See What a Professional Musician Looks at While Playing Piano

Between reading sheet music and making melodies with both hands, playing the piano is multitasking at its most melodious. That said, this complicated balancing act appears to grow easier with experience.

In the video, produced by YouTube channel Function, professional pianist Daniel Beliavsky and student Charlotte Bennett perform while wearing special eye-tracking glasses that monitor their eye movements. It might surprise you to see that Bennett and Beliavsky often aren’t looking directly at their hands, but instead anticipating where to move them next. And when Beliavsky reads sheet music, he keeps both the keyboard and the sheet music in his peripheral vision, instead glancing back and forth between the two.

Watch the two pianists in action.

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