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.

Memorizing Music

 

Every now and then one of my older students asks me whether memorizing music is important. Younger students often ask this question because they’re afraid I’ll make them memorize their pieces, and some of them aren’t very good at it. However, when the question is from an adult, they’re asking more than a simple “Do I have to memorize this?” The question is about the value of memorization.

Do I think it’s worthwhile to memorize music? Absolutely. First, it’s a good exercise for your brain. We don’t need to memorize many things these days. So much of what we need to know can be looked up easily – we can even ask our phones or smart speakers – that the art of memorization is no longer valued as it used to be. But the ability is valuable. Thinking in a different way and challenging your brain keeps it alert and engaged, which makes it more efficient at other mental tasks. Plus, recent studies show that keeping the brain active in different ways can help our mental faculties as we age.

More important, though, from a musical perspective, is the fact that 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 from the page. 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 do the same thing in music, but not as often if the page is in front of us. Playing all the correct notes in the right rhythm is only the beginning of playing a piece well. Playing from memory allows us to freely interpret the emotional content of the music. That’s why soloists for a concerto play without the music. Unfortunately, memorization is difficult for some people. I have some suggestions that I hope will help:

§  HEARING

What the piece sounds like is the first thing you notice. The more times you hear a piece, the more you reinforce your memory of what it should sound like, or what you want it to sound like. Hearing engages the memory in a different way than the other types of learning I have listed below, as remembering what something sounds like is not a conscious process; it’s automatic. However, we can improve our listening skills with practice.

§  SEEING

We also remember music by sight. As we read the music, we see the contour of the melody on the page, and the relationship of the notes to each other. Not only does it help us to remember how the music unfolds; it gives us a picture of it that can stick in our minds. This includes having a sense of “where you are on the page.” If you have a spatial sense of where you are on the page, it helps you to know where you are in the piece of music – how much further you have to go. Additionally, there is the visual element of what our hands look like when we play the piece. Many teachers tell their students not to look at their hands when they play, but I maintain that it’s part of the memorization process. You don’t want to be playing something from memory and look down and your hands and think, “What are they doing? I’ve never seen them do that before!” Seeing the patterns and movements your hands make helps you to remember what you’re supposed to play. (As an aside, there are many good reasons for students to not look at their hands, and times when it is important to be able to play without looking at your hands, but I will address those in the next blog.)

§  ANALYSIS

Analyzing the music also helps with memorization. Most of us remember what key a piece is in, and how many beats in a measure; those things are obvious. But analyzing other things about the music will help you to remember it better. For example, most music has phrases of equal length. If you have just played a 4-bar phrase, chances are you’re going to do the same thing again. Knowing where you are in your phrases can serve as a place-marker, and help keep you from getting lost. In addition, many pieces of music have different sections. Know how long the sections are and whether they repeat. Also, if you analyze the chord progressions, you can see how the piece unfolds within the key. An added bonus to this is that even if you can’t remember exactly what notes you’re supposed to play, if you know that you’re supposed to be playing a D chord, for example, you’ll know which notes will make the harmony sound correct, even if you don’t play them in the right place.

§  REPETITION

Repetition is valuable because it reinforces the elements of hearing, seeing, and analyzing. Plus, the more times you play something, the more you will develop your muscle memory of the piece. Muscle memory alone is not sufficient for complete memorization, but it’s certainly part of the equation. I have found sometimes that even if I am distracted briefly while performing a piece, my fingers are on “autopilot” and keep playing accurately.

• CHANGING SPEED

This may not seem like it would make much difference, but playing a piece more slowly and more quickly that you would perform it forces you to feel, hear and see it in different ways. Playing more slowly allows you to think more about each note, and the techniques listed above. Playing faster forces you to remember what you’re supposed to do next more quickly. Then when you slow down, it seems easier.

 

            While each of these techniques alone generally isn’t sufficient, the combination of them can help most people feel fairly confident in memorizing a piece. The beauty of memorizing a piece is that once you have done it, the music can fully become part of you, and will always be there for you to get lost in. Perhaps that is why we call it “playing by heart.”

