At my lesson last night, I ran through a short recital program I'm putting together for the holidays. The slow pieces were almost ready, but the fast pieces were the ones needing the most work.

Can anyone offer any tips on how I should be practicing these fast pieces and getting them up to tempo?

Super-slow practice with a metronome. Do that a few days in a row and then try playing up to tempo and see how it is. This usually gets the best results for me.

Slow practice
Break the piece into very small chunks that you can play together
More slow practice
Combine your chunks together
Even more slow practice
Hands separate practice aiming for above tempo
Yet more slow practice
Rhythms - short long and long short or more complex ones
Even sower practice
Try playing at tempo
Did I mention you weren't practicing slowly enough

Rich

^ +1

I find it helpful to occasionally attempt to play it at tempo. It lets me know really fast what I still have to work on; it also lets me know whether I can hear the piece at tempo; and, it helps me not get in the habit of only knowing it slow. But I certainly don't attempt to consistently practice it at speed until I can play it at speed

Cathy

Playing incredibly fast is simple and easy, and anyone can do it unless they have a serious physical abnormality.

It's playing fast and correctly at the same time, that's the challenge. Usually it's the "correctly" part that causes the problems.

That's about it.

S L O W L Y - every time you speed up enough to make mistakes you're just setting yourself back. The speed will creep up on you when you're ready. Meticulously practicing runs stacatto is good too.

David -

You're right, it's the "correctly" part that I need to do. I can play fast slop quite fine, but playing my pieces smoothly and correctly at a fast tempo seems to be quite the challenge.

Everyone -

Guess I need to have more faith in the slow practice I've been doing (and at my teacher's recommendation).

Still, it seems quite a leap of faith to think that in 4 weeks I'll be playing "Sleigh Ride" up to tempo (~176BPM) instead of way down-tempo (100-120BPM).

By practicing them S - L -O - W- L - Y. Sorry, couldn't resist. Everyone who recommended slow practice is right on. You have to walk before you can run.

OK, I've heard this advice given before, but could someone provide a bit more colour here?

So let's say you have a particularly tricky section that you are having problems getting up to tempo. So you start by practicing it at a greatly reduced tempo. You get to the point where you can play that section at that reduced tempo without error and with proper dynamics. Do you then immediately jump up to the target tempo or do you take intermediate steps, stopping when you start making mistakes (or can't get the dynamics right anymore). If you jump and you find yourself not playing it correctly, do you go back down to the same tempo as before, or do you go at a faster tempo? Is there a point when you stop "slowing down" and try to work through the problem area at tempo?

Thanks all.

For me, it depends I usually try it at tempo several times in a row. If I'm simply not used to playing it at tempo, it will work itself out. But if I really can't play it at tempo yet, I drop back down. But I drop back down to a tempo at which I am firmly comfortable, and that's usually faster than the really slow tempo I started at. And then I pay attention to whatever wasn't working at tempo. Was I trying to use a different fingering? Did I actually not know what the notes were? Did I lose the phrasing? Could I not connect it with the before and after passages? Then I work on those. Sometimes I *do* change the fingering, if that's what was not working. I'll try it both ways, and try to figure out why I wanted to do it one way slower, and a different way faster. So it's kind of a spiral process for me.

Cathy

Fast playing requires more efficient moves than slow playing. So while you are doing your slow practice, make every move of fingers and hands simple and direct. No wasted gestures, minimize tension, stay still, but stay comfortable and never stiff. It's a little bit like a computer - the instructions are executed at blinding speed, but the programmer works slowly and carefully to eliminate errors.

This is the rationale between playing ultimately fast legato runs stacatto (alternately with legato.) Theoretically by playing stacatto one is using the some movements one will use for fast playing in slow motion.

I think the comment about fast and correct above really has the key.

What holds you back from playing fast is accurate playing, so first you focus on accuracy, then you can bring up the speed. That is why slow practice is so important.

You most likely will need to increase speed in steps, that is why my suggestion included lots of steps trying to increase speed interspersed with plenty of slow practice.

You also need to learn to think of the piece in chunks of notes instead of just note by note. Runs, patterns, anything else to help trigger a more complex motion instead of just isolated single notes. That is why practicing in rhythms and chunks are important. Someone who has played a lot of pieces at a fast tempo have more patterns that they already have up to speed, so they get a head start from someone who is just starting out.

Finally, you can't play any faster than you are reading and thinking. If you can't read fast enough, learn to read in larger chunks, by memorizing portions of it, or memorize the whole thing. If you need help with this part, score studying should help.

Frycek - I think that is also part of the rationale behind playing in rhythms. You can mix rhythms and stacatto to add more to this as well.

Rich

A strategy that dancers employ to address the same problem in dance routines is to use a metronome in the following manner:

First, you play at a slow enough speed so that you can play it perfectly, yet it is not so super slow that the music does not really exist.

Say that that speed is 60 bpm.

Next, play it carefully at 61. Then 62, and so forth. (carefully is the key word!)

Each increase means that your brain and body are working a bit harder, although 1 bpm changes are almost impossible to detect.

Eventually you will either: 1. Find a weak spot (the weakest link), and can correct it, then start the process over, or 2. you will reach the speed you want.

When the speed you want is established in that you can play it well, use the metronome again to go beyond that speed, again one bpm at a time. Go about 10 bpm beyond.

This will give you a performance cushion so that when you do play it, it is not at your upper limit, but rather it is in your range of comfort.

I have used this method many times, and it does work, but the key is to do it carefully, slowly, and make sure you play precisely every time.

I find the best strategy for getting tricky passages up to speed is to practice it in rhythms. Vary the rhythms so that the "slow" note is on a different beat every time, so that each note gets individual attention. That's how I practiced the last velocissimo passage in Gnomus and it did wonders for increasing my speed and accuracy. I found that simply doing slow practice wasn't enough to get it to the required breakneck tempo and rhythms gave it the kick of speed that I needed. If you're already ABLE to play it at tempo, but are sloppy in doing so, then slow practice is the way to go.

Separate hands practise in small chunks at fast tempo, building to faster than final tempo. Use small enough chunks so that you have accuracy. Never practise your mistakes or you will get good at them

Interwoven of course with ... S L O W practice

you can gradually string these little chunks together. Also some medium speed is good.
Your last run through in a session should be your very attentive very slow perfectly accurate version.

Hey I should do this for my too-fast pieces!
thanks

Keep playing it slow even when you get it right at a slower tempo. There's something about really having it driven into your brain correctly at the slow tempo that is helpful. And really work on the fingering consistency. Inconsistent fingering will kill you when you bring the tempo back up. Your fingers and brain need to know exactly where you are going with this.

I've played with altering rhythms a bit and using staccato for non-staccato things and that also seems to help learning the note sequence irrespective of counting and tempo.

When you've achieved security at a moderate tempo (say, mm=60) and you're starting to increase the speed, every once in a while during your practice return to mm=60, then back to the faster speed. This will help to keep your playing accurate, and can keep you from pushing too hard for speed.

Something that I pointed out to some of my students yesterday was that if you practice too fast and make mistakes, are you building in those mistakes. If you practice slowly enough so that you can play it perfectly (or closer to perfection :D) then you are building in perfection. If you think of it that way, slow practice makes perfect sense...why set yourself up for failure?

The speed will get faster on its own, and one should never play faster than they can play well.