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A Few Tips For Getting Up To Speed With Fast Pieces

You Don't Need To Break The Keys To Get Up To Speed...

Yesterday, I touched on the topic of practicing by breaking down difficult passages into small segments. When you break it down this way, you can maximize practice time and bring your playing up to speed in practically no time.

But how should you know exactly what speed to start at and progress toward? Like everything else, it will depend on your own personal skill and the piece itself, but here are some general guidelines and things to keep in mind in regards to velocity and choice of practice speed.

In general, we want to be able to play up to speed as quickly as possible. However, playing so fast that you begin to feel stressed and make mistakes will not help improve your technique. Additionally, forcing your fingers to play the same way at a fast speed will not help increase your speed.

Your technique will improve the most quickly and effectively when you play at a speed at which you can play accurately. This is especially true when you practice hands separately. When you practice the left hand and the right hand separately, you have more control, and therefore you can get away with playing much faster than you could if you were playing with hands together. Since the main goal of practicing hands separately is to gain speed, the need to quickly get up to speed and to practice at a speed which is optimized for improvements in technique become contradicting.

So, how do we fix this? The solution is to constantly change the speed at which you practice without staying at any one speed for too long.

But what happens when you reach block? A difficult passage? When you come across a difficult part that requires skills that you don’t already have, the best alternative is to bring it up in stages. You can use speeds that are too fast as exploratory excursions to figure out what needs to change in order to for you to accurately play at such a speed. Then, you can try slowing down and practicing those new motions. Keep in mind that if you lack the technique required, you need to go back to shortening the passages to extremely small segments, as explained in yesterday’s blog post.

To vary your speed, you first need to get to a manageable “maximum speed” at which you can play the piece accurately. After you’ve reached this, try to go faster and take a mental note of how your playing needs to be changed or adapted (at this point, don’t worry if you are not playing completely accurately). Next, use these newly discovered motions and play at the previous “maximum speed.” You should discover that it’s easier to play now. You can continue to practice at this speed for a while, and then try to slow down to ensure that you are playing completely relaxed.

You can then repeat this entire procedure. It will help you drive up your speed in manageable jumps so you can work on each skill separately. Generally, you should be able to play a new piece, at least in small segments, hands separately, at the desired speed during the first sitting. This may seem unattainable at first, but you’ll be surprised that you can reach this goal relatively quickly.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Using a metronome can also help with building up speed, but make sure not to overuse it. Metronomes should never be practiced with for more than a few minutes at a time, because your brain will become confused and you will begin to have trouble keeping up with the beat of the metronome. For more information on metronomes, read one of my previous blog posts here: Five Tips For Acquiring Accurate Tempo

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Tags: Hands Separate, Hands Together, Metronome, Speed, Technique