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  • Your Strategies for Bringing A Piece Within Your Skill Level to Tempo

I've been reading Learn Faster, Play Better by Dr. Molly Gebrian, which is based on neuroscience studies, and I was inspired by conversation in a different thread to start this one, because I like the subject and I am interested in more ideas.

For clarity, I believe that people are different, their goals are different, that this is both expected and ok, and that individuals should do whatever they want. I personally enjoy conducting experiments on my practice and figuring out what works best for me, so I love looking at my options.

If you're interested in sharing your experiences, please consider also sharing the context of what you're playing. Short beginner pieces like mine? Ragtime? Rachmaninov? Liszt?

What have you tried doing to bring a fast piece up to tempo that didn't work for you?

What have you tried doing to bring a fast piece up to tempo that DID work for you?

    Working on a fast piece (well, at least for beginner) now. One thing I noticed is multiple run-throughs at fast tempo can get me tired very quickly. I remember a suggestion (by YT channel The Independent Pianist) to alternate between faster tempo and slow tempo during practice. The faster run is done at a tempo that just slightly push oneself, and the slow run is done to re-check everything (rhythm, articulation, dynamics, pedal) is still done correctly.

      Pallas What have you tried doing to bring a fast piece up to tempo that DID work for you?

      This is decades ago, but when I was learning to do fast multi-octave runs, Hanon was the only thing that let me keep my tempo up and fingers even. (Now I can't do Hanon, and I can't do runs evenly. Yay.)

      Now I've restricted myself to beginner pieces, and I recently realized that I would stumble when I was trying to increase the tempo at times where I wasn't emotionally feeling the faster tempo. If I was exhausted, down, and/or just felt that the piece shouldn't be faster, musically speaking, then it just wasn't happening. I think my brain was saying, "No, no, this is wrong", and so my fingers would falter. Now I wait till I'm in a good state (or caffeinated and sugared, which I try to avoid), and only then do I try to bring up the tempo. Once I've played something once at the tempo I want, the way I want it (with the right feeling), then it's not an issue later on if I'm wiped. I think it's that initial learning stage that's so sensitive to my mood and sleep status.

      iternabe alternate between faster tempo and slow tempo during practice

      This reminds me of my piano teacher - she would occasionally encourage me to push my speed a little beyond what I was capable of playing, but only briefly. So, she'd tap her hand on me just a little too fast, I'd get through a section but in an ugly way, and she'd either decide that was enough, or have me take one more go at it. But it was never more than twice in a row no matter how much better the second time went (plus she wouldn't attempt it again for the rest of the lesson), and I always had to finish up with one slower clean run.

      A few years later, for college track, our coach would sometimes (not frequently) use a really long elastic rope to tie me to someone who was much faster. The faster person would start out, gradually increase their speed, and then our coach would tell them when to really let loose, while watching me to see when they were towing me at the right speed (a little faster than I could manage on my own, but not so fast that I'd trip). Supposedly this was to train my brain to learn to increase my turnover rate. Once I trusted that I wouldn't go splat on the track, it was pretty fun, so long as I didn't have to do it too much. Not sure how effective it was, though - a runner I am not.

      Pallas What have you tried doing to bring a fast piece up to tempo that didn't work for you?

      Practising the piece at a tempo that was too fast for me. 😅

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        Animisha Practising the piece at a tempo that was too fast for me. 😅

        Hands up all those who've never done that!

        What works for me is first playing only a short passage at a fast tempo, then stopping to review it. If all was well: tempo kept steady, not tensing up, phrasing, dynamics, the lot, than I may try it again just a tiny bit faster. When I push the tempo, the thing I look out for is extra tension. If it feels just as comfortable when I play it faster as it felt before, I know I'm on the right track. If not I need to slow it down again to find out what's going wrong.

        When I start stringing the short passages together, I always need to be on the lookout for buildup of unnecessary tension.

        I need to be very familiar with the piece so that it's almost second nature, and then I can slowly speed it up.

        Pallas

        • Playing small groups fast, then chaining them
        • Trying a dozen different technical adjustments (looking ideas up online as well) until you find something that works at tempo
        • Spending an hour of lesson time trying out the above with a teacher
        • Video recording and mirrors to observe yourself to notice points of tension
        • Telling yourself not to play with tension, playing piano/pianissimo, playing short bursts so you don't tense up with time, allowing yourself mistakes so you don't tense up anticipating mistakes
        • Clicking up with a metronome, ideally once you know your technique should work at tempo
        • Trying to play faster than the intended tempo: this can suss out inefficiencies and it can become "easier" at tempo if done right.
        • Playing the offending passage hands separate

        Pallas I'm not an accomplished pianist, but I'll offer up what I think. OK?
        I think our technical threshold is what gives us a "speed limit", so to speak. By that, I mean, we can't play any faster than we've developed, technically speaking. If we play scales, accurately, at 70bpm, but start to hit wrong notes at 80bpm, that's going to be our speed limit until we develop our finger skills, technique. But, since scales are not as complex as some melodies, our scale "speed limit" may be optimistic for a more difficult piece. Granted, it is possible, even common, perhaps, for a player to learn a song, or piece, well enough to play it fast. But that may not translate to the next song.

