Slow Practice: The Fastest Way to Learn New Music
I used to despise slow practicing. I thought it was boring.
Up until I realized how much time I wasted because I didn’t practice slowly.
I tend to be impatient, so whenever I tried to practice slowly, I just wanted to move on at a faster tempo, to “get it over with”.
One day a teacher of mine told me something very strange. She said that the method of slow practicing was made precisely for impatient people. How did that make sense?
Because if you were impatient to get to the final result, slow practice was (ironically) the fastest way to get there.
For every five minutes you spend running through a passage like a stampede schoolchildren scrambling to grab the last slice of chocolate cake in the school cafeteria, you could achieve better results with one minute of slow, laser-focused practice. And I promise that is not an exaggeration.
However, when you are practicing slowly, you have to make sure you are reinforcing good habits, not bad ones.
So, how slow should you go?
That depends first on the piece you are working on, and second on your level of expertise at playing your instrument.
You should pick a tempo where you can play the passage perfectly. This means intonation, rhythm, sound…etc. Especially intonation.
It helps to separate the music into small chunks with similar material, so that you do not have to waste time playing an “easier” chunk at a slower tempo than necessary.
Now, often this tempo is much, much, slower than the original tempo. I am talking 16th note = 90 bpm type of slow.
So lets say you can play a passage of 16th note arpeggios at 16th note =90 bpm, perfectly. Now you can start bringing up the tempo, little by little.
The important thing to remember, and what many people neglect, is to always play perfectly at whatever tempo you are at.
If you can play a passage perfectly at 16th note = 90 bpm, it does not mean you can play it perfectly a few notches higher. Sometimes even a slight increase of tempo can cause you to mess up. Always be on guard for slight mistakes, and correct these blips immediately.
If you bring up the tempo and find yourself unable to play it perfectly at that tempo, bring it back a notch and solidify the lower tempo, then bring it up again. Often this solves the problem.
Now let’s say you reached 16th note = 180 bpm. You can now half the time, by switching to 8th note = 90 bpm (twice as fast as how you started). And when you reach 8th note = 180, you can halve that too.
This is where you might start to hit a roadblock.
You reach a new tempo and everything suddenly seems difficult. The music is going by too fast for you to keep track of, intonation mistakes begin appearing everywhere, you feel as if you are contorting your fingers in all sorts of ways, and it all seems too overwhelming.
This is when you start changing up your strategy.
Strategy: Consolidate Your Commands.
When you play your instrument, your brain executes commands, which tell your fingers how to act. Here is an example of a command made up of simple actions.
Push third finger down on A string, vibrate finger, and pull bow across the string, all at the same time. (for violinists)
Or for French horn players, press down a key, shape the embouchure according to pitch, blow into instrument.
Now, if you were just starting out on your instrument, those tasks would take a lot of mental energy and time to complete. However, if you have been training for years, your brain has already issued thousands of those commands or similar commands. The more you repeat an action, the easier it gets.
Sometimes, however, when you are working up to tempo, you increase the tempo faster than you ingrain the actions into your fingers. This is when things start to get overwhelming.
Each group of actions must become effortless. When you practice slowly, your brain is telling you to perform 1–2 actions at a time because you are learning the notes for the first time.
However, your brain can only issue so many commands at a time. Which means that your brain has to group different commands together to form a larger command. What does this mean?
Say you can play the first half of a measure of a passage easily and effortlessly. You have ingrained it into your muscle memory. Your brain can send your fingers a command to execute that half bar. Let’s call it command A.
You can also play the second half of the measure effortlessly. Let’s call the second half command B.
Now in order to play command A followed by command B at a faster tempo, you must consolidate the two commands. Try repeating command A and command B over and over again until the two become subconsciously linked together. Now, your brain only has to execute one command for you to play the whole bar! It is entirely possible to consolidate commands until the whole passage becomes one command.
If you can reach that level, you will be able to execute the passage up to tempo confidently and effortlessly!
This dog looks confident in his effortless jumping skills! He seems pretty happy, too!
Want to learn more on how to make your practice sessions as productive as possible? Check this out → 6 Simple Tips on How to Practice Effectively
