Should You Look at Your Hands While Playing the Piano?

 

            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.

 All of those are good reasons not to look at your hands. However, there are many situations where it is useful or even imperative that you do so.

§  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.