Ok folks, some more things to talk about...

I've read that vision makes up most of our sensory intake. When most
players play the guitar, their eyes are focused on the left hand,
sometimes on the right, making use of vision to aid the fingers into
placing themselves on the correct strings, the correct frets, with
the correct fingerings. Then the player records himself and discovers
that he actually sounds quite different from what he perceived his
playing to sound like. Issues of the instrument's projection and
recording techniques aside, I believe much of the reason for this
discrepancy is caused by the player not being able to listen to his
own playing sufficiently due to the focus that the mind gives to the
visual sensory intake. I think anyone who knows a piece well enough
to be able to play it with his eyes closed and records the piece this
way will find that what he hears in the resulting recording is much
more closely aligned with his perception of his playing. More
importantly, it provides a more efficient feedback and control
mechanism because the mind can focus better on the auditory intake
and hence command the fingers to make better near-instantaneous
adjustments in order to achieve an interpretation of the work that is
closer to what the mind intends to accomplish.

Madeline Bruser in her book "The Art of Practicing : A Guide to
Making Music from the Heart" also advocates playing with the eyes
closed. The disadvantage of course would be the difficulty in
achieving technical accuracy in the difficult pieces which require
rapid changes in left hand positions. But having seen Rostropovich
play an entire Dvorak cello concerto (and brilliantly at that), I
suspect that by conquering such difficulties we will end up greatly
surpassing our own musical expectations of what we can achieve.

Any thoughts/comments would be much appreciated.

Regards,
hyz
www.geocities.com/hyz_sg