When sight reading music sheet for piano, are u supposed to look at your hands?

if ur not supposed to, have i been practicing wrong this whole time?When sight reading music sheet for piano, are u supposed to look at your hands?
I sight read A LOT of music, because I do a lot of accompanying. The goal is to look at your hands at little as possible. And in beginning music, when you may be confined to several basic hand positions, you should never have to look at your hands. However, the piano is over 4 feet long. Realistically, there are going to be some jumps now and then that require you to look at those keys. The less you have to look at your hands, though, the faster you will be able to play the piece fluently.When sight reading music sheet for piano, are u supposed to look at your hands?
In general, if you're sightreading music on any instrument, you should be keeping your eyes on the music and NOT watching your hands.





The idea is that if you keep glancing away from the music to look at your hands it slows you down in your playing -- you're looking at the music, reading a few notes, looking at your hands as you play them, then going back to the page, finding your place, reading another chunk of notes, glancing back at your hands, etc. The constant shifting of your visual attention back and forth slows you down, IMO.





Whereas if you can just keep your attention focused on the music and allow your hands to find their way around without looking, your sight reading and playing will flow much more smoothly and effortlessly.





So yes, if you've been looking at your hands you've been practicing wrong this whole time. Sorry.
If you have to look at your hands... for ANY instrument.. then you don't know how to play that instrument very well.





How anyone can hope to play music if they have to look at the note and look at their hands, is beyond me. That would be like someone using a keyboard and have to hunt and peck for each key... they NEVER gain any speed because they have to look at their hands all the time.





Work on your technique and you should have hired a piano teacher a LONG TIME AGO... before you got all your bad habits.