Many piano students come to me with the preconceived notion that they should not look at their hands when they play printed music. It’s true many piano teachers forbid their students to look at their hands. Some beginning piano books even instruct students to “Always look at the music, not at your hands.” Not all teachers are rigid about this, but some take it to extremes.
There
are good reasons for this rule:
§ One
of the hardest things to learn, especially for younger students, is how the
little black dots on the page represent the notes on the piano. The more you
keep your eyes glued to the page, the more quickly you learn this symbology.
§ As
soon as you look away from the page, you are focusing mostly on playing the
right notes. While that’s important, it is very easy to omit the other instructions
on the page: fingering, rhythm, dynamics, pedaling, etc.
§ When
you look down at your hands, it’s easy to lose your place in the music. When
you look back up, precious milliseconds are lost as your eyes re-orient and
focus, often causing hesitation. This is quite important if you’re going to
perform. Although many of my students aren’t interested in performing, they do
want to perfect their pieces. Those who do
want to perform cannot afford hesitations, particularly if they are playing in
an ensemble or accompanying a choir, instrumentalist, or singer.
§ Particularly
for beginning students, hand-eye coordination helps develop good playing
skills. Sometimes a student will intend to push down one finger, and another finger
will play. This is quite common among beginners, whether child or adult. Their
brain sends a message to their hand, “Fourth finger, play!” and another one
will descend. Sometimes the brain-to-finger connections don’t get made properly.
If I have a student watch her hands while she plays that note, the hand-eye
coordination often helps with accuracy.
§ There
are some pieces that are so complicated and fast that looking at the printed
music actually slows you down, once you can play it up to speed. Your eyes
can’t process the notes as fast as your fingers can play them.
§ Related
to the above point is this: If you are memorizing a piece, the written page
actually interferes with your ability to “get into the music,” as they say. I
will repeat what I said in my previous blog (“Memorizing Music”):
“We can never be fully engaged in the
music if we are looking at dots on a page. Just as an actor cannot get fully
into character if he’s still reading the lines from the script, we cannot fully
get into the character of the music
if we are reading. When reading music, there is more of a tendency to keep a
stricter rhythm, because the measures and the beats are right in front of us,
confining us to a steady one, two, three, etc. Getting away from the page helps
us to let the music breathe naturally, just as an actor might pause in the
dialogue for emphasis or emotional effect, even if it’s not indicated in the
script. We need to do the same thing in music.”
§ If
you are trying to memorize a piece of music, watching the patterns your fingers
and hands make as they play can help reinforce your memory. You get a visual
sense of the spatial relationship between the notes.
§ Some
pieces actually can’t be played without looking. There is a Chopin Scherzo (Op.
31) that at the very end has an F in the right hand almost at the very top of
the piano, and a Db in the left almost at the very bottom. Not only do you have
to look, but you have to practice how
to look. You can’t see both notes at the same time, so you have to figure out
if you need to look at where your left hand should go and then watch your right
hand as you play, or whether you should look at your right hand and then direct
your eyes to your left as you play. I often tell my students that sometimes part
of practicing is learning when and where to direct their eyes.
A
final thought: Obviously, some people learn to play without ever learning to
read music. These players don’t even think about whether to look at their hands
or not. They simply look when they need to. For those who do learn by reading notation, it’s important to remember that there
is a great value in having an organic, physical relationship with the piano
that transcends the page.
I believe the best approach for
everyone, no matter how they are trained, is this: Pay careful attention to the
notation and instructions. Once you have mastered those, decide when and if you
need to look at your hands for the best possible result. If you are an
instructor, help the student decide. The important thing is not to be rigid
about it, and to evaluate each situation so as to get the best possible performance.