 

The Taboo against Listening to the Music You are Practicing

There is a taboo among some classical piano teachers about letting their students listen to a recording of a piece they’re working on. Some forbid their students to listen. There are some good reasons for this:

– If students hear the music before reading it on the page, they will may on their ears instead of reading the notation carefully. This can result in missed instructions marked on the printed page; dynamics, fingering, etc., and the rendition may not be accurate.

– It slows their progress in learning how to read music well, as they are not reading, but simply trying to repeat what they heard.

– Students tend to play the piece up to tempo from the start because they know “how it goes,” even though their fingers haven’t learned to play it accurately. This results in stumbling, and it is often difficult for them to slow down and correct mistakes.

– For the more intermediate and advanced students, the goal is to have them develop their own interpretation of the music and their own style, rather than copying what they hear.

All of these reasons are perfectly valid. However, many teachers take it to extremes, refusing to play the pieces for their students, or forbidding them to listen to any recordings at all. I question that this is the right approach, because it fails to take other factors into consideration. Music is an aural art. No one looks at musical scores and decides they want to learn how to play. We are drawn to play music because we hear and enjoy it, and want to emulate the performers we admire.

I believe there are times when the student must hear the music, because sometimes there are things that cannot be conveyed by notation alone: subtleties of style, choices of phrasing, certain types of attack and release, nuances of mood.

Of course, there is plenty of simple music that is always learned by ear. No one learns “Happy Birthday” from sheet music. The many folk songs passed down through the ages are usually learned by ear, as well as lots of popular music. I am focusing instead on music that is more technically complicated, and relies more heavily on the printed music for direction. This is very true of classical music, but also other styles as well.

Whether or not a piece needs to be heard can vary from one to the next, as well as from student to student, depending on each one’s skill and experience. To make a blanket statement and apply it to all pieces and all students is simply not appropriate, and in my experience does not yield the best results.

A perfect example of this is a solo piano piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff called “Etude Tableau in E Flat Minor.” (Op. 39 #5) It is a rhythmically and technically challenging piece, which is typical of Rachmaninoff. When I originally read the sheet music and tried to play it, I couldn’t figure out, as we say, “how it goes.” I was following the instructions and playing all the notes and timing correctly, but the music wasn’t making sense. And I am a very good reader. Then I listened to a recording of it by Evgeny Kissin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0uEiNJ17iE, a world-class pianist. Listening revealed to me how the piece was supposed to unfold. However, I was also fully conscious of the fact that if I had heard the recording without seeing the printed music, I still wouldn’t have known how to play it. It was so complicated I needed both the written music and the listening experience.

The last reason I listed for piano teachers’ “don’t listen” rule is that one of the hallmarks of becoming a good classical pianist, or instrumentalist or vocalist, is to develop your own style. Your teacher doesn’t want you to precisely re-create someone else’s way of playing something; she wants you to make it your own. Of course, recreating a stunning performance is in itself a feat of some talent, and I think we should acknowledge that accomplishment. What I’m speaking of, though, are very high-end ideals for the serious classical performer. These ideals are not always appropriate for the average piano student, but many piano teachers try to make all of their students learn this way.

I believe I have created a well-balanced approach: If I am learning a printed piece I have not ever heard before, I spend some time with the sheet music without listening to anyone else’s rendition. This way I’ll pay careful attention to all the notational marks: duration of notes, when to get loud and soft, when to pedal, when to connect notes to make a smooth melodic line, etc. All of these things are in the notation, and are easily overlooked when my ear is guiding me.

Once I feel I have technically mastered the piece, it is then time to make it come alive, to add the feeling and interpretation. Sometimes that comes easily and naturally, but if I feel I have somehow been unable to find the full meaning of a piece, then I listen to not just one, but perhaps four or five different versions played by different people. I usually listen on YouTube or other video channels. (Although I do still have some vinyl and CDs!) I mostly listen to recordings by professional players, as their playing is more consistently accurate, but also some non-professionals, who often provide fresh insights. The professional versions are often wildly different, as each player brings his or her own unique vision to the performance. I can then pick and choose what aspects of each rendition I like and dislike. One performer brings out a nuance of melody I didn’t notice on my own; another may pedal too much. It helps to illuminate things I might have missed, and clarify choices I have already made. Another advantage to listening is that I am not distracted by my own process of playing the notes, and am free to follow the way the piece unfolds, develops and concludes.

