Whatever You Do, Don’t Look Down!

Every time someone says that in a movie, what happens next? 

They look down and it usually just makes things worse.

Do you trust your hands?

When facing a door that needs to be opened, do your hands perform faithfully?

When you want to send a text, do your hands generally do a decent job of getting the message right?

When you’re driving, do your hands steer, signal, and use the windshield wipers, with ease?

Our hands complete these tasks with relative ease and very little oversight.

When you open a door, do you watch your hand to make sure it grabs the doorknob the right way?

When you send a text, do you watch your thumbs on the keypad?

When you drive, do you look at your hands as they steer, signal, or adjust the wipers?

You trust your hands to perform these tasks without having to watch them do so. 

Why do you trust your hands?

Why do you not second guess your hands’ ability to open a door, text, or drive?

“Because I do those things all the time!”

Exactly! 

How many texts have you sent today?  How many doors have you opened? How many times have you used your turn signal this week? (If the answer to this question is zero, you and I need to have a serious talk.)

You can trust your hands to perform these tasks because they do them regularly.

Why do we not trust our hands at the piano?

Now, we get to the real issue. 

So many students of all ages and experience level spend more time looking at their hands than they do looking at the music and this causes a number of problems.

1. Losing your place

If your eyes are constantly going back and forth between the music and your hands, you will frequently lose your place in the music. 

Try reading the following series of numbers out loud while looking at your elbow after every number:

“1 5 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 7 6 4 4 4 4 4 5 9 8 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 5 2 6 7”

Now read the following numbers out loud, keeping your eyes on the numbers at all times.

“1 5 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 7 6 4 4 4 4 4 5 9 8 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 5 2 6 7”

It was much easier to read the second set of numbers when your eyes stayed on the numbers.

2. Inconsistent Rhythm

Imagine walking down an empty sidewalk though a park on a beautiful Spring day.  The path is clear, so your steps are moving at a regular, consistent rhythm with no fear of tripping over anything.  You trust your feet to find their next step without having to stare at your shoes.

Now imagine walking that same path, but before taking a single step, you must first look at the path ahead of you so you know where to go, then look at the ground to find a place for your shoe, and finally watch your shoe take the step.  This way of walking is much slower and less consistent because you no longer trust your feet to do what you’ve trained them to do all these years.

The same thing happens with your hands.  If you take the extra moments to look down at your hands and the keys before playing the next note, your rhythm and performance will be inconsistent.

3. You’ll never learn to trust your hands

This is the biggest problem for you who habitually look at your hands while you play.  You will always look at your hands when you play because you will never learn to do any differently.  It will be a hindrance to your playing indefinitely.

How Your Hands Gain Your Trust

When you first started driving, you looked at your hands on the steering wheel to make sure they were in the right place and you watched your hands reach for the turn signal and windshield wipers.  You needed to look because your hands didn’t know where those things were.  Pretty soon though you trusted your hands to find those things without the help of your eyes.

When I first started texting on a full keyboard (as opposed to using the numeric keypad, where “Hi” was spelled 44 444), I spent a lot of time looking at my thumbs to make sure they were hitting the right letters.  Now I just watch the screen to make sure the words appear correctly and spend very little if any time actually watching my thumbs type.

Practice produces progress!

You gave your hands time to gain your trust while driving and texting (though NOT at the same time!).  Now, it’s time to give your hands the chance to gain your trust while playing the piano. 

Try this:

Put your right hand on your leg.

Tap your thumb on your leg three times.

Tap your pinkie on your leg two times.

Tap your ring finger on your leg four times.

Tap your middle finger on your leg twice.

Tap your index finger on your leg once.

Did you have to look at your hand do to that?

Next time you’re at a piano, try this (You can imagine that you are playing a piano, but using an actual keyboard will be more effective):

Put your right hand in C position (Thumb on C, index finger on D, middle finger on E, and so forth)

Play C three times.

Play G two times.

Play F four times.

Play E two times.

Play D once.

Did you have to look at your hand to do that? 

If so, do it again until you trust your hand enough not to look down!  

And while you’re at the piano, go ahead and practice not looking down on another piece of music and then another!

Practice produces progress!