I have heard it said that it is good to practice pieces slowly. Then, increase speed over time. Along with this is added that if one tries to practice a piece up to speed immediately they will end up being sloppy playing the piece. This has to do with muscle memory is what had been said. Troy said regarding pick speed this is not true. If so, how should one practice a piece of complex music? What would be the generic steps that should be taken?
I donât know what complex music you mean, but for me something complex would be the head of âDonna Leeâ. In which case I would take it a section at a time and figure out which parts are challenging at tempo. I still start slow and build speed over the course of the time I practice it for the sake of the fretting hand.
But Iâd say the important thing is to isolate the parts that cause your picking hand trouble and try to figure out a way of playing them efficiently - a feeling of smoothness and ease should be there. If you can play a smooth and fast tremolo this can act as a kind of benchmark for the feeling youâre going after. I donât know what level or stage youâre at so all I can say is that a good thing would be to experiment and see what works i.e. feels smooth and fast and relatively easy.
I might add that I pick in a relatively idiosyncratic way and use economy pickingâŚ
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Hi, James,
I am fairly idiosyncratic as well. I classical fingerpick but also work with pick and thumbpick depending on the project.
I really find the work Troy has done to be very helpful for me and helped me find some clarity regarding my picking issues. I was curious if there was work regarding the interaction of the left hand and in regards to the coordination that might impact how I approach learning a piece. I am a very detail oriented guy and the way Troy breaks things down is just wonderful, very pragmatic, down to Earth, and therefore useful. âThanks, Mr Grady.
My take is, learn where the fingers go very slowly, then practice what you memorized at the slowest speed you can play in fast mode.
Think of it as if you were an athlete. Just walking is not taking you anywhere but there are different levels of sprinting. Go for the âslower sprintâ speed as your basic reference.
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I donât think thereâs a should in practice, but I think it helps to build a thought process and âunzipâ the general folder of practice into stages, e.g., reading, learning, rehearsing, accelerating. Sometimes we want to accelerate when we should be learning. Other times we need to accelerate before we feel like weâve âearned itâ. Sometimes it works fast in stages, but we havenât connected it all yet. Some steps will appear more than once in the process.
Not every stage will apply evenly to every bar or phrase of a song. There might be two bars that keep you screwing up, but you keep going back to the beginning of the song or section just to get tripped up in the same place. Thatâs when Iâd highlight one phrase and go learn>rehearse>accelerate, then reintegrate with the rest. You might like to go ahead and mark each section of a song with where youâre at, like youâre managing a project, or make a separate list for it.
Practicing the whole thing slow doesnât really give you an indication of where the mechanical tripping points are, so a brisk run-through before youâre ready is a quicker way of finding out whatâs what.
Another thing I donât see mentioned is that the progressive order of the song doesnât need to be the learning order. Take a song a lot of shredders would know - Black Star by Yngwie. Rather than start at bar one and progress in order, Iâd look at something like the main theme and learn that. Then, Iâd look at the variations of that theme in the 2nd and 3rd choruses, building on the work already done. Next, Iâd tackle the intro solo, the middle solo, then the outro solo. Lastly, the nylon string intro as a side quest before putting the song back together in order.
Thereâs no one way to do it, but there will be your way of doing it when you define your process.
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I like this idea, Chris:
â aâŚgo ahead and mark each section of a song with where youâre at, like youâre managing a project, or make a separate list for it.â
Thanks, Mr. Brooks. I think that is a fabulous idea. I am going to print a check mark sheet to monitor progress through bars of a piece. I can record practice and monitor progress in this manner. I love the pragmatic nature of that. Surprised I had not already been doing it. Ha. The lucid clarity appeals to me.
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The penny dropped for me right about there!
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