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

BartK I feel like many people are too obsessed with speed

Not me 😃 In fact I have been overly relaxed with speed... almost too relaxed to be honest. But it so happens that I decided that my current piece, which is supposed to be a faster piece, I should be able to play, well, a little faster, lol. So I thought I'd share the way I have been going about it... especially since coincidentally the discussion was happening in this forum!

My strategy is to play it slightly faster each day (but still well within my ability) while continuing to play it slower every now and then to ensure I still feel calm and serene with it and enjoy the process.

What I find fascinating is that whenever I play it at a slower speed than I am able to, I can actually correct mistakes BEFORE they happen. My finger moves towards the wrong key, my brain notices it, and corrects it STILL ON TIME so it doesn't break the rhythm. Win win!

    The last piece I played the tempo is just over 60 BPM. What's the fastest tempo possible? I'd start from the fastest speed I can execute consecutive notes and work my way back starting from the shortest notes. Suppose the fastest notes I can play is at 200 BPM and a piece has 16th as the shortest notes. If I play at the top speed, 16th notes would be at 200, 8th would be 100, quarter would be at 50. A metronome set to 50 for each beat is the fastest I can go.
    If a piece has 32nd notes as the shortest, my tempo would drop to 25 BPM for each beat to accommodate the fastest notes.

    Obvious keeping your hands low on the keys and using efficient fingerings help. By the time we start tackling fast notes, the accuracy would probably go down significantly so always aware of the speed limit your hands can go.

    Hi

    I'll mention one recent example where I used multiple different ways to improve part of a piece. This relates to the 3rd page of Scott Joplin's The Cascades, which has a lot of running octaves in the LH and RH, and many other difficult bits. I'm learning it for ABRSM grade 8.

    I had been struggling with this page for a while, so about a month ago I sat down to practice it and I spent 20 to 30 mins playing the same page over and over, hands together and separately at different speeds (slower, normal, faster), the whole page in one play, in multiple sections, switching hands between sections - i.e. starting RH for 4 bars, then LH for 4 bars - and all of these options at different speeds.

    After doing this, when I went back to playing it normally, it did seem to have improved. This was confirmed when my Teacher commented on how improved that page was at my next lesson. I hadn't told her what I'd done btw.

    If I'm honest I think the piece is (or was) probably a little above my skill level. The bottom line is a lot of practise and practise in a lot of different ways.

    No guarantee this will work for anyone else of course, and I've no doubt others have suggested similar ideas. I haven't read the whole thread.

    Cheers

    Simon
    All round average Jazz, Blues & Rock player.
    Currently working towards ABRSM grade 8.

    Pallas 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?

    I spent a long time doing the "slowly, gradually faster" route, and hit a speedwall. A few years ago I discovered the concept of "short bursts". I got it in piano and then my favourite on-line violin teacher demonstrated the same concept by chance. The piece I worked on was the Burgmuller Sylphs. The first time I tried to sight read it rather slowly my hand cramped. I used the hand motions demonstrated by Zhdanov to get out of old habits, and did "bursts". Since I record things a lot I should find examples. Here are a series of "bursts" - this was "fast" for me then, esp. for an uncramped hand.

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c0h6r2jmg6zqh6hd99enp/21.11-26a-S-approach-pt2.mp3?rlkey=lwa2sx32n3tvqfbh3myrddrma&st=14h2rz7y&dl=0

    This one is called "future speed" and I allowed it to be sloppy if it had to be, played slower afterward (an idea discussed here)
    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u6z39wj0x9g8zbpm88eo1/21.11.04b-S-future-speed.mp3?rlkey=0l4rw3ypw8lxd34ypjayyt6q2&st=33rzd0kt&dl=0

    The next year there as a part of the Rach C#m prelude and it's fast part - using the "burst" idea I'd learned.

