Music Video Lesson: How to Use Tempo as a Practicing Tool

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com.

Today I'm going to tell you how you can use tempo as a practicing tool. This is incredibly valuable for you and it can save you a vast amount of time making your practicing more efficient. Now you all know that practicing slowly is incredibly valuable. For example, I'm working on the Liszt Sonata in B minor and there's a section in there that goes quite fast and practicing slowly can help to secure things.

Getting each note to be absolutely secure.

But sometimes you begin working and working on all these different passages and you wonder where should you focus your attention? Maybe you can already play most of it pretty well but you don't know where the trouble spots or potential trouble spots can be. In a performance maybe you're a little bit nervous, maybe your hands are a little sweaty, maybe you're playing on a piano that's unfamiliar, maybe you're taking a tempo slightly faster than you realize because of the excitement of the moment.

So what you can do then is try to play something faster than usual and see how much of it you can play and wherever you can't play at that tempo that's where you can focus your attention.

Now like none of it.

So I would take probably a little slower tempo and see how much of it I can play accurately and cleanly and then take it from there.

Now I could go a little faster, a little faster and see which passages or which part of this and of course it goes on and on. So I could try large chunks of music just a little out of my comfort zone and figure out which parts are weaker than the rest to focus in the attention and then flip it and go back to that slow practice. And by the way slow practice is one of the most valuable tools you can use in your daily work at the piano.

Even something you can already play up to tempo going very very slowly with the score, with the metronome and without the pedal is one of the best ways to secure your piano playing. That is a test. Take things fast. Take things even too fast. See what parts are weaker than the rest so you can maximize the effectiveness of your practicing at the piano.

Again I'm Robert Estrin and you're watching LivingPianos.com your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-use-tempo-as-a-practicing-tool/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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