The Tempo You Should Be Practicing At

When it comes to practicing, should you practice slowly or fast?

The answer is both!

Slow practice takes a kind of patience and discipline that can be hard. It's painful, especially for impatient people like me!

Practicing slowly allows me to really analyze a passage. I hear intonation more accurately. I can check that my position changes are clean. I am more aware of the coordination between the two hands. 

In “normal” practicing, we often gloss over notes that we assume we have in hand only to stumble when we’re under pressure. Giving close attention to every note keeps us honest and helps connect us to what is actually going on. It also helps to cement the patterns into our brain.

But practicing slowly can also have some downsides if not done correctly. Sometimes, we start exaggerating our movements in a way that we can’t when we’re playing fast. We have to be careful not to create new patterns that actually make it HARDER to play at tempo. As much as possible, we want to imitate the physical motions that we’ll use when playing a passage up to speed. 

So when practicing slowly, pay attention to the efficiency of movement:

How high are your fingers being lifted off the string? What is the minimum amount of pressure you need to create a good sound? Are you using too much bow when practicing slowly?

Ultimately, I recommend alternating between practicing a passage slowly and fast. By going back and forth between tempos, I can gauge my accuracy at a faster tempo while making sure that my slow practice is mirroring the physical movements I make at the faster rate.

So switch up your practice habits. Be a tortoise AND a hare and you’ll find that your ability to efficiently and accurately learn notes will make you a winner!