Practice slowly

Practice slowly.

Something I tell my students all the time is that practice makes permanent. NOT practice makes perfect. If you practice piano with poor technique, then you’ll play piano with poor technique, no matter how much you practice. So practice with good technique. That way when you perform you’ll be performing with good technique.

A great way to make sure that we do this is to practice slowly. Play so slowly that every single detail is correct. This might mean that you’re playing so slowly that you get bored. You might be playing slower than 1/4 speed. That’s fine.

The main thing is that each detail is correct.

This is something that golfers and olympic athletes do. They practice slow enough to be able to think about each tiny movement that they need to be able to do. That way they can really make sure that they’re accurately and efficiently doing each movement.

Now quick disclaimer. If you really get into doing this and you go super deep with it you’ll be playing so slowly that it’ll almost be like you’re playing in slow motion. That’s fine. That’ll be helpful and incredibly beneficial to your playing. So do that if you can handle it. BUT. If you can’t and you get bored doing that, play a little faster. Fast enough where you’re still engaged in what you’re doing, but slow enough where you’re playing accurately. Maybe you can’t think about every single tiny little detail, but you can think about the important details. Do that.

When you practice this way you’re making sure that you remember exactly how to play everything perfectly. You’re ingraining in your brain how each movement should be done and it makes a difference.

I do this for basically anything that’s fast. Anything on guitar or piano that’s a fast run I do this with. And I notice a pretty big difference. If I can take just 5 minutes and play something through slowly and perfectly I’ll notice afterwards that I’m able to play it much faster and much more accurately because of that.

I’ve even demonstrate this with my students. I’ll demonstrate this practice technique with something that they’re learning and point out that even in the 5 minutes that I’ve spent doing it IN THE LESSON there’s a noticeable difference. I’m not playing it twice as fast, but I’m playing it much more accurately and a little faster and a little more easily than I was able to before.

So practice slowly. Then after you practice slowly for a few minutes try speeding it up.

Rather than slowly speeding passages up with a metronome, alternate speeds. Play it super slowly, then try it fast. Then go back to super slow, then back to fast. Almost like you’re testing your speed and accuracy, then going back to building it up.

Try it.

Practice slowly.

It’ll help your playing.

ISJ