First published on October 16, 2014, Enjoying Ultra-Slow Practice came about in response to students who were trying to run before they could walk. I needed to find a way to get them to practise slowly enough and at the same time enjoy the process.
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If you’re serious about playing the piano, there’s no getting away from slow practice. It is a cornerstone of our work from the beginner stages right through to the advanced level, and a practice tool also used by professional pianists and seasoned virtuosos all the time. In this post, I aim to help you not only realise the importance of careful, accurate slow work but also to enjoy it fully!
I have noticed some folk think they should be beyond slow practice – that’s only something beginners do. Far from it! In Abram Chasins’ wonderful book Speaking of Pianists, the author describes a time he showed up for a lesson with Rachmaninov and overhead him practising – but so slowly that he didn’t recognise the piece at first. I know I have used this quotation before, but I am going to use it again because it speaks volumes about how a great pianist used ultra-slow practice for a work he was maintaining (not learning) to keep it spick and span:
Rachmaninov was a dedicated and driven perfectionist. He worked incessantly, with infinite patience. Once I had an appointment to spend an afternoon with him in Hollywood. Arriving at the designated hour of twelve, I heard an occasional piano sound as I approached the cottage. I stood outside the door, unable to believe my ears. Rachmaninov was practising Chopin’s etude in thirds, but at such a snail’s pace that it took me a while to recognise it be- cause so much time elapsed between one finger stroke and the next. Fascinated, I clocked this re- markable exhibition: twenty seconds per bar was his pace for almost an hour while I waited riveted to the spot, quite unable to ring the bell. Perhaps this way of developing and maintaining an unerring mechanism accounted for his bitter sarcasm toward colleagues who practised their programmes ‘once over lightly’ between concerts. (Chasins, Abram. 1967. Speaking of Pianists. New York: Knopf, 44.)
(Chopin: Etude in G sharp minor, op. 25 no. 6)
This sort of ultra-slow work is actually rather hard to do, it takes quite a bit of patience and discipline. We have an aural image of how the music ought to sound at the proper speed, and we are impatient to get to this. If we practise just slightly slower than the tempo (assuming it is a fast or fastish piece), we are likely to find ourselves getting gradually faster, influenced by a magnetic pull back up to the tempo.
Instead of a tempo that is just under speed, let’s choose one that is way slower. Each note will expand from font size 12 to size 48. When we do this, we need to remember that it is only the tempo (the distance in time between one note and the next) that is slow. Our reflexes and thoughts are fast, firing on all cylinders. If we have to make a jump across the keyboard, we will do this fast. If the thumb needs to pass under the hand, we can prepare this movement ahead. The speed we put down and release each key can also be fast, even though the tempo is slow.
Uses
So when do we use this sort of ultra-slow practice?
- Use it when learning new pieces, in order for the brain to move faster than the fingers.
- Use it for passages requiring fine motor skills that are uneven or that lack control.
- Use it for places that sound dull and mechanical, exaggerating the dynamics, hairpins and balances.
- Use it to maintain accuracy and finesse in pieces you already know.
- Use it to command control of every single note, inflection, dynamic and expression mark, and pedal.
- Use it for memory work (if you can play ultra slowly from memory, you know every atom and molecule of the musical structure).
- Don’t use it when you are forming the reflexes for fast playing after the initial learning stages. Let’s say you’ve spent some time learning a fast piece slowly and you want to get it up to speed. Now is the time to lay off the slow practice for a while, even though it will feel very comfortable to go back to it each day. Resist this, and make a plan to do little bits fast.
Little Bits Fast
The intelligent pianist will recognise the need for this type of practice, to string notes together so that one impulse takes in a group of notes. If slow practice is deliberately looking at letters and syllables, then ‘little bits fast” enables us to think in words, sentences and paragraphs. Take a few notes and play them up to speed (or faster!) but in one impulse, one gesture. After a few repetitions (nobody ever formed a habit by doing something just once) we can add a few more notes, and then practise starting from a different place. After you have completed this stage of the work, you can use slow practice and fast practice in alternation.
Musical – Not Mechanical
There is nothing more boring than dry, mechanical practice. Our finger movements need to be connected in our mind and body to a musical or artistic goal, and insisting on and listening for quality of tone keeps us fully engaged. Good sound is always important in all that we do, no less so in the slow practice.
What is going on in our head when we practise slowly?
Here is the process:
- Break down your piece into manageable sections. You may wish to repeat a section two or three times at the slow tempo, or if things have gone well just carry on. Personally, I like to break at the end of a section anyway and regroup. However you choose to do things, when practising slowly always stop to correct mistakes as soon as they occur.
