What you have to look???

What you have to look when you play the guitar?What's your left hand doing or the right one?Or both?

When I'm practising, I try always to keep my eyes closed! This helps to get more comfortable with and get some feeling into it. Only sometimes I look shortly at my left hand to verify the position.
Try once playing in a dark room without any lights. Not easy the first time :)

When you start, you need to look at both of them, to do so you need to back your head up a little, so you vision field is bigger...

After a while you don't look, you don't think, you just go out and play...

yeah lal- but its really out of preference, i have the Grateful Dead movie and several others, and Jerry looks at his fingers and fretboard a whole lot. probably because of his excessive improvisation, and because of his character.

it doesnt matter really, you just do whatever the hell you wanna do, because people dont come to see if your head is at your instrument or not,t hey come to see if you sound good and how good of a show you put on and **** like that.

just play!!!!!!!! If you gotta look at your hand then so what as long as you SOUND good and are happy whith what you are playing

now, you actually have to look when you start playing, to check out your position and everything, but as Mc alughlin put it "learn everything, then forget it" or as Philip SUDO put it "enter by form, exit from form"

But seriously, now.

Your righthand is considered the engine (presuming that you're playing the guitar the old-fashioned-right-handed-way).
When you're in a car you don't look at the engine all the time to see if it's running, so don't look at your righthand.

You don't look at your lefthand either.

The only thing you must look at is, in case of a change of position on the fretboard, the position you're about to move to. Let's say you're moving from I to XII, you look at XII before you make the move, so you can stop your hand in time when it's arrived in the right position.

So: Never look at your hands when changing positions but always at the position you're about to move to.
That way you'll always make a sure move.

Greetz
Dropje9999

I was serious...

i agree that it doesn't matter whether or not you look while playing BUT if you practice without looking (or as I also do, with the lights off) you will gain confidence and gain a better feel for the fretboard. imho of course.
-Daniel

I'm gonna disagree with you all... I do think it's important.. if you sing and play at the same time it is (something i cant do yet... but i'm working on it)..
I dont look at my picking hand often at all... I look at the fret board cos i got chubby fingers and i sometimes acedentely mute strings... but i try not to look, i mean it's dificult enough trying to sing and play at the same time... I dont wanna have to look and figure out what I'm doing...

your pickin hand will become second nature and you
will never need to look at it. the frettin hand
takes a long time and its not important to learn
to not look. some guys watch the fretboard and some
dont. i do play in the dark a lot and dont need to
look but playin without lookin brings different music.
when i look i think more. dunno if it matters to the
listener but i get different feels whether watchin the
fretboard or not.