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Do you play with your eyes closed? If yes, what has been your experience? How useful has it been in terms of learning?

Can you make it through an entire piece with eyes closed? If no, how often do you have to look?

Sometimes ... mainly when practicing scales ... it helps focus my attention ... sometimes I look at the computer screensaver to improve focus despite distractions ... and sometimes I do it to try and identify notes or intervals by sound alone ...

I'm just starting out, but I play eyes shut to get the muscle memory down.

Usually play scale. I can feel the touch and focus on listening. Playing simple pieces in John Thomson, I can play it eye closed. For pieces require more hand leaping, no success yet.

I can't do it very well at the piano playing with eyes closed. I can do it on the violin with pieces I've memorized. When I close my eyes, I hear the sound better and am more aware of my movements. I feel the music a lot more too. It's an amazing experience!

Check out Nobuyuki Tsujii. A young, blind, Japanese concert pianist I discovered today on YouTube. He blew my mind away with his La Campanella!

I do it sometimes when I am working on "leaps" that I think I know, or for tricky passages I think I know. It is sort of a test.

I tend to look at the keyboard a lot - I memorize the music. Playing with eyes shut is a game, a little test, a benchmark sometimes, but not something I do regularly.

Thanks for all the replies. There are some more reports on this other thread.

That other thread motivated me to try playing eyes closed this week. I found it to be a step forward. When I perform on the whistle for audiences, I tend to close my eyes (I have over ten years on whistle, six weeks on piano keyboard). My hearing feels sharper, my mind more focused. It is the same with the piano keyboard.

Starting with scales is a good idea for those that have no feel, and then progressing to simple pieces. I peek as needed. With eyes closed, I find myself anticipating the next move, and my playing feels smoother, my mind calmer.

Glenn Gould used to play with gloves and an overcoat.

I started to practice once about half an hour before sunset, and only noticed after a while that it had got too dark to see the keyboard. -- Playing from memory, of course.

It is actually a very helpful technique when used briefly for difficult sections. Sometimes the eye tries to keep up with dense writing and/or fast sections. Once a piece is sufficiently learned, closing your eyes can reduce confusion and as a bonus brings in your ear more.

I like playing with my eyes closed, and find it helps put more expression into my music at times as there as no distractions and it almost takes you into another world playing like this.

I also find it useful when teaching people if they are struggling on a certain section I get them to play that particular part with their eyes closed as it then gets them using other senses to feel and detect the notes. Then once they can play it with their eyes closed once they go back to play it with the rest of the music it becomes a lot easier to do.

I think eyesight is not necessary to playing piano.

Look at this concert of blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii:

http://videos.arte.tv/de/videos/debuet_in_der_carnegie_hall-6614538.html

Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder played with their eyes "closed" so to speak.

Do you look at your keyboard when you type?

I've got a replacement keyboard on my laptop here that I got on Ebay and of course all the letters wore off in a short time. Looking doesn't help me now! I "think" the letter and my hands "do it".

BTW that's a great piece of music that girl is playing!

Nope, I'm sorry. Heh, comes from haveing to copy things off the board and onto my laptop at school. Makes life much easier when you don't need to look up, down, up, down.

I think it is VERY useful to be able to not keep looking at the keyboard all the time. You don't have to play with your eyes closed, just keep your eyes on the sheet music and glance down only when necessary.

When I switched over to grand piano from an upright (I was a child) , I hated how the music desk is all the way up there and it made my neck sore from glancing up and down several times during practice. Later on I realized how helpful this was for me, I now rarely ever look on the keyboard (even though I'm by no mean an advanced pianist, my teacher has commended me on this specific skill). In short, I think the correct placement of music desk can help develop a good habit.

I often play with my eyes closed and find it helps me listen to the music better. I pay more attention to the inflections and feel less restrained. But only when I play on my own keyboard at home... and not anybody else's piano, which is unfortunate. On other pianos, I freeze with my eyes closed.

Excellent, albynism. I play a digital where the music feels like it's in my lap. I built a fairly simple shelf to stand on the piano with a music rack above and pencil shelf below. A lick of black paint and smoother edges might help but it does the job.

I started on an old upright where the rack folds into the piano lid. Much better.