Piano Video Lesson: How to Play the Piano Without Looking at Your Hands

Welcome to livingpianos.com. It's a pleasure to have all of you out there. I've got an interesting show for you today and it's the magic of the five finger position on the piano. Now, this is particularly important for beginning students. I want to kind of explain what I'm talking about. So first I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I mean. If you put your five fingers over five keys, like right now I'm over C, D, E, F, G in both hands. Interestingly, when young students are playing, you'll notice that they will constantly be looking down even if they're in a five finger position. But I always let them know, the keys aren't going to go anywhere.

If you just leave your hands in this position, it's possible to push down whatever key and you should be able to have your eyes closed and play whatever key you want. It's really important because this is a great way to develop reading skills. If you understand that you just have to know which finger goes down in each hand in order to play those five notes. Or of course, it can be shifted as well. You might be over G, A, B, C, D. Whatever the position, once you are comfortable in that position, you should be able to not have to look down at your hands at all.

This is invaluable because as music gets more complex, then you can do things like reach one note beyond. It's not a far a reach to be able to play one key beyond in one hand or the other. Getting that sense of the keyboard of where the notes are and your hands on them without having to look down, if you don't do it in the five finger position when you first start, you'll likely never do it. So it's really important to get comfortable playing in that position without having to look down at your hands to develop your connection between your fingers and the keyboard, irrespective of looking at them. That is the secret of the five finger position. There's amazing things you can do just with five keys on the piano. It's surprising.

So test yourself. Close your eyes and play and see if you can hit the keys you intend to hit if you're a beginner. Naturally, if you're a more advanced level, go back to some easier music. If you find your reading skills are really lacking, try to find books that are in that five finger position and sight read without looking down at your hands at all. Get comfortable with that and build up from there. This could be a tremendous help for you to develop your sight reading skills with that connection to the keyboard just from the feel of the keys. I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin, livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Lots more stuff coming here and on Patreon. Thanks all you subscribers. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/play-without-looking/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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