As a teacher, this is also the process I use for my students. I have them play a piece without listening initially, so they will pay attention to the details on the printed page. (Hopefully!) Once they have done that, if they want or need to hear it, I send them links to videos for clarification and comparison.

To me, this is the full process of learning a piece of music. It addresses both sides of the coin: reading and hearing – visual and aural – which are equally important. This is true for both the professional and the casual student. It is important to take the time to read and execute all the instructions, as well as play all the notes accurately; it’s also vital to understand how the piece should unfold, and convey the emotion behind the music. Because after all, isn’t that why we listen to music – because of the way it makes us feel?

Musicians as Athletes

 

One of the things many of my beginning students – whether young or adult – find frustrating when they are learning the piano is how long it takes their hands to execute the movements that are required to play well. They understand the concept of what they are supposed to do, but they can’t always get their hands to follow their brain’s instructions. They’ve always thought about playing the piano well (or any music), as something that’s only related to musical talent. They fail to take into account is the fact that in addition to being an artistic activity, it is also a physical one, and so in a way, musicians are athletes.

This is not obvious in the same way it is for a runner or a swimmer, but musical training still involves perfecting specialized muscle movements so that they are in peak condition for a performance. Of course there are differences between, for example, a runner and a pianist, or other instrumentalists. Most athletes train to strengthen and control their larger muscles, whereas a pianist mostly uses movements that are much smaller, utilizing the tendons, joints, and small muscles of the hands. Superior piano playing does utilize the muscles of the torso, back and arms, but the small movements are the foundation. We don’t commonly recognize the athletic part, because our perspective is different: for the runner, we applaud the athleticism; for the pianist we applaud the art. In other words, we typically don’t watch a musician and remark, “Look at those amazing biceps!”

It is important, though, for students to realize and accept the physical component of creating the art, and how it takes time to develop. As students learn to play, they are forging new connections between their brain and their fingers. For the beginner, this physical aspect can be more difficult than you might imagine. Quite often I have seen a student intend to press down the fourth finger of the left hand, and instead another finger goes down. When this happens, the student is surprised, not realizing that you can’t just think instructions at your fingers; they have to become accustomed to executing the physical movement first. In fact, sometimes I tell them to do something with their right hand, and they do it with their left, or vice versa. Then they are embarrassed: of course they know which is left and which is right. They don’t realize that in developing new finger/hand coordination, sometimes the signals get scrambled. (When this happens to my younger students, they are unfazed; they’re used to confusing left and right.) Of course, these problems fade as the students develop the mental/physical connection required. For some, very quickly; for others, more slowly.

More advanced students, particularly professional musicians, must think of this on a larger scale. It is important that they take into account their own physical fitness as a component of their art. Like other athletes, they are often plagued by physical injuries resulting from repetitive training. Tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome are common afflictions, and must be dealt with and overcome, just as a pulled muscle or other injury would be for a runner or a tennis player.

When I have beginner or intermediate students who are frustrated because they can’t get their fingers to do what they are supposed to do, I remind them that part of playing music is developing the physical aspect of it, and that this takes time. It’s not all about just the musical talent and the listening skills. This helps them understand why it takes longer to learn certain passages, and also helps to convince them that the exercises I assign them are not just useless drills or tedium. They are essential exercises for their fingers, hands and arms, and help develop hand-eye coordination and physical strength that are so essential to playing an instrument well.

When I teach more advanced students or performing musicians, I remind them to be conscious of how they are using their bodies so as not to overtax them. There are obvious things like staying in good health, but also learning not to tense muscles during practice and performance, and learning certain playing techniques that minimize stress on the fingers, tendons, and arms. (That’s a whole other article!)

