I really want to be able to play large jumps without looking at the keyboard at all. Partly, it's because my old neck gets sore from looking down .

I'm very good at feeling the keys to knowing where I am, and not looking down when reading music. But for playing stride and improvising, I've just got to be able to do it without looking at all.

Every day I'm spending some time with my eyes closed, and playing notes based on arm position only (not feeling any keys).

Have any of you successfully improved your ability in this regard? Do you have any exercises that you work on?

Thanks!

Al,

Being a trombone player you probably have a better idea than most about moving your arm to get between notes. It's just practice that will solidify those jumps. You may want to work in similar keys to practice distances ie Ab maj, Db maj and Gb maj to get the black note jumps, and C, G and D to start on the white note jumps. I find the black keys much easier to find when striding.

Hi Al, I think that its just practice and repetition, there's no shortcuts on that one, if you do it enough times eventually your fingers/arms would memorize and get use to jump the distances. I think that practicing the jumps slowly and gradually increasing the tempo can help with memorizing. A lot of times when you play something slow your brain has more time to process the info and you learn things faster. Another thought, most styles of music doesn't have constant huge jumps, so whenever you do have one, maybe try to get use to glancing at the keyboard real quick (and mainly with your eyes and not the whole neck/head)and after performing the jump bring your eyes/neck/head back to comfortable position, I think that its "easy" to get stuck with the head down looking at the keyboard even when you don't really "need" to.

scepticalforumguy, nice recordings, you have a really nice touch !

If you'd like to see a pianist who spends nearly all his time looking around while playing try Erroll Garner, famous jazz player. On YouTube.

Interesting, he's short and uses one or more phone books below his bottom. Been known to hum along with the tune too--on recordings.

Bech

There is one technique that has really helped me with fast big jumps.
You can mentally divide up the action of playing the leap into parts - 1 playing the first note/chord, 2 actually making the leap and 3 playing the note/chord at the end of the leap. It can be very useful to practice playing the 1st note/chord and moving to make the next notes but without actually playing them, in this way you are practicing just making the jump. It is important to get this jump right and locate the hand properly before actually playing the next notes otherwise it is easy to end up kind of grabbing at the notes and this leads to many wrong notes.
For stride it is important to do this in both directions - low octave to high chord and in reverse.
For an actual exercise you could try this ...
Try playing the bottom notes and then move the arm very slowly as though you were going to play the top chord but stop yourself just before you actually play the chord. Do this 10 times VERY slowly whilst looking at your hand.Then gradually speed this up a little (for a minute or 2) until you are doing it as fast as you can.
Then do the same but actually play the top chord. Include a little pause before playing it to keep the idea of 2 actions fresh in your mind - move and then play. Start slow and speed up after a minute or so.
Then repeat this whole process over with your eyes shut. As soon as you play a wrong note slow down or go back to the previous section.Then repeat this whole process over going in the other direction ... high chord - jump - low notes.

Try it, maybe it will help.

Great tips, thanks!

I can't help but agree with this 100%. Its kind of a subtle point but its something I notice most performers tend to do when playing with the score in front of them. They seem to glance at the keys at the same points in time and the same manner I tend to. It is also possible to play without glancing at all, but many musicians do it and in some ways its kind of a technique/trick to master in itself.




One thing that I read from CPE Bach's book on the art of playing the keyboard; he said to improve sight reading try learning to play youre memorized pieces in the dark. Whether you agree with this or not, I can't help feel there must be some value in taking one of your arrangements and learn it inside out. Learn it so well that you can play it blindfolded, in several keys and write it out on pen and paper. Hopefully it will be an arrangement that you really like and can then play for enjoyment. That being said, playing stride is not really my thing and I tend to prefer playing things that don't require looking at the hands very much

Have you checked you are using the correct fingering for these pieces, as sometimes if you are using incorrect fingering then it will slow down the transitions of moving up and down the piano. So double check this.

It is good you are trying to learn passages with your eyes closed, so I'd keep doing this, as you are using other senses to feel where the notes are. And if it is a particular JUMP, say just over an octave or a higher note range moving quite low, look visually at where this is, play the notes, so you can HEAR what they sound like, and practice it repetitively until you have it in your head.

I think you are moving in the right direction though, but just need to keep practicing away at it.
Good Luck

Samantha

To be clearer, this is the kind of playing I'm talking about:



That is, I'm not playing a piece in which the notes are written out. So my challenge is to find the proper position when I play the chords, and also find the keys when improvising.

I've been playing about an hour a day blindfolded, and things are getting better.

Nice playing!

Moving the hands "out of rhythm" helps with jumps.

fingers

When doing those wide jumps, keep sensing your arm and hand all the way across. Don't just sense the origin and the destination - sensing the whole travel allows you to keep track of what's going on, and keeps your arm under control. Staying both controlled and non-tense at the same time. If you tense up, you will still be able to play, but you will get tired fast and you won't play any better. If you stay patient and allow yourself to get used to playing in a non-tense way, then it will work fine. If you switch from tense to non-tense, you will miss all the notes at first - don't get discouraged, and don't go back to tense playing.