- Decide on the slowness of your tempo before you start and feel this in your body. While the tempo will be very slow, it is going to sound and feel convincing to you – you need to own it. Even though you might not agree with some of Glenn Gould’s slow tempos, they always sound convincing because he believed in them!
- As you prepare to play the first note (and every note thereafter) KNOW which finger(s) and which note come next. If you are certain about each and every footstep (fingerstep) you need never play a wrong note! Aim for ultimate precision here.
- Inwardly hear the sound you desire.
- Imagine and relish the way it will sound and feel – your’re going to ENJOY it. Enjoyment of the sound and of the physical process of playing is paramount. Treat it like a meditation where each finger stroke equates to a breath in and out.
- Be fully convinced about your result – know in advance that you are going to produce what you intend.
- COMMAND your servants! Never forget your fingers (and your feet) are your servants. Tell them exactly what you require them to do (click here).
- LISTEN acutely to the results you are producing.
- CONCENTRATE fully as you practise.
- After each note, evaluate your result. Did it match your intention? If it did, carry on with the next note by repeating the process in the same way. If it did not, then back up a bit. Make sure to check in with your body – you need to stay physically loose and free. If the playing involved effort make sure to release the effort immediately, the body returning to a place of stasis and balance the microsecond after you have played. Remember to breathe easily and to maintain an attitude of mental calm and self control.
Sure, a metronome can help and many people swear by this. I don’t want to get into the pros and cons of metronome use here because I have discussed it before (click here), but I don’t think it is always the best solution. I prefer to retain the natural timings, rubatos and breathing spaces when I practise slowly. A metronome is the ultimate party pooper – it kills all this and takes the fun out of slow practising. But each to their own – if you are a fan of the metronome, by all means use it.
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Thank you so much for this. I have been struggling with slow practice for years, and your article explains why it is a struggle, not a soft option. On to your full book next!
Thanks Rosalind. I have always enjoyed slow practising but I only recently recognised why some people don’t. It is a mindset!
[…] following article in Practising the Piano really brings these ideas home. Extremely important for recovering focal distinct who are retraining […]
I love this article! The enjoyment of understanding each note in depth, tonal color is so satisfying when this regimen is followed. It is wonderful. I call it ear candy.
In my experience I find that many students are so busy connecting the dots on the page that are not listening and therefore not appreciating the richness and potential of the piano itself to express the emotion that we call music. This article is a strong tool toward that process. Tone and control of tone matters. It is everything But did we hear it? Or just play it.
Thank you, Jack. Ear candy is a great way of thinking about this. I am also more and more interested in the way it feels – that tactile enjoyment and satisfaction in our body as we play. If we feel fully in control of the sounds we are making at the slow tempo, we will ingrain that sense of being in relaxed command and it will leave a helpful impression as we play up to speed.
Hello Graham,
I became aware of your work through one of the piano groups on LinkedIn. I really enjoyed this article and found it enlightening and very informative. Thank you for sharing it.
All the best,
Russell Szabados
Las Vegas, NV
Thanks so much for your comment, Russell! I am very glad you got something from the article. Check back tomorrow and I’ll post the sequel… 🙂
Great article! I studied a little with Sergei Babayan, and one of the suggestions he gave was to work on a measure or two for an hour. Still seems like overkill to me, but practicing ultra slow is really the best way to have time to pay specific attention to how everything sounds and exactly what you want to portray musically.
I love that you addressed the issue that if you’re working on forming the reflexes for playing a piece fast, to avoid the slow practice. I find that too many teachers keep students playing slow even when it’s speed they need, and that somehow magically the student will get the piece up to speed by always playing it slow.
Thanks Brian. Babayan’s suggestion is all well and good if you’ve got hours and hours to practise. I agree, you can get the result more quickly if there is a strong intention as to the sound you’re after.
[…] very comfortable to go back to it each day. Resist this, and make a plan to do little bits fast. (https://practisingthepiano.com/enjoying-ultra-slow-practice/) How slow is slow? I like to set my metronome around 50, each click for the shortest note in the […]
the advise you give here is crazy good. the explanation on the magnetic pull to go faster is actually SO TRUE. i’m currently working on chopins nouvelle etude no.1, having some issues with polyrhythms haha and have to go to playing so slow note by note (for 3 against 4) it doesnt sound like it at all. shall press on though it seems like im getting nowhere!
Thanks, Pauline. I have just finished compiling two big articles on polyrhythms with downloadable worksheets as well as practice guides and video demonstrations for the new Online Academy. Watch this space!
