V.com weekend vote: What is your visual focus, when you are playing from memory?
Where do you direct your eyes, when you are playing from memory?
There are certainly useful ways to employ the eyes when playing, when they are not needed for looking at sheet music.
I often want my students to keep an eye on their bow placement, their lefthand finger placement, etc. when they are playing. For myself, I'm pretty sure that I under-utilize my eyes, when it comes to playing. I've always been extremely aural and tactile about it -- how does it sound? How does it feel?
Yet the eyes can greatly help in analyzing how your left hand is working, whether your bow is straight. They can help you do things like more accurately find one of those high-on-the-fingerboard notes that you have to pick out of the sky. Yet I am much likely to stare at the side of my fiddle or at the floor, not really thinking about what I'm seeing, when I'm playing.
There are also other options for visual focus: if you are playing with someone else, your eyes may be focused on your collaborators. Or, maybe you simply stare at a portion of the floor, or maybe you play with your eyes closed.
How about you? What is your visual focus while playing from memory?
Thank you to Sander Marcus for today's vote idea! If you have an idea for our Weekend Vote, please e-mail Laurie!
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Replies
I tend to do the same as Ron, although I sometimes close my eyes too.
I don't play from memory, but when I try I look at my left hand
When I play from memory, I really don't look at anything, but my eyes are open, I kind of look past what ever is in my line of sight and am in my own head thinking about what I'm playing.
"Fingers or bow" comes nearest for me, although I don't really fixate on either of these. I also tend to shut my eyes involuntarily during moments of intense concentration. I'm concentrating mostly on intonation, tone production, and phrasing.
In the Alabama tornado outbreak of April 2011, my area, although unscathed, had a 4-day blackout after one twister took out the feed from Browns Ferry Power Plant. It was already warm enough to play in the garage by then, and I played each evening session there in near-total darkness, relying on a combination of memory, pitch sense, muscle memory, and bow distribution. These were good, productive sessions. It's remarkable what you can do without seeing much of your surroundings, when you have to do so.
Trying to focus more on bow position relative to bridge so when I remember, thats where I look. Also trying to improve position of left hand fingers to give better intonation, also…….
Being a retired Suzuki teacher, most of my memorized performing was leading my students in group performances, so I would look at them...to encourage them or help them to relax and conduct dynamics or phrasing. I find that my eyes don't keep up with my fingers in fast passages and the bow focal point doesn't work with my vision issues!
When playing from memory, I do occasionally look very briefly at the fingers of my left hand, and sometimes at my bow for a couple of seconds, but most of the time my eyes are open rather passively without focusing on anything at all, because my ears and my brain are extremely actively involved using almost all of my energy available while performing.
I voted eyes closed for when I'm improvising a solo, but do try to look at the other musicians too. If I feel the need to look at the audience, I focus above the back row. So easy to get distracted otherwise. When playing backup, however, I glance all around, checking out whatever is happening.
One teacher told me to look at the point of contact of the bow hair to the string, and Not look at the left hand fingers. The only time I spent appreciable time playing from memory was as a mariachi violinist. No paper scores, not even in rehearsal. I would occasionally look at the other musicians for visual rhythm control;--no conductor. For improvising background parts I would watch the left hand chords of the guitarist. But most of the time I did not have a visual focus at all. The eyes were pointed at the audience, but that does not mean I was Looking at them.
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December 28, 2024 at 10:09 PM · I dont look at anything with my eyes really, I look inside my mind thinking of the sound of the tune I am playing.