How to Practice Slowly and Why It's Important

do your practicing session sound like this uh Discord [Music] and here um [Music] you can probably tell there's a lot of things wrong with the way I just played right now but I bet you're practicing like this too why am I so confident because that's how I hear my students play in the lessons all the time one of the wrong things I did was I got faster and faster as the music went and stopped so many times [Music] uh um here um today I'm talking about slow practicing why it's necessary and how slow you have to be to improve your overall performance and make it a lot more solid for those who are new to my channel my name is Akira I'm a Pianist piano teacher and a translator who's living in three different countries on my channel I'm posting videos of my performances topics related to and not related to music if you haven't done so please hit subscribe and notification buttons so you won't miss my future videos and this channel is supported by my generous supporters on patreon.com and YouTube membership these contents take a lot of time and effort to create and your support has been huge encouragement as I try to grow this channel little by little and here kind enough to support me for three or ten dollars I will leave a link to my patreon page in the description below you can also support this channel by becoming a YouTube member right here so let's talk about what went wrong with the way I practiced in the beginning when you learn a new music we learn by playing it correctly over and over but the way I was practicing I was going at the normal performance speed and once I don't know how to get to the next part I stop and then I figured out the chord and then kept going but think about it what did I just do I told my brain how to stop and go what's even worse was I sped up after I made a mistake only the crash at the next transition here if you think about it if you increase the speed of Music difficulty level goes up too so if you're not used to this music you should be playing slowly but in our lessons and even in auditions and performances I see this trend all the time where students speeds up and speeds up and speeds up until they crash and when I ask my students to play Slowly oftentimes the next time they play it's not even slow at all and even if you practice this way if you do it every day a hundred times you'll still be able to play this music decently but that's not efficient at all and when you practice I want you to get the most out of your time and efforts you're spending on it after all that's why you come to the lessons right now when you're practicing new music for the first time we can't help but stop and think of some notes to figure out what to play or what Rhythm to play and so on I'm not talking about that kind of stopping usually people are good at staying slow at that point but once you get used to the music that's when the rushing and fast practicing what I call Russian stop practicing happens and I get it it's fun and exciting to play fast I like fast things maybe a little too much but like I said earlier by going fast and stopping and then fixing that and then going you are teaching your brain how to stop and that's not what you want in performance after practicing for a while the problem is not that you don't know Discord or you can't play Discord the problem becomes not being able to go from this part to this part without stopping we cannot change the notes we cannot change the resin but what can we do to make this easy so you can handle it you can change the tempo when you practice so rather than practicing like this uh [Music] you should slow down and go [Music] plenty of time to figure out the next chord now you successfully transition to the next chord it may have been very boring but you actually played through without mistakes and if you do it enough times your brain will know oh when I go from here to here this is what I do and that's how you can play continuously and at that point you're ready to speed up and believe it or not speeding up is the easiest part of learning a new music once you have a good foundation with a slow practice you will be able to speed up it doesn't take that much time to speed up at that point so what I usually tell my students who has a habit of rushing stop practicing is that when I give them a new piece I tell them next week I want to hear super slow motion version of this music I don't care how slow it is as long as you don't hit the wrong key where you don't stop and I mean because slow continuous playing is much more present to listen to as well than going fast and crashing fast and crash and remember slower you play the easier it should get and if you cannot play Slowly you cannot play Fast either now to this comment you might say but sometimes I can play faster but it's so hard to play Slowly I get that feeling too because I used to think that way but the chances are even when you're playing fast you're making the same mistake and you have the same issue you just don't notice it because it passes so fast or if you're actually playing better when you're playing faster and can't slow down that means you are relying on your muscle memory AKA kinetic memory when you're using muscle memory your brain is remembering how it feels to play certain things but it's very dangerous to rely on this because it relies on how it feels meaning if something feels different then