Wide jumps always follow an approximately-sort-of-but-not-quite parabolic shape. The easiest visual analogy is the fenders on cars from the 1930s and 1940s - your starting point is like the flatter back end of the fender, you go very gradually up and across, and your destination curves down a bit more suddenly, like the more-curved front part of the car fender. If you are conscious of that, it can help.

Here are some pieces of advice I got from my piano teacher which were helpful for me.

1. When making a jump move the hand quickly to a position where it is over the target keys so that you have time to drop it precisely on the right keys, feeling said keys if necessary with your fingers.
2. Don't worry too much about missing the keys, better to stay relaxed. This seems counter-intuitive but it was for me the single most useful piece of advice.
3. Make "cat like" jumps so your fingers spring off the keys and land lightly.

My experience is that like so many other things you learn on a piano you can spend a long time feeling like you are not making much progress and then in a relatively short space of time you get it and can't figure out why it ever seemed so difficult.

nice playing Al !!

That's a really nice version of My Romance Al! I love that song too.

Thanks for the compliments!

After a week of work on this, I've learned a few things:

1. With my style of improvising, I really need to be able to find any key from any starting position.

2. My idea, when blindfolded, of where, say, C2, is can be way off. That is, my internal map of the keyboard is faulty. I have to work on fixing it.

3. Feeling the keys has limitations. The biggest one is that it can take too long to distinguish the two-group of black notes from the three-group. So this only works for fine-tuning. That is, I need to know where a key is within an inch or two, and then use the feeling of the keys to fine-tune it.

4. Sometimes things just flow, and I magically find the notes I want. More often it goes less smoothly.

5. It helps to sit blindfolded and play different notes, paying attention to where my arms are and how they feel.

6. The technique that works best so far is to take off the blindfold, look at the keyboard, paying attention to the two octaves around middle C, and then try to hold that image in my head when I put the blindfold back on.

Thats great Al,

I don't know, from my experience with other pianists (many whom I admire), their sense of absolute touch is much weaker compared to the relative sense of touch. You can actually do a lot more then you would expect with a relative sense of touch. I have also had an interest in this over the years. Of course some pianists might have this skill to their advantage.

I would be curious on your progress, if you develop this skill and maintain it. There is probably little to no research on the subject. Anyway this is really just my opinion and I know some will disagree

Al, this works with my students:

Blind Man C's

1. Close eyes.
2. Hear middle C in your mind.
3. Play middle C and hold it.
4. Imagine the sound of the C an octave higher.
5. Move your arm/hand/finger quick as possible to the higher C. One impulse of 'going', not 'finding'.
6. Repeat till it's easy. Be sure and pause and relax and 'hear' the target note
before going there. If you miss the target, you laugh and repeat the exercise.

(Obviously you can do the same exercise down an octave, or up two octaves, as you wish)

Usually the pull of the strongly desired sound, opens your natural ability
to locate sounds on your instrument with your ear leading the way. That, along with the practice of refining your aim through repeated iterations of this exercise, can focus this ability to a surprising extent.

Thanks Wade, that's interesting, and I'll try it.

In the month and a half since starting this thread, I've been playing a lot with my eyes closed (or blindfolded). It's making a big difference, although I'm still lacking confidence that I'm going to hit the right notes, but sometimes I can play a tune such as the one in the videos with only a few mistakes.

I think I'm getting a better picture in my head, almost like an after-image, of where the keys are.

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to pass on an epiphany I had recently.

In my sight-reading, my teacher has taught me to get the feeling of the different intervals "in my hands." For example, know how a sixth feels. She's also stressed that I need to know where "I've been." That is know where my hands are.

I had an epiphany the other day, realizing that these same ideas would help with my shell-voicing playing, and help me play without looking. That is, instead of (or in addition to) learning the absolute positioning, I should work on the being able to go from the current notes to the new notes.

Yes, often the jump is further than an interval that I can reach, but usually I am moving less than an octave.

For example, if I'm playing an Abmaj7 with a Ab, G in the left hand and a C in the right, and I'm going to an Fm7 (F, Eb (tenth) in left, Ab in right), I might feel that I'm going down a minor third with the left pinkie, and up a minor third with the left thumb. The right hand goes up a minor sixth.

So, I've been reading through The Real Book with this new paradigm, and have made some rapid progress. I realize that in the past I wasn't paying attention to where I was, and just finding the new chord from scratch.

This was an unexpected benefit of my sight-reading work.

Thanks for posting, Al. I always follow your threads (and your blog) closely, and I very much appreciate you sharing your insights, your struggles, and your victories, and especially your fearless posting of examples with you playing. Very helpful.

Number 3 is very important... I think it's more important than you realize. The fingers act as location sensors via the black keys, they brush the keys and can arrive a few milliseconds early to feel they are in the right place. Somewhat flat fingers do this better than curved finger shapes. The black keys are like giant simple braille. It's one aspect of why blind pianist can play so well.Of course the arm movements "measure" the distances.

Al,

Really liked your voicings on My Romance. I would love to hear you play Trombone because you understand the layout of harmony on the keyboard so well. Hope you will post more

Dan