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Are there any exercises to help one learn the keyboard by touch? I have to keep looking down at the keyboard and I lose my place in the music. This is especially true of the left hand when playing a base note and then jumping to a chord, such as in ragtime music.
I would think there ought to be something to aid in the development of muscle memory.
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I know what you mean. I've always wondered how performers can smile and interact with the audience without loosing their place. Looking at my hands hasn't been a major issue for me because I only use sheet music to learn a piece. I've usually memorized it long before I can play it perfectly. It would still be nice to be able to look away for longer periods though, especially at weddings where you have to look out for cues and so forth. Not that one plays ragtime at weddings (well maybe at mine they will Hoping someone will share some tips...
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Like Ivory, I've memorized a piece long before I can play it well. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be able to look at a sheet and place it well immediately (probably never). Jumping, etc take time and practice, at least it does for me. I'm beginning to think piano is a lot like gymnastics, but with your fingers. Like a floor tumbler who knows their routine, it takes time and practice before they can execute their routine precisely.
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Learning to read is the way to learn to not look at your hands as much. Sometimes, you'll still need to, but when everything is in reach you'll begin to feel comfortable in feeling your way around before long.
To play stride well, you're going to need to look. You can play shorter stride to make it easier. Even then, you'll likely need to look and certainly will for wide stride. There is no harm in it.
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I would think there ought to be something to aid in the development of muscle memory. There is. It is called repetition. Just keep doing it over and over until you can do it without looking. Tedius work, to be sure. No other way.
Don
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Here's a few ways to practice this that my teachers gave me. I still look at the keyboard once in awhile, but these exercises have significantly lowered my need to constantly look at the keyboard.
1. Scales & Arpeggios without looking - staying close to the keys and paying special attention to the feel of your hand on the keyboard. Additionally, visualizing where your hands and fingers are on the keyboard while playing.
2. For large leaps, practice "walking" the leap very carefully and slowly while keeping close contact with the keyboard. Pay attention to the other fingers and what keys they are on when you leap. Many times you'll find that the other fingers are the ones that actually make the leap accurate and not the active fingers in the leap. Once you get a feel for this, start practicing by feeling the leap - not looking.
3. Practice immediately prepping your hand after it's done it's part. and my teachers mean -immediately- they consider the next hand position as the "final note" of the last phrase so they want me to finish phrases with a hand prep. A 2nd part to this is make sure your hand shape is also immediately prepped as part of the process. They want my hands to be ahead of the music in this respect.
4. When sight-reading music be aware of which lines and spaces your fingers are on and what parts of the staff your hand are taking up. Many times this makes it easier to move or stretch to a new note without looking.
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Lots and lots of slow practice. I'm talking years of experience in playing leaps without looking.
For now, try to see as much out of peripheral as possible, but you may at first have to look. No getting around that.
Without knowing much about you, it is possible that you are trying to play something that is too hard for your current level of playing. It is also possible there are technical reasons/tensions that are getting in the way.
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Are there any exercises to help one learn the keyboard by touch? I have to keep looking down at the keyboard and I lose my place in the music. This is especially true of the left hand when playing a base note and then jumping to a chord, such as in ragtime music.
I would think there ought to be something to aid in the development of muscle memory. It's called: lots and lots and lots of experience at the keyboard - playing lots and lots of pieces . And lots of repetition too, on specific pieces. Such that your brain eventually develops a strong mental topography of the keyboard, and your hands and fingers 'know' where to go to hit any particular note(s). That's how blind pianists play with unerring accuracy, like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgPXOW5bpZkIf you're fairly advanced, you can practice playing your pieces in the dark, or with eyes shut (if you've got it memorized). But if you're not far off from a beginner, your priority is to develop your position sense first, using your eyes when required, moving your hand swiftly into position prior to playing (not striking the key from an acute angle while still in the middle of a sideways movement).
If music be the food of love, play on!
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Looking at keyboard, then page, then keyboard, then page, without losing your place is a valuable skill worth developing. If you can read this sentence on the screen, look at your computer keyboard or across the room, then back at this sentence on the screen, you can learn to do it. Like anything it takes practice. It helps a lot if you're sitting correctly so that you can see both the keyboard and the page without moving your head. (Many adult beginners sit much too close and thus have to move their heads up to see the page and down to see the keys.) If you use glasses, make sure the glasses allow you to see both.
Last edited by hreichgott; 08/31/16 08:52 AM.
Heather Reichgott, piano
Working on: Mel (Mélanie) Bonis - Sevillana, La cathédrale blessée William Grant Still - Three Visions
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This is especially true of the left hand when playing a base note and then jumping to a chord, such as in ragtime music. The only way I know of to develop a ragtime bass is to play a lot of ragtime. Note that the bass intervals are not randomly selected. You're most often jumping down to either the root note or the fifth of the chord you're playing. Over time--in my case, a lot of time--your body will start naturally moving to the correct default position.
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I was practicing (left hand) going from the base note (Ab) to the chord (Ab second inversion), say 10 times looking, then 10 times not looking etc. Then from the lower Eb to that same chord looking and then not looking. Then the combination Ab, chord, Eb, chord, 10 times looking, then 10 times not looking.
I would do this before practicing the piece, and over a couple of weeks got to the point where I rarely make an error now on those notes.
Doing that kind of provided an "anchor" so that now I also don't have a problem going to the A or the Bb, or on the lower end, the Db next to the Eb.
That was the intent of my question, exercises like the one I just outlined. It seems that some combinations of notes might be more generally useful, and provide anchors to make striking other notes in the same vicinity easier.
By the way, I'm quite new to this. I can do the major and natural minor scales, and two octave arpeggios and a couple of very simple pieces. (I very recently got a piano teacher.) The question above was due to my current assigned work on Joplin's Easy Winners. I'm also working on the Maple Leaf Rag at the same time. But for the Easy Winners, I'm trying to do it without looking at the keyboard. For the Maple Leaf Rag, I'm memorizing it.
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If you're specifically looking for ragtime, there are some brief exercises written by The Man Himself. http://www.ragtimepiano.ca/images/schoolofrag.pdfSupposedly Liszt started the fad for memorizing piano works because he had to keep looking at the keyboard to see where his hands were going on the big leaps in his own music.
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I was taught a good process that works well for ragtime.
Start off by learning a small section, so in ragtime a bass octave and chord.
Next speed this up to as fast as you can play it accurately and practice this a bit.
Next close your eyes and play what you practised slowly, building up to how quickly you want to play the piece.
It's labourious, but effective. I sometimes slightly modify the above to do bass notes for the octave and chord, and then go back and add the other notes.
Russ
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I was taught a good process that works well for ragtime.
Start off by learning a small section, so in ragtime a bass octave and chord.
Next speed this up to as fast as you can play it accurately and practice this a bit.
Next close your eyes and play what you practised slowly, building up to how quickly you want to play the piece.
It's labourious, but effective. I sometimes slightly modify the above to do bass notes for the octave and chord, and then go back and add the other notes.
Russ Along with that there is a problem: when you add the right hand , is disturbed accuracy in the left. Renowned professional of stride piano advised me to play blindly just with the left hand for a few months. The period of such work and number of repetitions is very individual, but it also depends on the age: during working on fast solo of Count Basie, I had to repeat fragments 400 - 500 times. Necessary to be careful not to overplay the hand!
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