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bh9nrems73jeyjp9q33ly/22.07.15b-R-approach2.mp3?rlkey=q131vr9jfgzp0h71ybds1f0tg&st=c7kbkljs&dl=0

    Here it is when it came together later. But it started as "bursts". I fell in love with bursts and the speedwall was burst with it. It was not practised as a whole heard here, but in small bursts.

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/attprlhvceixk817kh6j8/sample.mp3?rlkey=2ftr92w1jvqzi0fpor06vxvay&st=i2hz3y1r&dl=0

        I found the old video that I ran into while exploring the idea of "bursts". My apologies that it's violin. 😃 In the first part he talks about the usual "slow practice - gradually speed up" approach which has its merits but also limitations. He then goes into something like "bursts" - two notes super-fast almost as though a single note: then three; then four = note groupings. Then working with those note groupings. I watched this at the time of working on Sylphs and it seemed a variant of bursts.

        I've been having more success lately by alternating lots of HS practice fast (within the boundary of accuracy) and HT practice much more slowly. The former pushes my muscles to move faster; the latter gets the piece in my brain solidly so I don't have to think about it as much when I get to playing faster. After a while, I do HT as fast as I can play accurately and no faster. Then repeating that, generally finding when I get back to HT fast again, I can go significantly faster than I could before.

        What doesn't work for me is the whole "set the metronome slow and speed it up a little at a time" thing that I often read. That might work a bit within smaller tempo ranges, but I can't get from really slow to really fast that way. It's more like a work on it until I find there's a more sudden leap ahead in tempo. After enough leaps, hopefully I'm at tempo.

        Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.

        I try to play it clean and relaxed as much as possible and then bring up the tempo. The body automatically tends to tense up when playing fast and you have to prevent that from happening somehow. Short bursts can be effective to achieve this. Stop before your body starts to tense up, work in small chunks up to tempo.

        To simplify, the approach I choose depends on which of the three categories the technical difficulty falls into:

        1. I can play up to tempo fine but it's a little rough around the edges
        2. I can play up to tempo, but barely, with poor technique and really sloppily
        3. I can't play up to tempo at all

        In the first case, I would practice mostly slow to ingrain the correct movements knowing that it will naturally come up to tempo later on.

        In the second case, I would alternate between short bursts at tempo with good technique as much as possible, and slow practice, maybe even dotted rhythms

        In the third case, I would assume that there is something I fundamentally do not know about the technique that needs to be executed, and try to get it to at least the second stage so I have some idea of what it might actually feel like to play it at tempo.

        TC3, you gave me some new things to think about. Thank you

        keystring

        That is what I've been saying; to get speed you have to practice speed. If you concentrate on accuracy while trying to play faster, you will get accuracy, not speed.

            The main thing is to get the muscle memory on the hand positions for different notes. Play faster gradually. If you start to make more mistakes or hesitate, you may want to try other fingerings to get a smoother run. Also check for hands relaxation. If you muscles start to tense up, it's harder to play fast.

            Player1 That is what I've been saying; to get speed you have to practice speed. If you concentrate on accuracy while trying to play faster, you will get accuracy, not speed.

            In part. Did you listen to my samples? When I started with Sylphs, my hand cramped. I learned a different motion, and made certain to use that motion for each short burst. That was accurate, and the notes were correct. But I could only do it that way in 4-note bursts, which you hear. Eventually it become 2 sets (8 notes), then more sets.

            Did you watch the violin one, where he clumps two notes - even smaller than my 4? The notes have accurate intonation.

            I have sometimes done "inaccurate" - for example, when getting a sweep of the hand and arm, because I want to set up a broad motion since I've been so physically restricted. That broad motion is in fact "accurate" though the notes can be nonsensical, as they are not the goal.

            See Woroniki at the time-stamped start.

              As my 8-year-old boy likes to say jokingly, "work hard, not smart". 😂
              No, seriously, grouping is my way to go. But not too small groups (i.e., not that dotted grouping by two notes that some students practice) because that would take forever and is antimusical and tedious.