I just stumbled upon this treasure trove of information.
Thank you for posting such brilliant content!
Thanks so much for your comment, Leo!
For years I was taught the importance of s l o w practice. Recently, learning Bach’s Italian Concerto, I came to the crunch point where I needed to speed it up, and realised I had no idea how to. I could play it slowly and accurately, but the ‘difficult bits’ always dragged behind the rest, and when I tried to up the tempo, even gradually, they turned into inevitable road crashes.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your ‘little bits fast’ idea. I have not encountered this before, but for me it’s been a breakthrough. It had never even occurred to me to train the reflexes, as you put it, and I (and my teacher) have been delighted by the results.
I’ve discovered another bonus of ‘little bits fast’, which is this. During the slow practice phase of learning a piece, you have to stop constantly, and keep going back to correct mistakes/make improvements; it’s a bit laborious. Whereas, with ‘little bits fast’ you get to play larger sections of your piece, up to speed (or practically) – which is highly enjoyable – exhilarating, even.
I am now planning to make sure I have pieces on the go at different ‘practising stages’, for instance, one at the ‘slow learning’ stage, and another at the speeding up stage. This will give my practising a lot more variety.
Thanks again for a seriously useful blog post.
How wonderful that you let me know this, Orlando! I am genuinely delighted the “little bits fast” technique has helped you get the Italian Concerto up to speed. I wish I can say I thought of the idea myself, but it was passed down to me by one of my great teachers. 🙂
Hey, absolutely love this article.
I actually use this method to learn and teach singing!
I was just searching around to see if other teachers are using similar methods.
It first came to me while I was learning guitar songs slowly, and thought, ‘hey, why don’t i try learning singing the same way’ – particularly cos the singers I like do crazy fast runs and have a lot of quick intervals and slides in their singing.
I worked incredible and my voice has transformed as a result, and students are improving the same way.
I love the detail you go into here and it is fantastic. I will share this link on my website for students to have a read of to encourage them to understand why slow practice is so effective for any instrument, including the voice.
Thank you very much
Thanks so much for your enthusiastic comments, Rached. I had no idea singers could benefit from ultra-slow practice, but I’m very glad to hear this post was helpful to you.
There is of course always the question when actually PLAYING the piano is necessary in this context. When the tempo is so slow that one bar takes 20 seconds, I wonder if you cannot just as well do this mentally.
I have read this article many times since it was first posted and I have found it extremely useful over the years. However, I could add something to the description you give about “knowing what to play next”. I simply call it preparation. Let’s say I play a key with my 3rd finger, then I will play my 5th finger and after that move down a bit and use the thumb. So while I press my 3rd finger I will simultaneously move my 5th finger so it is above the key it is to play, and while I release my 3rd finger and start to play my 5th finger, I will stretch out my thumb. AND if my left hand happens to be “idle” in this bar, I take this opportunity to also move it to next starting position. It is a matter of accurate coordination between many fingers (and limbs 🙂 ), and of course this requires ultra-slow tempo at first.
When I first tried ulta-slow practice, I thought it was about pressing down one key with full consciousness, like doing some be-in-the-present-moment-meditation, and then move over to the next key etcetera. While meditation is good, this approach is rather pointless. The only thing that happened was that I lost my focus. So it was rather about this “multi-preparation”, prepare for the upcoming keys.
I also think it is good (actually) to make mistakes and play the wrong notes sometimes. That is, you need to bring it all up in tempo many times, to see where you fail, then investigate what happened here, then figure out what to do, then practice this correctly. And slow. My opinion is that if you start veeery slowly and then graaaadually increase tempo until you play it “perfectly”, there is a big risk that you get bored by the whole thing, and everybody will hear that. Your playing also risk to be totally mechanical, always exactly the same. But in that case we could just as well leave the playing to robots. A pianist is a living human being and a live performance should contain a certain degree of uncertainty. Otherwise the pianist can place a playback device on stage, press the Play button and leave.
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This is great advice! Thank you so much. I’m a guitarist who dabbles in piano. I’m actually using this approach not only on songs I’m learning on the piano but also on the guitar. I’m currently learning Gypsy Jazz on guitar – the technique and phrasing of the master Django Reinhardt – and slow practice with little bits fast has helped me tremendously. I copy paragraphs here and text it to myself so when I sit down to practice I have this effectively brilliant guidance. Thank you again!!!
Thank you so much for your comment, Kenny. I am very heartened to hear these ideas transfer to the guitar, and really appreciate that you let me know!