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No. It's a proper way to learn. It diminishes with time naturally.


The most common mistake that leads to loss of place in the score is moving the head up and down instead of moving the eyes only.

There's an appropriate amount of looking at the keyboard based on the piece's difficulty/layout on the keyboard and pianist's level. No one would expect a conservatory student to have to constantly look at the keyboard when playing a Bach chorale but a much less advanced student would probably have to look more. What an advanced student considers a big jump is not the same as what a less advanced thinks is a big jump.

If you watch the best pianists in the world play from the score they will all occasionally look at the keyboard unless perhaps if they are playing a very elementary piece.

If there were a "like" button, I'd press it. You have described a lot of things I'm overcoming to a T.

I did not get taught not to look down, but I was also not taught anything else. I was a child who was given a piano and notation and I learned to "read" in a way where I heard what I saw in relative pitch and I simply felt my way around the keyboard. In fact, when I returned to piano 35 years later, the first time I tried to look at the keyboard I got disoriented. I cannot even describe how I did relate to it. The music I had available when young was a bunch of sonatinas, mostly Clementi, so I also stayed in the mid-range of the keyboard, 90% white keys, mostly with the hands in 5 finger span, and this puts your hand into a fixed shape, and region of the keyboard. There are also things that you don't learn to do.

One of the things I am learning to do now is to move in for mostly black keys, out for mostly white . I am overcoming the tendency to stay in one place and stretch: since I have a relatively wide span for my hand size (stretch hands, thumb to little finger forms a straight line), the habit is stronger - also twisting at the wrist. Children and older students who were taught differently never even have to learn to move their hands about. Nor does anybody think twice to do so when reaching for ordinary things in their lives.

In other words, everything you just wrote.

You pretty much summed up everything I wanted to say. However, I think it's still a good idea to try to consciously improve your sense of proprioception and key distance at least some of the time. Perhaps spend some fifteen minutes each day trying to actively play without looking at the keys. Ideally, you would want to be playing blind when you can execute most of the hand movements correctly without looking. There's no point if you are simply hitting the notes. How long this will take will depend on the individual, but I would suggest holding it off until you can play at least grade 4-5 material fluently. To never to look at the keyboard is terrible advice. I'm pretty sure all pianists look at their hands when they are trying to figure out difficult technical passages. At the beginning, all passages are technically difficult for you, so you must look at your hands constantly and try to create that fusion between your musical intent and your hand movements.

When we practice a piece enough times, we develop muscle memory. Some people like myself would get to the point of memorizing the notes that the sheet music is just there for checking once in a while. And we're less conscious of the notes we need to play like the fingers are on autopilot. When I need to look at my hands, it's usually the LH. My RH can play the right notes by feel.

Beginner pieces are not usually very fast or require you to play many notes or chords at the same time so memorizing entire sections is not necessary. When reading music, we don't have to read every note. Notes in the melody or the bass line that are the same we just need to read once.

Beginner pieces are usually quite easy to play, so they are easier to memorize as well! I would advise you too memorize each piece you play, and then play while paying closer attention to your hands. You want them to be very relaxed, roughly at level with the keys, etc. Read about proper piano posture, and try to get it as perfect as you can. Every slight improvement in efficiency counts! I think this would be the best way to progress quickly. Focus very intently over a prolonged period of time to perfect basic technique, or get as close to possible to perfection. This is especially important given your age, imo, and it would be incredibly important even for children. After six months or a year, if you do this right, you will have accumulated quite a bit of experience and fluency at the keyboard. It may take a few more years to mature. However, that is the point where I would start trying to focus on sight reading. In the initial stages, trust me and just memorize. It should be possible to memorize an easy short piece in a few hours. Once you've memorized it, try to improve every aspect of it, and play it really relaxed and effortlessly -- it will be better if a teacher can guide you on this. Pay close attention to your hands, the sensation of where the energy and strength is coming from, whether there are any weird angles in the hand, or tension, and so on.

Bad advice, in my opinion. Don't memorize everything from the beginning. You need to learn to read music, play from the score, use a natural technique, look back and forth between your hands and the music - all of it. And learn to memorize if you want, but not exclusively.

