Once your fingers know something, do you ever find they get ahead of themselves?

I'm playing a slow piece (Massenet's Meditation from Thais), and have been playing it for a while so it comes quite automatically. There are a few bits, mainly the quintuplets (such as in the 3rd bar the violin plays in), where my fingers just fall over each other too fast - I think this may be why everyone on Youtube seems to play these quintuplets unevenly! I can play them slowly in isolation but when I lead in to them they end up in a mess.

Any ideas?

Hi, yes I do seem to speed up, the things that my teacher point out to me is that I take my fingers of to quickly or I use less bow. I've never learned to count and play at the same time. In what way do you speed up?

I've been told that I should not have to count or use a metronome, the pulse should be in side me.

At 60 I'm not sure thats achievable, I can get by in an orchestra as I listen to the person next to me. i would be grateful for any advice on ths matter.

I find in cases like this it helps to practise without the bow but tapping the fingers smartly on the strings so that you can still hear the notes. It makes my fingers much more precise - works for me, anyway, in places where it is tension that is causing the rushing. Of course you need to have worked out the basic rhythm first.

I just started this piece on Tuesday and think it's absolutely lovely!!! It's a bit ahead of my technique at the moment so I'm just learning the various positions on the violin (I used to be a music teacher on a different instrument).

One way to slow your fingers is to break up the quintuplets into a group of three then two, and then the other way round; two then three (just while you're practising) and that breaks up the desire to rush them. Once you have that fluent you can just think the rhythms in your head and the notes will sound even and controlled.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Lottie I adore this piece - possibly my favourite ever.

Massenet's Meditation - Nicola Benedetti *shivers*

Thanks for that link, Rosie - it's a dream.

And to think I gave up my violin lessons over it at the tender age of 17! Although it wasn't so much over the piece, as a difference of opinion between my teacher and myself over the interpretation of a single bar! It has coloured my opinion of it ever since - and has haunted me ever since. So when my current violin tutor put it on the stand in a lesson a few years ago....

But perhaps I will re-learn it after all.

Sorry

That's really sad - I hope you can re-learn it and love it. Which bar, out of nosiness? I have a hunch!

Oooh *faints with delight*

... and Nicola plays it almost as well as I do!