So while we don’t think of musicians as athletes, understanding the physical component of making music at the piano, or singing, or any instrument, is an essential part of the process. This is true for the beginning student all the way up to the very advanced, no matter what your level of musical talent.

Feeling TImeless

We are often counseled to “live in the moment.” True, it can be very liberating to just be here and now, and not worry about the past or the future. When people tell us to live in the moment, it is to help free us from the burden of these worries and focus on the beauty of today.

            I do not disagree; I have spent a great deal of time trying to develop that skill. But I propose that having a sense of the past, present and future all at once can also be a joyful experience and is quite natural.

            As we go through our days, and move from one event to the next, it appears to us that we are living in the present. We talk about how certain times seem to pass more quickly or more slowly than others, but we almost always perceive time as passing in one direction: past to future, and we are in between, in the now. Even when we say someone is “living in the past,” it’s like we’re saying they are only in one place on the timeline.

Even if time really does go in one direction, and I have my doubts, it’s not really that way in our minds. We travel forward and backward on our timeline in our minds constantly – memory and speculation alive in our thoughts simultaneously.

            For example, when I’m playing a Beethoven sonata, my mind is at once in the present, and also in the past and the future in very important ways.

            The part of me that’s in the present is thinking about:

           

- the joy of hearing the music as I play it

- the feeling of my fingers pressing the keys firmly and confidently

But at the same time I’m also thinking about:

- the sense of how the piece unfolds from beginning to end. To play it well, I must think about where the music has been, where it’s going, and the story it’s telling

            - memories of my past practices while I was perfecting it, how a section became what I wanted it to be

            - memories of my father, who taught me to love the piano and music
                  (He played the piano I practice on: the past is always present there)

           

And the most far-reaching of all:

- thoughts of Beethoven, long dead, and what he might have been trying to say

- the knowledge that I am part of a continuous line of teachers and players, each passing along beautiful music over the centuries, as I will pass them along to my students or my audience beyond the biological limits of my life

           

All these pieces of past, present and future are there in my mind and my playing at once, making the experience beautifully and naturally timeless. It doesn’t have to be Beethoven, or Mozart, or Chopin. It’s the same if I’m playing The Beatles, or Scott Joplin, or Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s not about the musical genre, and it’s not even about music. In almost everything we do, this is the way our minds work. We are beautifully and naturally in many places in time at once. Not living just in the moment can be a rich and rewarding experience.

The Benefit of Getting Older – as Seen Through the Eyes of a Musician

People are always complaining to me about how they don’t like getting older. They complain mostly about physical things like wrinkles, aches and pains, or less stamina. While there is some truth to their complaints (don’t get me started on the value of exercise as we get older!), it seems a shame that we seldom spend time looking at the benefits of getting older. Let’s look at it from another perspective...

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned from studying difficult repertoire on the piano is that there are some things that cannot be accomplished in a short period of time, no matter how hard you work, or how talented you are. Some pieces of music are just so difficult that it may take a few months just to learn all the correct notes, to say nothing of the technique involved in bringing it to life. One of my best examples of this is a piece by Debussy called Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain). It’s ten pages long, very difficult, and it took me a year and a half to learn. I should probably point out that between teaching, performing and writing, I am not able to practice every day and even then not usually more than about two hours. For a concert-level pianist who practices four to six hours every day, a piece like this would not take nearly so long. But that’s not my point. Most of us aren’t concert pianists. I’m talking about what can be achieved over a long period of time. Here's a youtube of it:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqO3fsWeTV0) Unfortunately, I don't know who the pianist is, but it's a good version.

My younger students always want to finish practicing a piece so they can move on to a new one. The idea of spending one and a half years working on the same piece would seem like torture to them. They want to be finished and try the next thing. They also want the satisfaction of their teacher’s approval. To me, and to many of my older students, however, it’s not just about finishing something or about approval anymore. It’s about a way of life. Playing the piano is simply what I do, and as the years go by, and I keep practicing, I get better and better at it. The individual pieces are just part of the process.

