Hello,

I am learning a study and at the top it says each crotchet is 102. The piece is mostly semi quavers so I have to play four notes for every click. That is never going to happen. The best I can do it and still play the right notes is setting the metronome to 160 and playing a semiquaver for each click. I think that works out to less than half the speed! I am feeling a bit gutted that I seem to have come to a point in my flute playing where it seems like I can't progress any further.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on myself...

When your teacher gives you a new piece of music, how long does it take you to be able to play it properly? It took me a week just to learn the notes! There a lot of accidentals and E#s which I get confused with. I know the theory but when I am playing, my brain can't process the notes quick enough!

Is it possible I have reached a certain standard and will never get any better or is this something to power through?

LearnerFlute x

It sounds as though you've just hit a wall- don't worry- it doesn't mean you won't progress!! I've had so many times like this- suddenly it will just click, and you'll feel so much better about it

Playing fast is something that needs to be built up, it won't just happen unfortunately- I wish it did! Have you tried playing it through slowly to make sure there are no 'blips' when you're moving between notes? My teachers have always suggested splitting difficult passages up, and playing the notes in various dotted rhythms (dotted quaver, semiquaver/ semiquaver, dotted quaver/ a mix of the two) if that makes sense to you and I find that it really helps to get your fingers moving.

Sometimes it takes a long time to get a piece up to speed, but you need to make sure that you can play it at a slower tempo before you try to increase the tempo, or it won't be as neat and you'll struggle more

I think that it's very unlikely that you're going to stay at this standard forever if you keep working, everyone goes through these times, but when you get through them, you often feel as though you've improved substantially

Hope this helps x

Sorry to read about you feeling down. And I often feel the same. Just recently I found out, that putting the metronome to a higher speed than 80 bpm for a quaver gets me into panicking. One thing you can do is play it very slow and try to focus on the finger movements that need to be made to produce each single note. Try to save them in your had (and after a while they will be saved in your body).
And you can try to find out, why there is a wall you hit. Take a careful look on each aspect of your playing this study (embouchure, finger movement, diaphragm work, jaw movement...) try to get used to every aspect and keep it in mind.
And don't let the idea of not being able to play fast settle down in your brain.

I managed to speed up a piece from 80 bpm to 88 bpm within one practise session by only trying to think I can play fast.

And don't loose patience. There a so many aspects that have to work together to play a piece it takes a while to feel secure with them all.

What is the piece? Metronome marks are sometimes an editorial addition - sometimes added by an editor with a tenuous grip on reality.

You probably are being too hard on yourself. Concentrate on playing the piece at a realistic speed for you that allows you to keep it clean and even. You will probably find it gets faster as you stop concentrating on speed. Identify the hardest part of the piece and set your speed according to how you can play that part.

Depending on the piece you can often make it seem faster by keeping it light and bouncy.

Good luck.

Months


The more you progress the longer it will take you to learn a piece - this is perfectly normal.

It is called Goodouterie (I think). It is an unaccompanied flute study.

Let's be honest, crotchet = 102 is pretty brisk - you've got lots of semi-quavers.

I have the same issues with the viol and cello - I'm just not used to playing passages which are that rapid (I have no problem wading through fistfuls of 'orrible roulades singing Handel or Bach).

As others have said - patience and a steady attack at it - there's a lot of co-ordination needed, some of it very subtle. Whilst with strings you've got to worry about bowing, fingering, and synchronisation, I'm sure flute has its own issues.

I am not sure if I can help since I don't know where you stand in your studies. But from your comment that you already have trouble reading the many accidentals that don't apply to the key signatures, my guess is, that you try to achieve something in speed where you already lack security when it comes to reading.

I am currently in the process of speeding up. However, I just got my last accidentals and up to 6 key signature signs secure. I can almost securely do 80 bmp from sight on a crotchet with semiquavers and some odd demisemiquavers on a beat when they are just spread nicely in between. But when it comes to 96 (which is close to your 102), I have to really know the piece already quite well, and even better before I speed up to 116 or 120.

So, my advise would be that you practice first reading the notes better which you can do with etude practice. If you have done an etude and can play it securely including the accidentals, you can do the next and check with the new one, where you still get stuck by playing from (first) sight still with accidentals. Before you are not secure with that, I would really recommend, you stay below 80 bpm.

The other thing is that it doesn't help you to speed up when you loose control over quality. A staccato at 120 bmp has to sound just as lovely and nice as a staccato at 80. And when your muscles aren't properly trained, you won't be able to procure that. For the lifting of the fingers applies the same.

You cannot rush things. Before you get where you most likely want to be, it takes you hours and hours of very concentrated and focused practice. And when you are there, you still find new things to the same topic. That all results into quality. I guess, the proverb quality over quantity can be translated into quality over speed when it comes to music!

Remind youself, a long way begins with lots of very tiny steps.

