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Re: Good Advice for Newer Players

Author: Matt74
Date: 2021-08-08 10:33

Brycon,

I knew somebody would say that. LOL

When I was a kid I was always thought I was being told "you have to start slow and then speed it up gradually". This seemed to me to be a waste of time. I felt like they were holding me back. Why not just go for it? It also seemed to me to be unmusical to play things too slow.

If someone had simply told me WHY you play slow, I could have saved hundreds, or thousands of hours of pointless "practicing", not to mention years of frustration and futility.

Part of the problem is that it's very good for speeding things up, and for that reason it's real purpose gets confused with speed.

You can use it to play faster, and we all do, but that's not the point. It really has nothing whatsoever to do with playing faster. It has to do with how people learn. The important part is that you can only learn as fast as your brain and body can learn. You can become more efficient in practice over time, and get better at learning, but at any given moment you can only learn as fast as you can learn. That's true mentally and physically.

How slow is complicated. You need to start slow enough to reveal your mistakes, but not so slow that it become impossible. It only needs to be slow enough. If you play it REALLY slow it gets too hard and becomes counterproductive. It's like jumping. You can't practice jumping real slow. That's not how your body works. Very slow muscle coordination is different from quick muscle coordination. They're different skills. A reasonable tempo is sometimes better. Sometimes it's better to be a tiny bit sloppy at first and work it out. However, if you keep messing up on the same thing, or are all over the place, you know you need to slow down. ... Eventually, you do have to practice largo legato playing - music is beautiful but cruel. I wanted to keep it simple and memorable for beginners, so I didn't explain all that.

- Matthew Simington

Post Edited (2021-08-08 10:48)

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Good Advice for Newer Players new

BethGraham

2021-08-06 18:59