Much of what we focus on from day to day is geared toward “what’s next?” There is very little attention given to what happens when you spend forty years doing the same thing. I have been playing the piano now for fifty-three years. That’s a really long time to do the same thing. The opportunity to spend decades dedicated to my craft has made it so much a part of me that there are aspects of it I don’t even have to think about; they’ve become automatic. In fact, I barely even remember learning them. This frees me to spend more detailed time on perfecting technique, or, better yet, to focus on expressing the beauty of the music. I wouldn’t have had this opportunity without getting older.

We can apply this perspective not just to the arts, but to many aspects of how we live our lives. The craft of getting along with people, playing tennis, gardening, or managing your time well. As we get older and do these things over and over, we become more adept at them and are free to think of things beyond “just getting all the notes right”.

Well, okay, not always. I’m still working on the time management thing. But decades of life does have its rewards, whether it’s becoming a master painter, or becoming a better teacher, knitter, gardener, or cook.

Of course, you have to apply yourself to these skills over the decades, or the gift of time you’ve been given will be wasted. Sadly, that is just what some people do. But if we put our minds to it, many artistic skills and self-improvement endeavors are things that we can continue to perfect over a lifetime; an ongoing process of growth that, we hope, will go on for as long as we live. Getting older is an opportunity, a gift, a bonus. Hence my mother’s lament at eighty-nine: “It’s not fair. I think I’m just starting to get the hang of life, and now it’s almost over!”

If we do it right, that’s what we’ll all say.

Music, Money and Meaning

When I was a young, struggling musician, I was very self-conscious about how little money I made. Perhaps because our culture is so money oriented, I felt the need to judge my success based on my yearly income. As you can imagine, this was a depressing endeavor. Each year, when Parade Magazine published their list of peoples’ incomes based on occupation, I would peruse the job descriptions, look at the yearly salaries, and feel inadequate.

           

I also questioned my perseverance and work ethic. I knew some people who used “I’m an artist” as an excuse to not get a job, and it was hard not to wonder if I was just one of those lazy people. I worried that maybe I wasn’t working hard enough. In fact, I was working hard: practicing to hone my craft, hunting for gigs so I could perform, teaching lessons, plus holding down two non-music-related part time jobs to pay my bills. Even then, somehow it felt like I was being lazy if I took time to practice the piano instead of working extra hours at a job I didn’t like, since my piano playing wasn’t generating any income.

           

As I got older and began to develop a local reputation as a musician, I began to enjoy my work more and more, and I was less hard on myself. But on some level, I still did not feel like I was successful unless I was bringing in lots of money. I kept teaching, performing, and writing, and I wasn’t getting rich. I learned to be savvy about how I managed my finances as a self-employed person, but I never hit the “financial success” bar that I had set for myself.

Then one year I had an interesting experience with a couple of anesthesiologists. They were starting a barbershop quartet with some fellow workers and wanted me to coach them, since none of them were professional musicians. One day I made a disparaging remark about how little money I made in comparison to them, and how I envied their financial freedom. At the time they were probably each making six times the yearly salary I was. Both of them immediately hurried to say, “Oh, no, we totally envy you! You are your own boss. We have to jump through all these institutional hoops where we work. We’d give anything to have your job – a working freelance musician!” I was taken aback. How could they envy me? That, and other similar incidents, started to make me think differently about the money.

Somewhere in my forties, I began to realize that if I had really wanted the money, I would’ve found a way to make it. Although I hadn’t realized it at the time, I had always been more interested in the work I was doing, and the quality of the work, than in the size of my paycheck. And I suspect that if the anesthesiologists had really wanted to be musicians instead of doctors, they probably would have been.

I finally realized that I am content to pay my bills and be joyful in my work. That is success. So many people can’t say that. I have the privilege of making a living doing what I love. I get to share the joy of music with people every day. Not only do I get to perform all kinds of music I love for people who appreciate it, but I get to help other people learn to play beautiful music and develop their own musical skills. It is a very cool way to live. And after all these years and all the hard work, it still feels like a gift.

We should pay attention to the things that we want to do, are highly motivated to do, and that we actually do. These are the things we should devote our lives to, and what will give them meaning. Sometimes we choose the right path without realizing it.

Peace and good harmony,

Julie