Sam

The best advice I can give you is to do your best to learn to play while following along with where you are on the printed notation (sheet music).

Make no attempt at all to memorize anything.

If that means you must play very slowly, then do that.

If that means you need to glance down at your hands periodically, then do that.

If you do that, you will slowly get better and better at it until one day you will find that you do not even think about it any more.

You just do it.

Then you will be able to pick up a piece of printed music and just look at it and play it.

Some Day ....

Good Luck

The reason why I suggest memorizing is so that you don't have to look at the score and can therefore focus on your hands more. This is at the beginning stages, one you gain a moderate level of fluency, it's not an issue. I think a lot of technical issues are caused when the hands are on autopilot. Reading from the score will force you to divert your attention.

So in summary,

you have the opinion of those who recommend you to memorize so that you can look down and focus on your fingers, those that say that you should not memorize at all and start playing from the score day 1, and those in between to a varying degree.

I guess the OP is back to where he started.

Sometimes I feel like we lose sight of the only truly important part of playing the piano which is to play a piece as best as you can. How much you look at the score versus how much you look at your hands in the end doesn't matter at all. As a beginner, play around with it, try to look more at the score than you usually do, try to memorise and watch your hands all the time, try to go back and forth between the keys and the score, try playing with closed eyes. You will find what suits you best.
We are all different. Where our eyes go when we are playing will be different.

But now the OP has necessary information to make informed decision.

The topic of playing from memory has been discussed before and we can spend half a day on it. I've seen people who played from the score and those who played from memory in a performance. The audience listened to the music. Whether someone plays from the score is irrelevant.

People who are in Suzuki would learn all the songs in Book 1 by imitating their teachers' hand positions and by listening without reading a single note. Reading is introduced after the first year. Traditional teaching methods would get students reading from day 1. Both reading skills & ear training are important. There are those who say students who learn the Suzuki way reading skill lag behind and many get into a habit of memorizing pieces to avoid reading.

After hearing a song on the radio, some people are comfortable reproducing the melody by ear and throw in some chords for harmony. Others need the sheet music to play it.

When your sight reading is at a certain level, you can play a piece once by reading and be done with it. Unless it's an advanced piece you're going to perform on stage, you don't need to memorize or polish it.

Piano player 416

Advanced pieces performed on stage do not necessarily need to be memorized. There is the choice of performing with the score. Starting with Liszt, there was a convention of memorizing all performance music. That has changed even for some professional highly-rated performers and it is considered acceptable in many situations to use the score for the performance.

Unhapilly, I think he just has a bunch of contradictory opinions that are all over the place and thus an overload of ideas. Difficult to define a practical path when one is a beginner. I guess it is inherent to asking a wide open question in a forum. Much better for him/her to follow the directions of the teacher. http://forum.pianoworld.com/images/icons/default/wink.gif

After watching many student performances, came to the conclusion Suzuki students would perform Book 1 pieces in their first recital from memory. Even after learning to read, many continue to perform on stage from memory. In a concert, reading pieces is up to the performer. In a competition or a talent show, it is more likely a contestant would play from memory.

The OP is 61 - much more difficult to memorize at that age. Believe me, I know - I am 67. Sometimes I memorize, but I try to avoid it.

Sam

For a moment I thought Moo has stolen your account.

Well, opinions are information, too.

Such videos are the bane of a teacher's life.

It is difficult enough when a student comes in with a video of someone like Lang Lang playing a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody and asks: "When are you going to teach me to play those fast octaves?"

Advanced pianists just do things differently from beginners or intermediates because they can, not because they know some secret of how and where and when to look at the score. For one thing, they see lots of familiar patterns and groups of notes and whole chords (in both hands) at a glance, not individual notes, and their well-trained hands know exactly where to go.

When the student gets to Grade 7 and above, he will be doing something close to what pros do when playing from the score. He won't need to be told: "This is what you need to learn to do."

I think it's individual. I'm 55 and have several pieces firmly memorized, and I find memorization is natural for me. Everyone's brain is different.