Keep Your Eyes on the Notes, Not Your Fingers
When learning piano one of the most challenging things for students is to stop looking at their fingers and keep their eyes on the music. Curiously, we don’t see this issue with our woodwind students. Why not? Could it be that students starting band instruments are typically older tweens? Not really. It’s simply due to the fact that they have no ability to watch their fingers.
We see piano students from the age of 4 up to adults who struggle to stop looking down to see their fingers push the keys. This is followed by the extra challenge of rediscovering where they were in the composition before looking down again to watch the next finger poke the next key.
In the olden days, a mean piano teacher would punish this behavior with a rap from a ruler on the knuckles and a stern admonishment to, “keep your eyes on your music!” Not only was this abuse, but it only taught students to fear their piano lessons and their piano teacher. Sadly, we still hear horror stories from adults today about these kinds of experiences.
Another trick some piano teachers may use is to put a book or folder over the student’s fingers so that they’re unable to see them. We have done this on occasion. It’s a quick way to show a student that they actually don’t need to look down. It builds their confidence and shows them that they really can do it! Unfortunately, holding that object in place to obstruct the student’s view of their fingertips is not practical, especially at home during regular practice.
Why Is It So Important to Look at The Music Rather Than Your Fingers?
So why must we keep our eyes on the page and not look at our fingers? Your fingers don’t require your eyes to observe their movement. But your brain does need your eyes to not lose your spot on the page as it interprets this strange language of symbols that is music.
There are several additional reasons why keeping your eyes on your music is important:
- Develop muscle memory. Developing muscle memory is key to playing smoothly. Just as with typing on a keyboard, over time your fingers learn the positions and movements you need to make on the keyboard to produce the notes you see on the sheet music in front of you. This helps you better interpret the music.
- Improves sight reading skills. Sight reading music involves the ability to quickly interpret sheet music and that requires constant eye contact with the notes and symbols on the page. If you’re looking at your fingers, you’re interrupting that flow.
- Maintain rhythm. If you’re continually looking down at your fingers, it’s far too easy to lose your place in the piece. These hesitations disrupt your timing, breaking the flow of the music.
- Inspires confidence. The more you trust your fingers to find the notes that correlate with the music, the more confidence you’ll develop in your playing ability.
- Better group performances. If you’re playing with an ensemble or orchestra, you need to have your eyes on the conductor, the other musicians, or the person you’re accompanying. If you’re looking at your fingers, you’re going to miss visual cues.
Tricks to Learn Tracking
Our favorite way to help learn tracking is with the old Follow the Bouncing Ball videos.
If you are over 40 years old, you might remember Follow the Bouncing Ball sing-a-longs. They would sometimes be sprinkled throughout our Saturday morning cartoons or show up before the main feature at the movie theater.
Over the years, the bouncing ball gave way to lyrics that light up the words as they’re sung with the words flying across the screen. The adult version of this would be karaoke.
When you’re playing music, your eyes should go from note to note just like the bouncing ball goes from word to word. The less you look away from the page the less work you are going to have to do to relocate your spot on the sheet music.
When reading music, we are also comparing one note to the next for distance and spatial analysis. This is information that our muscles memorize over time. Eventually this also makes reading multiple notes on the treble and bass staves (your grand staff) that will be played by multiple fingers in both hands.
Below are just a few of our very favorite Follow the Bouncing Ball videos:
She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain
Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing
Disney Sing Along Songs
Other Disney Sing Along Songs with words that light up but no bouncing ball
Karaoke for the adults
You can search Disney Sing Along Songs or Karaoke for more of these kinds of videos. There are huge playlists available and it’s lots of fun to learn the words to some of your favorite tunes.
If you have any favorites we haven’t mentioned, share them with us on social media! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube @AKoppMusic. And be sure to look for this Saturday’s Follow the Bouncing Ball themed #AKoppPlaylist on Instagram!
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