How many eyes does a pianist have? 12! A trick to help students trust their hands by Piano Comics

How many of your beginner piano students can’t decide where to look at as soon as they start reading scores? Here is an experiment I like to do to prove to them in 5 minutes that they can ‘see’ with their fingers.

In this video I do this trick with a 7 year old beginner learning piano for 7 months. What usualy happens and is quite natural, is that children get confused as to where to look when they have to play from scores a new piece: the piano keyboard or the scores in front of them? If you also teach one hand position to beginners you can do the following trick: prove to your students that they can ‘feel’ with which fingers to press the correct keys when only looking at the scores.

Ask them to place their hand on the hand position you want them ( either a new piece  or some bars you created in that moment ) so that they are on top of 5 consecutive keys ( I like the c,d,e,f,g for obvious reasons ) . Then put a book on top of their hand so that they cannot see it, but only feel where their fingers are touching, without still playing the 5 keys in a row. Finally, ask them to look at the scores ( they won’t have the temptation to look at their hand since you have hidden it ) and try to play one key after the other. Their only job then is to decode the musical ‘painting’ of what they see: do the keys go up or down? Do they climb or go down consecutively or jump? And see for yourself just as in the video, if you pay close attention, ( wherever the fingers of the students can be seen on camera…) how their think of what to play is seen by how and which finger they move before they touch that key. In those miliseconds you can actually understand how the student thinks of reading the scores. 

All students are pleasanlty stunned when they realise in real time that they don’t always have to look at their hand to play the keys. It’s as if they placed little eyes on top of each 10 fingers making their vision stronger by + 10 eyes! So they have total 12 eyes.

Hope you try this trick and it helps young piano beginners with their confidense when reading scores and playing.