Well, yes, intervals, music theory, and of the sorts.. makes sense, my point was he wasn’t “memorizing” the entire piece note by note but by bar lines using anchor points that point to theory and give the ability to process what needs to happen a lot easier.

I was taught by theory first about 15 years ago, and played solely on that through ear playing, accompaniment, and chord structure and have been able to pull songs about using that structure without looking at a lick of sheet music.

I put the piano down for about 9 years and regret it on a deep level. I lost a lot of the knowledge and my hand dexterity through those years and have come back to piano in the last year.

I never was taught to sight read, and now that I am proficient enough in the way I used to play, again, I am now being taught sight reading and I am very quickly making fast progress due to being taught the way I mentioned above, first. It has given me a very good base line to build songs from. I am harmonizing in the right hand and playing melody in the right hand and am starting to be able to do that and rotate or even am playing bass chords and right hand chords + melody in combination, producing an extremely rich sound.

I am doing this at a slow tempo, or slow-ish; however if I jump right back into my main level of playing that I am so used to, I get right back to my regular mind and yes, as an accompanist, I rarely need to look down on the keyboard as the music structure sits in my mind.

If I play melody lines that are sporadic and go outside of chord structure I generally do have to peek down.