Regularly I have students who open a new piece and they want to play it at the same tempo as what they’ve heard already. After all, what attracted them to the new piece is likely to be a recording they heard somewhere. However, what is often forgotten is the months of practice that goes in before the recording.
There’s no rush to learning a new piece of music. When we start we should learn as much as we can about it. Working on the rhythm and the notes, getting musicianship into the music. This can include dynamics, balance between each voice and musical shaping.
Notice that I haven’t mentioned “play your piece as fast as possible”.
Once you have mastered everything above, then you should start to work on tempo. Increasing it graduallly until you get to where you want your music to be. I’ve found in the past that I end up being able to play my music faster than I would ever perform it. This is a great place to be because it shows mastery.
Sometimes, when you’re figuring out your fingering it can be a good idea to play something at the composers suggested tempo. The reason for this is that phrases can often be played very slowly with fingering that feels comfortable however, it can end up being inefficient when you get to the target speed.
If you do use this approach, only do it for small sections and hands separate until you have good fingering. Once you’ve figured out the fingering go back to slow and mindful practice.
Why have I found this the best approach?
Often if you start working on something quickly there will be plenty of mistakes being made. Everybody knows that the more you practice, the more what you’re learning settles in. Sadly this includes mistakes. Once you’ve learnt your mistakes it can be a painstaking process to remove them and build again.
It almost sounds counterintuitive. Practice slowly and you’ll learn your music quicker. The reason for this is because you’re working with a strong foundation and building on that. If you start with lots of mistakes you need to ‘unlearn’ them and start again. Why not just skip the ‘unlearning’ part and go straight to the good stuff?
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