After surviving my freshman year of college, I felt like I could conquer any challenge college could bring my way, but sophomore year proved my naïve perception to be a pure illusion. It was the fourth movement of a Beethoven sonata with big chords, an aggressive mood, and a fast tempo. It didn’t fit my personality or my hands, and I unfortunately didn’t practice it very intelligently either. Through the process of not learning this movement very well, I learned a lot about myself, about life, and about practice. Though the lessons I learned about myself and life were of greater import, here it is more appropriate to share what I learned about practice, slow practice that is. Slow practice seems like a magic cure-all. It is an easy go-to for teachers that solves many student errors, but most students perceive it as a torture devise. In this post, I would like to explore how slow practice is useful and how it isn’t. My hope is that any students reading this will be able to practice more effectively and avoid some of the mistakes I made, that any teachers reading this will be able to utilize these ideas in giving practice assignments and in understanding their students, and that any parents reading this will know better how to give advice to their children based on what they are hearing during practice sessions. Slow practice is an age-old strategy deeply entrenched in the practice habits and teaching of every musician, and rightly so. The problem with playing too quickly too soon is that students are not able to play correctly at the fast speed they want and end up repeating and thus engraining mistakes. Going slower is a great solution to this problem. Playing slowly is a wonderful means for students to ensure that they are playing the correct notes and observing details of articulation and dynamics. A slow tempo can also make it easier to observe how you are using your body at the piano to ensure that you are using a healthy technique and not holding excessive tension. In general, playing slowly makes difficult passages easier, allowing students to work out the challenges of note reading, rhythm, articulation, and dynamics before playing at a more challenging tempo. Slow practice is an easy and useful strategy to fix many errors and to prepare for confident performances. The ubiquitous teacher direction “let’s try that section again slower” is called for, but there are several pitfalls of slow practice that often go overlooked. The first possible pitfall of slow practice I would like to draw attention to is that rhythms feel different at different tempos (Chronister 187). As someone who has had a life-long struggle with performing rhythms precisely, I can easily relate to this struggle, but sometimes I forget it as a teacher. What this means of course, is that a student’s ability to play a passage with the correct rhythm at a slow tempo many, many times very precisely does not necessarily translate into the ability to play the same passage with the same rhythm at a faster tempo. Another option is instead of changing the tempo to make the passage easier, eliminate or change the notes so that the student can play the rhythm correctly at many different tempos. This can be done by having the student clap the rhythm or play it on one key on the piano or a five-finger pattern or any other set of notes that is simple enough that the student will be able to play the rhythm successfully at a performance tempo. This could even turn into an improvisation using the written rhythm but notes the student chooses. Another problem with slow practice is that the technique necessary to play a passage quickly is very different from the technique students tend to revert to when they play slowly. I know for myself that if I am playing a slow piece, I tend to use bigger, less efficient arm gestures than I do when I play something fast. These arm gestures may be very appropriate and graceful for my slow piece, but they will cripple me in a fast piece. So, the problem is that when I am practicing a fast piece slowly, I tend to automatically use these less efficient gestures (this was one of the problems with my Beethoven sonata). For slow practice to translate into confident fast performance, students must practice with the technique they would use to play quickly but in slow motion. Perhaps, watching a video of the teacher demonstrating the faster technique put into slow motion could help. Another solution to this dilemma is instead of changing the tempo to make the passage easier, changing the length. Students can learn to play one beat and the first note of the next at a performance tempo much more easily than an entire passage. This strategy keeps them from sloppy mistakes and helps them develop the technique they need to play the whole passage at a performance tempo. They can eventually start putting these tiny pieces together. This solution also helps keep the student interested, because, let’s face it, slow practice is boring. The last downside of slow practice is simply that: it’s boring. Students want to find ways around it (been there, done that), and they will be highly disappointed if they actually make themselves do slow practice and come to a lesson only to find that they didn’t do enough slow practice to actually fix the problem (been there too). There isn’t an easy solution to this problem because sometimes slow practice is the best solution, and the student simply must learn the discipline to use this strategy effectively. However, we can help our students reap the satisfaction slow practice can bring if we help them understand its pitfalls and how to avoid them. We also do our students a favor when we give them a variety of strategies to use beyond just the direction to play slowly until they can speed the piece up without playing sloppily. Teaching our students to play small chunks fast and to speed pieces up gradually in sections will aid in easing the burdens of slow practice. Including easier pieces in a student’s repertoire so that they can more quickly earn the right to play fast is another way to not only make practice less boring but help them see the benefits of slow practice. Slow practice is extremely helpful, but it takes a long-term view, discipline, and awareness of potential pitfalls to use it effectively. If we ensure that our students understand the rhythms they are working with at many different tempos and the technique they will need at performance tempos, we ensure that their slow practice will lay a foundation for confident performance. Slow practice could translate into a butchered performance if its shortcomings are ignored, but done well, it could be the hero that makes difficult passages possible. I must thank the piano faculty at The Master’s University for teaching me these principles and for helping me integrate valuable practice strategies into my practice habits. Work Cited Chronister, Richard. “A Piano Teacher’s Legacy: Selected Writings by Richard
Chronister.” Ed. Edward Darling. The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy, Inc. 2005.
0 Comments
|
Archives |