It may help if I put the piece you are playing in context: it is a Grade 6 level solo piece by Mike Mower (the title Goodouterie is a pun on the fact that it is an inversion of the famous Badinerie from the JSB Suite in B minor).

A piece of this length and level is DipABRSM Quick Study equivalent - in other words a diploma candidate might expect to make a reasonable job of it after five minutes. If you are not at that level it will take much longer to get the notes sorted, so be kind to yourself.

I would suggest working on it a phrase at a time, gradually notching up the tempo (one metronome notch at a time). Over the course of a few days you should find the tempo of the whole piece increases slightly.

I am grade 4 level. This makes me feel much better. Thank you xx

Another way is starting from a speed you can comfortably play do 5 times at that tempo, move the metronome up 3 and play once then down 2 and play 5 times. Keep going until you get there....not all in one day.

[quote name='LearnerFlute' date='Jul 9 2012, 09:30 AM' post=

When your teacher gives you a new piece of music, how long does it take you to be able to play it properly? It took me a week just to learn the notes! There a lot of accidentals and E#s which I get confused with. I know the theory but when I am playing, my brain can't process the notes quick enough!

Is it possible I have reached a certain standard and will never get any better or is this something to power through.

LearnerFlute x
[/quote]

This despondant feeling arrives very regularly I find! Usually shortly after the euphoria of starting on a new piece, whether it's flute or piano. It may apply to the whole piece or just a few twiddly bits that I can't seem to break through. Rather than stressing out on it or trying to power through as you say, I find it's better to try to take a relaxed attitude, concentrate on playing little bits with clean fingering and beautiful tone; this may be just negotiating a large interval or playing one bar of the semiquavers as slowly and beautifully as you can, repeating many times in a very relaxed way and just enjoying the sound, maybe varying the rhythms or the dynamics, anything to avoid just pounding away trying to increase the speed straight away. Bit by bit it usually gets easier. Some pieces you just have to get as far as you can with and then just put away for a while.
Jennifer Cluff in her blogspot (jennifercluff.com) has a long article on How to learn Etudes which you might find helpful. She is so upbeat she makes you feel anything is possible!
(if it's any consolation my teacher gave me Donjon's Etude no 4 A min a few weeks ago which has lots of leaps, changes of register and apparently nowhere to breathe. I had a good moan to her and she said, well that's the point of it isn't it! and suggested I practice it around 54 bpm and make it sound like music at that level. The only recording I found is somewhere over 110 .... )

Sometimes I yearn for the days before metronomes. In fact I yearn for the days before technology. The days before I could easily listen to Gudrun Heyens playing a piece I'm trying to learn, and before I had to realise how dreadful I sound when compared to one of the leading experts on the instrument, from one of the countries that do it best, who's dedicated the larger part of her life to perfecting her technique, in a recording that may even have been selected and edited to make sure it's really top notch. And it sounds much better than me, which under the circumstances really shouldn't be surprising, but is still depressing.

There must have been a time when many pieces would have been played in wildly different ways, by people of different levels of talent. The domestic amateur would perhaps have played slowly and simply, the travelling professional faster and with much more improvisation and interpretation. Both sorts of player would have enjoyed their music-making, and the amateur wouldn't have had to live up to professional standards all the while.

Of course we all want to get our music up to speed, and over-slow music can be unexciting and dull, but often I feel speed is a little over-valued. I once went to a performance of some Vivaldi in Germany. After they'd played the work very tidily but rather automatically, the conductor took a bow, smiled broadly, waved his baton, and as an encore, they played half the program again at three times the original speed. It was a phenomenal achievement and thoroughly unpleasant, a mish-mash of noise with no meaning or destination. It's put me off Vivaldi for life. I now flee shopping centres if buskers start playing the wretched man.

Good luck in your quest to get your piece up to the desired speed; you will get there, you obviously have determination. You sound like you have the good sense to hang on to musicality as you accelerate. That makes you a better musician than a certain chamber orchestra in Germany.

(crumbs, I'm turning into a grumpy old man. At this rate I'll have to start a blog).

Thank you for your suggestions. It has really helped me and I spent ages just trying each bar one at a time making sure I know the notes. I have decided to give up on speed for now and will try to concentrate on dynamics. I really enjoyed practicing last night. I played the difficult bits really slowly and got the articulation right.

Learnerflute xx

Maybe you're trying to process the notes one at a time rather than see the phrase shape as a whole? can you see familiar patterns in the music? bits of scales, arpeggios, thirds etc? Personally, I'd rather have a flowing performance with a few notes errors than a piece with all correct notes but with no soul!

Perhaps you could try different ways of looking at it?

I actually wrote a little article / blog things on being 'Stuck in a practice rut' called 'Digging deeper into practice' which you might find useful (just scroll down the page); http://www.masquerade-music.co.uk/freemusic.html . It is a hands on article; you get the study and then you have to follow the steps. You may find something in there that you haven't thought of before maybe....

Best of luck, I'm sure you'll get there!