your whole memory is gone and I'll show you an example of this this is a lovely piece called La campanera by Mist I played this music before I performed it several times but it's been a while since I played this so I'll try to relearn a part of it in front of you right now [Music] foreign [Music] how do you think I played please let me know in the comment section so it may have sounded okay to you but there's a lot of note that I was missing so now I'm gonna start practicing slowly and see what happens [Music] oh [Music] memory sleep let's try again oh [Music] foreign [Music] so it does sound worse let's try one more time [Music] Oh I thought I missed it Oh wrong cord [Music] thank you it does sound worse when I play Slowly doesn't it this is an example of muscle memory so I played this before I know how it feels so I have a lot of muscle memory left so when I play fast I can play it okay but when I slow down it feels differently my hands not getting the same momentum all of a sudden I cannot even play this music now you might think well if you can play fast and okay it's not okay and I say no because if I'm relying on muscle memory when I play in a big concert hall and the piano feels different from my own piano or the Acoustics is different the way I sound is different in the concert hall anything that changes causes risk to your muscle memory if anything changes if any of the feeding changes you won't be able to play it reliably so in this case I was actually getting rid of my muscle memory by going slowly and whatever the notes that I didn't have it solidly and whatever the notes I couldn't play properly those are the notes that I actually don't have it if you think logically if you can play fast shouldn't you be able to play slowly as well but in this case clearly proves not even if you can play fast sometimes you actually don't know what you're playing you're kind of mimicking how it feels but I assure you we can say the opposite if you can play Slowly you can play fast it's just a matter of improving the technique because you already know all the notes at that point so for this reason even if you've been learning the same piece for a long time and you think you're ready for performance I challenge you to play really slowly and see what happens if you can play without any problem very slowly then you are truly ready if you start seeing any problems those are your weak spots it's really good idea to fix those spots slowly and make sure you actually logically know the music so let's talk about how slowly should you be playing the answer is as slow as you need you need to play it perfectly and to enforce that I have a personal rule that if I make one mistake I turn down the notch if I make two mistakes I turn down the notch again on my metronome until I can handle that music so let's see how slow I have to be to play this La Campanella section the tempo I play area was still too fast so I'm gonna go slower foreign spot to start with [Music] I didn't want to admit but I actually missed one key earlier and I was gonna just let it slip but then I missed another one so yes I have to follow my own rule slow down even further okay [Music] foreign [Music] I play without any mistakes it didn't even sound like how this music is supposed to sound like it was very boring took a lot of patience but at least my hand did the right sequence of the movement that's what I needed my brain needs to experience the right sequence of the movements you have to feel how far the keys are what it feels to play those keys what key am I playing how far am I going next and when I practice like that several times and if I can do this consistently at this Tempo now I'm finally ready to speed up a little bit if you don't have that discipline to play Slowly it is a good idea to use a metronome and make it rule that you have to follow that metronome and when you make a mistake turn down the speed until you can truly handle that piece but again don't do this if you are a beginner struggling to read the note and learning a new piece because you will have to stop the music and read the notes that's given but once you get used to a certain music and think you can speed up ask yourself am I really playing correctly without any stops and if you can't say yes to that question slow down and only speed up once you can play Slowly perfectly and that way your performance is going to be much more solid and your teacher and audience will be very happy alright that's it for today as always if you like this video please hit the like button so YouTube will know this is a good content and start spreading to other people if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comment section I have a lot more practicing tips to share with you so don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification button so you won't miss my future videos I hope these videos are helpful but nothing will beat one-on-one lesson to address your individual needs and concerns and if you're interested in taking online lessons or consultations with me I'll leave the link to my appointment system in the description thank you for watching I'll see you in the next video bye bye thank you [Music]

Channel: Akira Ikegami

Views: 15,416

Keywords: Akira, Ikegami, 池上, アキラ, WRX, Subaru, piano, technique, performance, learning, beginner, intermmediate, advanced

Id: VRf1HA2gwpY

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023