How to stop looking at your hands when you play piano

Should you look at your hands when playing piano?

Sometimes, yes. Every pianist glances down for a big leap or to find a new hand position. The problem is looking down for every note. Each time your eyes leave the page, you have to find your place again when they come back, and that search takes longer than playing the note. Reading slows to the speed of finding your place.

So the aim isn’t never to look. It’s to need to look only rarely, and to look in a way that doesn’t lose your place.

Learn the keyboard by touch

The black keys are your braille. They come in groups of two and three, and you can feel those groups with your fingertips without seeing them. Every white key has a fixed place next to them:

• C is just to the left of a group of two black keys.
• D is between the two.
• E is just to the right of the two.
• F is just to the left of a group of three.
• G and A are between the three.
• B is just to the right of the three.

Try this away from any music, a minute or two at a time:

1. Close your eyes. Run a finger lightly over the black keys until you feel a group of two.
2. Slide off its left side onto the white key: that’s C. Open your eyes and check.
3. Do the same for F (left of the three) and G (between the first two of the three).
4. Then without the slide: put your thumb straight down on a C you can’t see, and check.

Once C, F and G are reliable by feel, you have a starting point for most beginner hand positions.

Five-finger positions with your eyes closed

In a five-finger position, each finger rests over its own key, so you don’t need to look for notes at all: the right finger already knows where they are. The C position is the place to start.

Play it with your eyes open twice, then with them closed. Then do the same in G position and F position. If a note goes wrong with your eyes closed, it’s usually because the hand drifted out of position, so keep the fingers resting lightly on their keys between notes.

Read intervals as finger distances

Once the hand is in place, you don’t need to find each note by name. You need to know how far to move from the last one. On the page, the distance between two notes tells you; under your hand, it’s a finger:

• A step (line to the next space) is the next finger.
• A skip (line to the next line) skips one finger.
• A repeat is the same finger again.
• A fourth or fifth skips two or three fingers.

This is how you read without looking: name the first note from a landmark, put your hand there, then read the shape of the line rather than the letters. The sight-reading guide explains reading in shapes in more detail.

Peripheral vision and the quick glance

You can often see the keyboard at the edge of your vision without looking down at it, especially if the music stand is low and close. That’s enough to sense roughly where your hands are. Let it help, without moving your eyes.

For a leap you can’t feel, glance properly, but time it: look at the keys just before the leap, while the last note is still sounding, then look back at the music as your hand travels. Don’t look during the leap and stay down there for the next few notes. One quick look, then back.

Practice tricks that help

• Cover your hands. Drape a light cloth or a tea towel over your hands, or hold a sheet of card above the keys. You can play but not see. Use it on easy music only.
• Use easy music. If every bar is a struggle to read, your eyes will escape to the keyboard for relief. Music well below your level lets you practise not looking, which is the skill you’re working on.
• Play the same position for a week. Pieces that stay in one five-finger position let the hand learn where everything is.
• Say the move. Before each note, say “step up”, “skip down”, “same” quietly. It keeps your attention on the page.

Keeping your place when you do look

Since you’ll look down sometimes, make it cheap:

1. Know where you’re coming back to. Before you look down, fix the next note on the page in your mind.
2. Look back to the same spot. Come straight back to that note, not to the start of the line.
3. Mark the bar. In a piece with a known leap, pencil a small mark at the bar where you return, so your eyes land quickly.

Pianomi helps here too. In wait mode the music waits for the right note and the cursor shows where you are, and a wrong key shows as a ghost note on the staff, so you can see what happened without looking down at your hands.

Questions

Is it bad to look at your hands when playing piano?

Not in itself. A quick glance before a leap or a big change of position is normal. It becomes a problem when you look down for every note, because each look costs you your place in the music, and reading slows to the speed of finding it again.

How long does it take to stop looking at your hands?

It varies a lot from person to person. With a few minutes of daily practice on easy music in one hand position, many learners find simple five-finger positions start to feel secure within a few weeks. Larger moves and leaps take longer, and the habit fades gradually rather than all at once.

Do professional pianists look at their hands?

Yes, often, especially for leaps and in solo music they play from memory, where there is no page to lose. When they read music or play with others, they look down much less, and they find most notes by touch and by knowing the distances on the keyboard.