confidence when I'm at my lesson and I can actually look. I can play most of the Moonlight Sonata, both the first movement and the second one up to where I'm at, with my eyes closed. Because of this, I find I can now more easily play broken chords and octaves (both of which feature heavily in Moonlight 1) in other pieces I haven't yet memorized, too.

I can only suppose that practicing scales and arpeggios, specifically, (especially with eyes closed) would make this even easier.

I am currently working on it. Or rather, having made to do so by my teacher. The F minor variations I'm working on now is what we are experimenting this with. I can learn a new Bach music without looking at my hand most of the time because there aren't so many leaps of notes. But it's hard to learn classical piece without looking. Especially the piece is not easy. She told me that it would cut time to learn a new piece and greatly benefit my sight reading skills. I can see her point. Like sight reading, I have to learn to play the piece in a selected time with correct dynamics and articulation. I see the benefit and determine to stick to it even if it takes a year to learn this piece this way.

This is an interesting topic. Since day one, which is really only a few weeks, I hardly if ever look at my hands. Well I should clarify, I don't look at my hands after an initial run through with a new piece. Once I get the interval for the piece (and since I am new I am not yet flying around the keyboard) I only look at the sheet music (and only do that until its just about memorized). Then I will only look down if something does not sound right. I could be doing this completely wrong. Maybe I should be looking at my hands more, or even less.

I don't play piano but I do play guitar. Not looking at the fretboard was an acquired habit, and really took some discipline to stop looking at the fretboard. I do not remember how long it took to make it a habit of not looking at the fretboard, but I remember it was a struggle for a while.

Also, now that I don't much any more, I have lost that comfort zone, and tend to look at the fretboard when the fretting hand needs to move significantly.

Here is my suggestion: Start with memorized pieces, and keep your eyes closed while playing. Once you are comfortable with that, only then start looking at notation while playing. Good luck!

I look at the notation for things I have not memorized. If I have it memorized, I look the keyboard. If I am playing a piece and looking at the music I will occasionally look at the keyboard in an area which is difficult for me to manage without looking at the keyboard. However, it must never result in losing my place nor affect the flow of the music. Sometimes I will memorize a passage where I need to look at the keyboard so I have time to get back to the notation. The only reason I look at the notation, at all, is because that frees me from having to memorize it.
I would prefer to never look at the notation but that requires memorization of everything. I do not care to do that.

Thanks for all the replies! I will try blindfolding or something similar, because then I have no choice! When I just try to close my eyes or not look, I always end up cheating =)

I think my biggest problem is not necessarily that I look at my hands a lot while I play, but rather as I am looking at music while I play I get lost so easily. I can look around the room or talk to someone or whatever and play much more smoothly than if I'm actually looking at the score. Obviously, this can cause some issues. It is like processing the music and what my fingers are doing at the same time is too much. Never had this problem before on other instruments, but the other instruments I've played you never had to move your hands or fingers to other positions/buttons.

Now there's some pieces where I can look at the score the entire time, barely glancing at the keyboard (Prelude in C from WTC), but those are pieces where hand position rarely changes and the same pattern is played over and over.

Its mostly scales all the major and minor ones three octaves.

Also I have a couple of Hanon drills where you play all 5 fingers but stretch the thumb and small finger to take a full step and you vary where the stretch takes place.

Also a lot of arpeggios.

This is how i was taught to play by the feel of the keys when i was younger. I did not develop it beyond this level but I wish I had done so. Hopefully it's useful to someone here.

The first step is to learn how a whole step, half step, major & minor 3rd, perfect 5th, octave, etc feel like on the piano without looking. It's a good idea to know how those intervals sound like. Try learning this all over the key board. You can feel the difference between C and F by feeling the number of black keys next to them (on the right), 2 and 3 respectively. When it's done, try doing this with a score, reading and associating the intervals with the feel of the keys.

This is an athletic rather than an intellectual challenge. We have an internal sense of muscle tension that sends information to the brain, which figures our where our arms, hands, and fingers are. So, learning to play -- or type as I'm doing now -- without looking is just a matter of practice to train this neuromotor function. BTW, this is also what lets you use the pedals and gear shift on your car without looking.

As suggested, start with scales. Then pick a pair of chords, say C and G, and just go back and forth between them. You can look at first, but after a while let your eyes drift away. When you get good at one pair of chords without looking, try another, and wider jumps. The more you do the easier it'll get. Do a Google search on Stride Piano and you'll find videos of players who are really good at this, doing jumps of a couple octaves consistently for a whole piece.

If you don't already have one, this is the kind of thing that you might do on an inexpensive digital keyboard with headphones. It helps to keep peace in the family, and if you also have an acoustic piano, it helps you learn to adapt to different keyboard instruments.