What do I mean by supplement slow piano practice? One thing I have discovered since coming back to piano is that there are literally hundreds of different ways to practice. Unfortunately, all too often the only advice that gets shared on many social media sites is ‘slow it right down’. I don’t think anybody would minimise the benefits of slow practice. However, to make faster progress I think it’s important we experiment with other ideas too. I seem to have found myself on a mini-crusade recently to help people discover a wider variety of practice techniques.
Let me re-state: slow practice is absolutely vital and valid and is something that I do often. However, I don’t believe it is a panacea for every problem or situation. Much depends on the problem you’re trying to fix or the improvement you’re trying to make. Most of us have very limited time, so getting the maximum return on our practice investment is vital.
Here are some examples where slow practice is often quoted as the best strategy.
Practice techniques to get faster
One of the frequent times people are told to ‘slow it right down’ is when they’re trying to work out how to get something faster. I’ve already discussed this topic pointing out that there are numerous other techniques that can be used when you’re trying to build speed. After all, you wouldn’t tell a runner trying to get faster at 100m to go and take a walk around the park. However, at the same time, if a person can’t even run 100m, then the advice to do some walking first would likely be extremely valid!
For anything that’s tricky for us to play, one of the first places to start is by going slowly whilst we work it out properly. Going slowly will help us work out our fingering scheme, understand the notes, structure, harmony, phrasing etc. It also helps as we work on the voicing – especially where we need to voice notes below the highest note in the right hand. It helps equally after we’ve learned something hands separately. Even if we can play it comfortably at the speed we want hands separately, when we first put our hands together, going slowly will help enormously with general coordination
However, beyond this, I’m convinced that Slow Practice alone is unlikely to provide the biggest bang for your buck. We need to supplement slow piano practice with some of these other ideas.
Ways to deal with unevenness
Another time ‘slow it right down’ keeps coming back is when people are asking questions about getting something more even. This can be in scales or passages in pieces.
Evenness issues can be in rhythm, touch or even volume. We find unevenness often when the thumb is passing under the fingers (or the fingers over the thumb). We can also find it when playing on combinations of white and black keys.
To help fix these problems, there are plenty of other techniques we can try. For example, if we have rhythmic unevenness, a very valuable way of practicing is to actually purposefully accent different notes in a controlled manner – knowing of course that there will be zero accents in the finished product. This is one of the pieces of advice given by Melanie Spanswick for example for Fur Elise in Play It Again Piano book 2.
Another way I’ve seen and used is to accent every 1st note in say groups of 4, then the 2nd notes, then the 3rd and then the 4th. This, for example is a good way to practice the small cadenza at the end of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major.
Then of course there is always the technique of rhythms. Interestingly, this, by default, actually slows down parts of what you’re playing whilst keeping the rest at your intended tempo. I used this to great effect on Chopin’s C Sharp Minor Waltz.
Ways to fix wrong notes
Another time people are advised to slow things down is when trying to get rid of isolated wrong notes.
For example, you might keep stumbling over a fioritura in a Chopin piece, or an isolated run in something else.
Again, to fix this doesn’t necessarily mean having to go slow. Josh Wright advised a great trick that seems to work well. First, identify where the mistake actually is (or perhaps the point at which something falls apart). Then, spend some time practicing until just right before the problem.
Once we’re 100% comfortable with that, we add on the next note – so the one that causes the problem. We then spend time practicing actually to the mistake – and of course, it becomes relatively easy to add a single, correct note to a passage we can already play well.
Again, once we’re 100% comfortable, then we can add the next note, rinse and repeat until we get to the end of the problem section.
Slow is still super valuable
Of course, there are multiple occasions when slow practice really does come into its own and I’ve not yet found anything that works better.
As I said earlier, we have the initial learning process and initially putting something hands together when we’ve learned it hands separately. In addition to these, slow practice is, believe it or not, a really good test of your memory. When you suddenly slow something right down, you might find you struggle to remember the notes. This is simply because you’ve been relying on what people refer to as ‘muscle memory’. ‘Muscle Memory’ should really be thought of as ‘procedural memory’. When you do something to interrupt a learned procedure such as by doing it really slowly, the brain has problems ‘remembering’ the order in which it was doing things.
Also, slow practice can be great when you’ve got a piece to that ‘OK’ stage. This is the stage where you can certainly play it, occasional random wrong notes perhaps, but you wouldn’t be embarrassed to play it in front of friends. Working on subtleties of voicing and expression are really well served by slow practice. It gives much more time for your ears to focus on the result your fingers create and your brain to interpret it. Improving the general balance between the hands is also well served by slow practice.
Pick and mix
Don’t forget of course, that you can combine any of these alternative practice techniques with slow practice. You might, for example, combine slow practice with rhythms or accents.
There is a simple rule that if you can’t play something slowly, then you’ll not be able to play it faster. That rule doesn’t work in reverse though.
This is why I have been so happy to find things like Graham Fitch’s eBook Series on Practising and Josh Wright’s YouTube Channel. Both will tell you how good and important slow practice is. It most definitely is important. However, they also offer a multitude of other things to try out when you’re seeking to fix a specific problem.
Which of these techniques have you already tried? Let me know in the comments.
