I have to admit it. I'm not a patient person. Despite my best intentions, I'm always speeding up a piece before I can really play it. Not to mention running the whole thing instead of just practicing the difficult bits. I know this is not the way to do it, and indeed for the last few pieces I've made a definite attempt to get more focused, stop, and slowly concentrate on the bits that are eluding me. I'm still only partially successful though. I practice it slowly until I get it, then speed it up and sometimes it works at tempo, sometimes it doesn't. Last week my guitar teacher pointed out a part I had practiced slowly but it was still hit or miss on the play-through. He gave me the instruction to practice it slowly and NOT to speed it up for the whole week. Well, a whole week is a long time (!) but I did manage not to speed it up for several days, and lo and behold, I can now play it quite reliably. So this was something of a revelation - (Duh, you might say). I actually needed to continue to play it slowly for many more repetitions before speeding it up. Hmmmm. So maybe that's why my slow practice isn't working so well. So to test this theory I'm going to go back to some of the problem parts in Maria Luisa by Sagreras (as evidenced in the video - there are quite a few of those!) and run them slowly until they are thoroughly ingrained... and when I can finally play the notes reliably I will be able to start adding the dynamic variations - I know, experts say they should be there at the beginning, but I'm still at a stage where one thing at a time works best.
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Yes! I could have written this, having exactly the same issue with rushing in to play a piece faster than I can manage. You would think it would be an easy thing to learn to take things slowly, but it goes against everything else I have learned in life. Completely counter intuitive. I am so over coming unstuck in front of my guitar teacher when I could play a piece perfectly to myself that I am slowly beginning to do what you are doing. Not without frequent rebellions though! ��
ReplyDeleteGlad to see I'm not the only one who can't follow their own best intentions! You notice the metronome? The ONLY way I can control my speed, even when I'm determined to practice slowly it just creeps up.... Though I did find out with the renaissance piece that counting out loud has roughly the same effect and tends to carryover better to NOT counting out loud compared to switching off the metronome.
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