Hello everyone, and welcome to my new series on how to practice. There are many students who are wonderful musicians but don't know what it is like to practice a piece in a way that is easy, and effective, and that is why they don't practice as much as they should. So, in order to fight that urge (and yes, being a high school student heading off to college soon, I know how boring it is to practice at times!) I am starting a series to help people fight that urge and hopefully make you or your student(s) better musicians.
The most common problem I see as a cellist is people don't want to take music under tempo. If the piece is written at a presto, we as students want to preform the piece at that tempo or faster. So my advice to you is to slow it down! You don't need to have the tempo mastered when you are sight reading the for the first time (unless your in a competition and you must). Reducing the tempo will save you not only you stress, but will make you a better musician. By slowing it down when your learning the piece, you get to see the notes that normally might miss, or miss the stylistics that you need for a piece.
Music is about more than just going through a piece and hitting every note and hitting every dynamic. You need to respect the style of the piece (you can't play something Baroque in the same style you would play something like Metallica!), and should respect articulations (you shouldn't play something legato that should be spiccato or vice versa!). Practicing slowly helps improve those qualities of the music and makes more effect on less time.
The best way to tell what tempo you should take a piece is slow it down to the point that it doesn't sound like what you've heard or what the tempo is written as. Run through the piece multiple times at that tempo and do the following: 1st focus on the note accuracy; make sure you can play every note at that tempo and the pitch is correct. 2nd focus on the articulations and bowing/breath markings and enforce those because they are there to make the piece easier or to sound a certain way that the composer likes. Finally focus on the stylistics if there is a style listed.
After you have completed that several times and feel comfortable speeding up, then do so slowly. Only make tempo jumps in increments of no more than 5 BPM (beats per minute). This insures you are sure you know what you are playing. This process is a long way, however the payoff is you are creating beautiful music. There will be times this will be cumbersome, annoying, and possibly time consuming but I promise this is the way professional musicians like to practice.
If you have any questions about the material in any of my other series, anything music or what to see something else, send me a message on Twitter (@sulliadm), over Facebook (sulliadm) Google+ (sulliadm) or send me an email. If you liked what you are reading, or want me to continue with the series share my articles. It would be greatly appreciated!
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