Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2015-04-01 16:29
To work out a difficult passage, you absolutely *must* start dead slow and with a metronome. For an unfamiliar pattern, such as the D&C noodling, you may have to set the metronome to 60 and play one note per beat. Keep setting the speed *slower* until you can play the exercise without difficulty. Then move the speed up one notch at a time.
After you get slightly familiar with the passage, you will find that you can jump up to a higher speed. THIS IS A TRAP. You must build up gradually, through each intermediate speed. Otherwise you're just faking it. There is always an intermediate speed (say, sixteenths at 96) where you start to stumble because some changes from note to note are easy and some are hard. Unless you work your way through this point, your technique will always be uneven and unreliable at faster speeds.
EVENING OUT THE CHANGES
Sometimes moving from one note to the next involves just one finger (say, low C to low D), and sometimes it involves many fingers in contrary motion (as in going over the break). The more complex movements tend to take more time, and it's also hard to keep them as clean as the easy ones.
Therefore, you need to single out the hard finger movements and clean them up. You do *not* achieve this by just running through a passage over and over. The following method isolates each interval and lets you work on it individually.
Beginning *very* slowly, play the passage in pairs of quadruple-dotted 16ths and 128ths, repeating each quick change until you have it clean and snappy. At the beginning, play just the first note; stop and take a small breath; then "snap" from the second to the third notes as quickly as possible, repeating until it is clean; stop and take a small breath; then "snap" from the 4th to the 5th note, and so on. Then leave out the breaths and work up gradually to close to performance tempo. Notice that you are working on the transition between notes 2 and 3, then 4 and 5 and so on.
Then, begin again with a 128th followed by a quadruple-dotted 16th. This isolates the transitions you skipped, between notes 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and so on.
Work up both versions slurred and tongued.
When you finish, you will have isolated and cleaned up the transition between each note and the next. Then, go back to straight 16ths, which will be almost magically smooth.
I've used this method for over 50 years, and it never fails.
Ken Shaw
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