        Personally, I can play some blues based things on the piano faster than I can play scales, only because I've become familiar with those licks. Generally, I play ballads, maybe a few swing-tempo tunes, so speed isn't much of an issue for me. If I wanted to learn to play fast, I'd find a "live, sitting right next to me type" teacher who would tell me how to fine tune my fingering technique.

          Followup question: if the overall tempo of a piece is limited by the fastest (few) measures, should those measures be worked on first and most when raising speed?

            iternabe if the overall tempo of a piece is limited by the fastest (few) measures, should those measures be worked on first and most when raising speed?

            Of course!

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            Pallas

            You haven't been playing for very long. From my own beginnings, I've found that I inevitably hit a speed barrier. I can manage a piece quite well at a slower pace, but as I gradually increase the tempo, I reach a point where I cannot go any faster. Trying to push beyond this limit, I start making mistakes and lose a lot of the musicality. When this happens, I have to significantly reduce the tempo to correctly play the piece again.
            What I've learned to do in these situations is to accept my final tempo, at least for the time being, and move on to the next piece.

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            ... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...

              PS I see now that PianoMonk gave quite a similar response, in a different way though. 🙂

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              ... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...

              Animisha You haven't been playing for very long.

              That's true! How is it pertinent to my question? I'm a little confused. My question couldn't have been more general, I think.

                Pallas Animisha You haven't been playing for very long.

                That's true! How is it pertinent to my question? I'm a little confused. My question couldn't have been more general, I think.

                I simply think that playing a piece correctly, musically, and quickly takes quite a lot of time and practice. And of those three, the first two are the most important to focus on as a beginner. A high tempo requires lots of movements to be automated, and automation happens by itself, if you practise dilligently. Which you do!

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                  Animisha Ok, cool! Those things are important, for sure. I agree with the priorities. In the thread where this post originated, the advice was to prioritize speed over accuracy, and I was wanting other opinions, because I disagreed.

                  And also, I'm a beginner working on pieces for a teacher, and we polish them before moving on, which means getting the piece to the marked tempo. So even at my level, I'm working to get my pieces to tempo.

                  This reminds me of a diagram I found on a YouTube video, so I'm going to start yet another conversation!

                    iternabe alternate between faster tempo and slow tempo during practice

                    This is exactly how I do it - I don't follow all these Youtube channels because I just do as I think I should do, but that's what I do naturally 😃 I never practice it faster than my brain or fingers can handle though, because this is what happens in my case:

                    iternabe Working on a fast piece (well, at least for beginner) now. One thing I noticed is multiple run-throughs at fast tempo can get me tired very quickly. I remember a suggestion (by YT channel The Independent Pianist) to alternate between faster tempo and slow tempo during practice. The faster run is done at a tempo that just slightly push oneself, and the slow run is done to re-check everything (rhythm, articulation, dynamics, pedal) is still done correctly.

                    I've kept that video on my YouTube play list for fast tempo advice (the title has to do with metronome). For a long time, his method was my "go-to" method for increasing tempo, although towards the upper end of his chart the tempo would increase too much for me and I'd go back to 5 bpm at a time.

                    My new favorite method for increasing tempo is Dr. Molly Gebrian's interleaved clicking up.

                    I thought I wouldn't reply to this thread because I feel like many people are too obsessed with speed when it's usually not what they should be focusing on, but when I saw this I had to react:

                    Pallas In the thread where this post originated, the advice was to prioritize speed over accuracy, and I was wanting other opinions, because I disagreed.

                    You should never sacrifice accuracy for the sake of speed. Speed comes from control. Greater control means greater speed. You do not increase your max speed by practicing speed but by being able to fully control your movements and gradually compressing the time it takes to execute them. Your max speed gets better very gradually over time and there isn't any point in trying to force it.

                    Here is an anecdote which I told several times on the othe forum about my scale speed. I used to practice scales every day for several years (I stopped now because I'm prioritizing other things). Over those years I almost never practiced for speed. When I did speed runs it was only to check myself to see how fast I could go. All of my normal scale practice was slow and in total control. Guess what happened? Each year my max speed went up. This continued to this day and what once felt like "there is no way my fingers can ever move that fast" now feels like "this is so slow I'm falling asleep". Every "impossible" wall I faced eventually vanished without me ever having to force a higher speed than I was capable of.

                    It's fine to use the metronome to click up to the quickest tempo you can reasonably achieve but don't fret about it if you hit a wall. Practice your scales and arpeggios diligently and you will get faster over time. I promise. 🙂