Music Video Lesson: Is slow practice important?

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin and you're watching LivingPianos.com. Today, the extreme slow practice.

Boy, is this a valuable technique. You have no idea. I'm going to show you, right in front of you, demonstrate how this works and how it can be unbelievably valuable for your practice. I'll explain in a minute. First, let's have some music. I'm going to play this really fast movement from the Bach 5th French Suite, the second movement, the Courante, goes really fast. I'm going to play it and then I'm going to solidify it by this extreme slow practice right in front of you and I'll explain how valuable this is for you for a number of reasons. But first, let's have some music with this Bach.

So, we have a piece and you can play it, but maybe it's getting rusty. You could play it and then it's not as solid as it once was and you wonder what can you do to re -solidify it. Or you have a piece that maybe you've gotten to a certain level and you just can't quite get it really secure. So take a piece like this that's really fast. You find a really slow tempo where you look at the score, you use the metronome, get your foot off the pedal.

Now, what's so interesting about this is when you play fast and there are things that maybe go by, maybe are a little blurry, but at this slow speed, any little imperfection is like blown up, like putting your playing under a microscope and as a result you can really solidify your playing.

Now here's the amazing thing about this technique.

Obviously, if you get it solid you would want to go notch by notch with the metronome getting it up to speed, but if all you do is play it slowly like that, you will gain so much just from that. Not that strategic metronome speeds is something you shouldn't do. Obviously, that's a great technique, but just going through like that, even a piece you know really intimately well and can play well, you will always learn new things about your score when you play things that slowly. You're going to see things and you're going to feel things and understand things.

Did you ever take a word and you say it over, over, over, over and the word doesn't even sound like a word anymore? And then eventually you really understand that word on a new level. Well, that's what happens when you play slowly like this, a piece that your fingers kind of go on automatic pilot, you must be deliberate at those slow speeds and you end up learning it so much more securely. So try this with pieces that you want to get on a higher level or pieces you've had on a high level and you want to reinforce them. There's no better way, by the way, before a performance when you already have a piece in shape and you're playing it over and over again and then some days it's better than others, you wonder what can you do? Extreme slow practice to the rescue. It's going to solidify your playing like you can't believe. Try it for yourself. Let us know how it works here at LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---