You've admired professional musicians for this skill and believe or not, you can begin practising to develop this skill right now!
As well as being incredibly impressive, playing without looking has huge benefits to you as a pianist.
It can improve your:
- ability to play and sing together
- performing to an audience
- playing with other musicians
- sight-reading skills
- and improve your Stevie Wonder impression!
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Here are some tips for developing this skill:
1. Know what you are playing… well.
When developing this skill, it’s best to choose a song that you are well familiar with. You need to have memorised how to play the song while looking at your fingers on the keyboard.
2. practise visualising
Not only do you need to have it memorised while playing (and not looking at the sheet music) you need to play it in your mind! Imagine your fingers playing on the keys like a movie in your mind, with the sound playing in your ‘inner-hearing’ rather than out loud.
3. play passages slowly with eyes closed
Obviously this isn’t going to happen immediately, but practising small passages (that don’t require large leaps) with your eyes closed is a good way to dip your toe into the water.
While your eyes are closed, play very slowly through a short passage of the song and play the movie in your mind of what your fingers look like on the keys (this is putting into action Tip 2).
Try to slowly feel out where the correct keys are using the raised groups of black keys (grouped in 2 and 3) to find exactly where you are and determine which notes need to be played.
4. practise leaps
It’s easy to play intervals that fall within our natural hand position with fingers 1 to 5, but moving the hand further than this position can be tricky.
Practise leaps of an interval of a 6th and more so that your hand can start to become familiar with the stretch of the hand and any greater leaps your arm needs to move.
5. chord-tone math
Think logically from one chords to the next. Which keys are you playing currently and how can you use those as a reference point to feel your way to the next chord without looking?
Using voice-leading (the closest inversion of the next chord) to minimise the leaps needed is also a great way to improvise with a song’s harmony and more easily play without looking.
Practise these tips and you will definitely improve your ability to play the piano without looking. If you want to specifically use this skill for playing the piano and singing together, check out this training on ‘Playing & Singing’.
Not a member? Join the ‘Creative Pianist’ membership here.
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