I was this kid, and I think I know exactly what's happening. He's playing the piano as if it were Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, as a game where the goal is to hit the right keys at the right time. Somehow you have to communicate the idea that the goal is to produce something that's enjoyable to listen to.

Playing with eyes closed is something that I've never tried, but my guess is that it's forcing him to listen and that's why it works. (I need to try it myself!) What worked for me when I was a bit older is my teacher making me get a little handheld recorder (cheap ones were surprisingly good back then, and I'm sure the tech has improved). Try having him record the song and listen to the recording, and ask what he thinks. In particular, does it sound musical? Why or why not? My guess is that it'll reveal details he wasn't able to focus on while playing, and it will motivate him to fix them.

This resonates with me. One of the best advice from my organ teacher was to „stop playing the notes and start really listening to yourself.“

Closing my eyes really helped with removing all stimuli that distracted me from actually doing that and it made all the difference.

As a competitive partner dancer, I too will close my eyes sometimes to shut out distractions and focus on the movement more. This is especially useful while practicing but I also sometimes do it during social dancing (provided there is enough room and I won't be putting my partner at risk by crashing into other people or being crashed into).

Feel the damn music :/

Having started playing music again after a 10 year hiatus, I recently came to the same realization about my younger self's approach to musicianship. Hitting the right notes is table stakes. But going beyond that requires developing the ability to listen to yourself critically, recognize the difference in sound between talented musicians and yourself, caring to fix the difference, and taking steps to do so.

This reminds me of the piano teacher (danthecomposer) I am following on youtube: he calls his approach a "philosophical approach" to learning the piano and to me it seems quite influenced by daoism or zen.

he puts heavy emphasis on practicing with your eyes closed from the beginning. this becomes possible through visualizing scales and chords from the beginning.

other aspects are: getting your ego out of the way, trusting in you inherent musicality and allowing you creative source to steer your fingers to express your emotions and avoiding conscious interference. there is also a lot of simple improvisation inside a chord from the beginning.

i cant speak for the long term success of his technique, but i like the approach and it makes sense to me with respect to other skills i have aquired before.

his youtube channel is a bit hard to navigate but this playlist is a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQxJJ7AgS7k&list=PL4cPpP-Ua6...

he also has a blog: http://piano-jazz.blogspot.com/p/water-pianism.html

After about 9 years learning piano as a kid I had one year of tuition from a concert pianist when I went to University.

He was an excellent teacher - one of the things he majored on was ‘blind’ familiarity with the keyboard. He would get you to close your eyes, then ask you to pick out, for example, all the Cs on the keyboard going up the octaves. Made a huge difference to my confidence in positioning my hands at speed…

This sound amazing, is there any teaching material I can buy to start with it on my own?

To be honest a lot of the guidance was verbal. The only book we used was called ‘Help Yourself to Sight Reading a Practical Tutor for Pianists’ by Daphne Sandercock. The writing style was quite severe and had phrases like ‘a fault common to weaker pupils at this stage…’

The feedback process of listening to the music you’ve created is almost as important as the score itself, which to me feels like a guide. Sure you can play the right notes in the right order, but smaller tempo and pressure adjustments are made by feeling the music. My girlfriend played piano for years and hated it, she can play almost anything, but it sounds horrible because she isn’t listening to and interpreting what she plays. That is where the joy of piano is for me.

I use a "Temporal distancing" method for feedback of audio / visual recordings of my performances.

I record and watch or listen after many days. I have recordings of some of my performances from years ago which felt really terrible on the day of the performance but felt ok many years later.

Music is another way of storytelling. It does have lot of conventions, yet it still needs to have an ability to lead and tell.

Each piece could be seen as many stories and as performer you can choose your story, then try to tell it. Classical pieces obviously have a canonical version which is what most audience would expect. Still, when learning such piece the story still needs to be there, not just as a sequence of prescribed pianos, fortes, and ritenuntos, but as a moving flow to capture interest and convey some relatable image.

I guess the classical training also can equip performers with such imagery. I have grateful memories of teachers that tried to project a story into our kid-minds before delving into technical aspects of learning a new piece. Very inspiring times.