My band director told me today that I can play mallet percussion in the pit next year. He let me borrow a marching xylophone for over the summer. How can I play without the advantage of looking at the keyboard? I have experience with playing scales, but I play them with one hand and touch the keys with the other. Do you think that I will survive in a full ensemble situation? What is the best way I should practice?

just preactice ur scales, look for rythms and other stuff in like college/DCI auditions and take them half time and learn that way, thats how im doing it

Yes, you should do fine on mallets. You're really not supposed to look at the keys anyway while you play, so you have an advantage over all of us sighted people.

You need to get some muscle memory for the keyboard, just as you had done for tympani. Feel for where middle C is and tap until you hear the next note. As you learn the distances, try going from middle C to E. Keep working on that until you are comfortable. Then try C to F. Make sure you do it for both hands as well. Keep doing this for each of the different keys, sharps and flat keys included, and your muscles will learn how to get from one note to the other.

Now, as far as practicing once you have some muscle memory: Yes, practice scales and practice them with intervals using both hands(thirds, fourths, fifths, etc.) Use the sound of the instrument to tell you what notes you are on.

What you will need to do is that when you are getting ready to play, you should set yourself up in the same stance and position each time; x inches away from the instrument and in front of the same key (middle C as an example.) As you practice the scales and intervals more and more, and become more familiar with the instrument, you will know exactly how far you will have to shift your body to hit the proper notes.

It's the same thing as when you walk around your house: everything is always in the same place, so I'm sure you have gotten used to how many steps and in what direction you need to take in order to get from your bedroom to the bathroom or the kitchen. As long as you set yourself up properly, otherwise known as getting your frame of reference, you should do fine.

oh, my bad, i forgot u were blind. sorry. in that case, ignore my advice, lol. ima take it tho, heh. *borrows his advice till someone else needs it*

Muscle memory takes a long long long time to build up... While you're learning the part you'll be spending most of your time finding notes on the keyboard. With each peace, once you learn it you should be able to play it without looking at the keyboard unless it has something weird... like a 10th or somthing. After you've been playing for about half a year you should be able to sight read stuff and not need to look at the keyboard.

Now as far as how you set yourself up every time. Play scales, arpegios and stuff till you find a comfortable spot for you to play at (keeping the right technique... Yes some people's comfortable spots don't let them use the right technique) then measure it and find out exactly where you are. After that for a while make absolute sure you're in the same spot. Eventually if you're just off by a little bit you'll be able to feel it, or hear it in the case of playing and hitting wrong notes. Once you get to that point you don't have to spend much time getting the right place because you can feel if you're uncomfortable and you'll just move to the right spot during the begining of performance so that when you start moving around you'll move the right amounts everywhere.

make sure that you practice diffrent kinds of scales and arpegios especially the harmonic and melodic minors, those kill a lot of people when they have to play it for the first time. Also the broken arpegios and broken scales are usefull, or at least in our case (half our music was diffrent forms of the arpegio combined with partial scales).

But good luck with your keyboard work. =)