I’ve been practicing a lot of speed bursts lately, trying to get chunking down and to understand how it feels to play thinking in terms of chunks instead of single notes. I had quite a lot of success dealing with individual chunks, I haven’t clocked my speed but I’d say I can play 4 notes in a row at about 230-250bpm comfortably, but the problem is I can only play these 4 notes. If I try to connect these chunks I just get lost, I feel the rhythm slowly going off with each consecutive chunk I connect. Any ideas on how to solve this problem?
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Maybe practice hitting that 5th note, because that will be the first note of the next 4 note chunk.
I’m nowhere near your speed. But at my human speed. I’ve found it helps me to play 8th notes for 4 notes. down up down up. and then 16th notes for 4 notes. down up down up.
so you are playing the same 4 notes, slow… then fast. And usually I will play the 8th notes for a longer while, locking in the feel, and then double time it to sixteenth notes. It seems to lock it in for me better.
I do this with a metronome… where the metronome plays 8th notes.
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The thing is, getting high speeds is really easy when you do it just for four notes. I’d much rather be able to string then coherently the way you’re able to do. I’ll give this a try and then report my results, the weird thing is if I chuck those notes in groups of five the 5th note comes out smoother and the 6th comes out wrong. The problem seens to be in the gaps between chunks.
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With that exercise you having to decelerate to a controlled motion in time, but it is the exact same motion… I usually find that once I can do this comfortably, then I can go for 8 16th notes, and then back to 8ths to rest but keep the mechanic going. Eventually I get to the point I can do the 16ths for extended times before landing in the 8th note resting comfort.
The thing I like about this, is you are doing the same mechanic, and when you slow down you can assess the movement for a while, and then hit it again fast.
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