On Saturday 7th June, Graham Fitch presented the fourth and last workshop in his interactive Practice Tools series. This set of workshops serve as a hands-on complement to his Practice Tools video series and feature variety of exercises designed to help you apply these tried-and-tested tools to elevate your practising.
Slowly Does It
The series kicked off in March with an exploration of the art and craft of slow practice. We started by looking at how to use slow practice (or “the speed of no mistakes”) alongside the feedback loop for laying strong foundations when learning a new piece.
Graham then went on to demonstrate a variety of other ways that slow practice can be used on pieces you already know. These include maintaining motor control, finessing sound quality and engaging different memory systems. We also looked at how slow practice could be combined with fast movements (“slow yet fast”) to develop reflexes and precision required for increasing tempo.
Fasten Your Safety Belts!
With the ground work done using slow practice, the second session went on to look at ways to build speed whilst avoiding the wheels falling off or buckling up with tension. One of the widely used methods is the incremental metronome method in which passages are repeated with the metronome tempo gradually increasing.
However, there are more effective ways to develop speed! A powerful method that was introduced is to combine the feedback loop with chaining or “little bits fast”. In this video excerpt from the accompanying video series, Graham demonstrates this approach with the Schubert E-flat Impromptu:
The session also showed how to use rhythm and accents for achieving fluency in passagework and how to reduce tension and maintain accuracy with controlled stopping techniques like the “Floating Fermata”.
Making Practising More Fun and Rewarding
The last two workshops then looked at how to make your practice sessions more fun, engaging and rewarding. A variety of “practice toys” were presented to give you ideas for incorporating creativity and “desirable difficulties” into your practising for greater concentration and better results.
As part of the “practice toys”, Graham demonstrated how miming (or “shadow practice”) can be used to develop finger control, internal hearing and independence between hands or voices. He also presented some ideas for how you can invent exercises within your pieces and demonstrated further variations of practising separately, such as “zigzags” and deconstruction.
Lastly, we concluded with a brief look at innovative ways to use the metronome. this video excerpt demonstrates a simple clapping exercise that can be used to help you develop a sense of rhythm:
If you missed any of these events, you can still purchase access to the recordings and resources to work through the materials at your convenience. Each workshop features a worksheet with several activities and exercises designed to help you bridge the gap between knowledge and application.
Click on one of the following links to purchase access to recordings and resources from this series:
- Workshop 1 – Slowly Does It
- Workshop 2 – Fasten Your Safety Belt!
- Workshops 3 & 4 – Creativity in Practice
Series Bundle Offer – Save by purchasing a bundle comprising recordings and resources for all four workshops here for only £200 (£120 for Online Academy subscribers)
Practice Tools Video Series
Also included with tickets to these workshops are the first four instalments of Graham Fitch’s revised Practice Tools video series. These new videos have been re-shot in our studio and feature updated content, additional repertoire examples and new features.
The series starts off with a set of introductory videos on strategies and approaches for enhancing your practice sessions. These are followed by 20+ videos featuring a variety of practice tools from the foundational Feedback Loop and “Three S’s” through to creative tools for learning pieces, building speed and much more! Click here to view an index of the series on the Online Academy.
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