My daughter's cello teacher has asked her to try and speed up the allegro parts of her exam piece this week but hasn't given her any ideas as to how to go about it.

The piece is secure (intonation, shifts and slurs) at around crotchet = 76 and her teacher is aiming eventually for crotchet = 90. The first allegro passage is all semi-quavers and the second almost all triplets (with the occasional crotchet). There are a couple of awkward shifts but what my daughter found hardest when learning it was respecting the slurs and separate bows and not ending up at the tip of the bow instead of the heel. The semi-quavers caused particular problems as there is almost every possible variation of slurs/separate notes imaginable.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to speed it up?

Maybe it seems over-simplified, but my suggestion would be the same in this situation as in all others:
Get it right first, then speed it up.
So, learn to play it accurately with all the right bowings etc first, then start to do it gradually faster.

Thsi is how my boys would do it. They would learn the piece slowly, as said above, to get all the notes bowings etc correct. Then using a metronome they play along with the metronome slowly at first then they gradually increase the speed. If they make a mistake they slow it down again. If they don't use a metronome there is a tendency to let the speed fluctuate. Sometimes they just use the metronome on the trickier passages. Then they make the piece their own without the metronome.

About a year ago my daughter had a piece that she had to get up to quite a fast speed on the cello for a performance. Various things helped. As suggested use a metronome control the speed. Identify the sections which are a problem at speed and practise them most. Go in small steps, if she can play at 140 but need to get to 160 then first work on getting to say 144. To get to 144 take small sections at a time and play perfectly at say 135 then in small steps move to 144 or stop at whatever speed there are problems and drop the speed back down. Then put together longer sections at 144. When 144 is secure then maybe go for 148 by working up small sections gradually from 140.

Don't spend all the practise sessions on the speed. Some sessions should be at whatever is the current comfortable speed working on other aspects. When my daughter is working on speed she always needs the metronome especially when she is doing slower practise because she tends to start racing too fast. Once the desired speed has been reached she weans herself off by using the metronome for a few clicks before she plays to remind herself but then plays without it.

If there are particular problem sections another "trick" is to work out exactly the string crossings and practise them. You will find that because of crossing from high to low and back and from down bow to up bow or vice versa some crossings the hand moves clockwise and some anticlockwise. It can help to really slowly work out what is going on and practise these on the open strings. Children playing at speed I think tend to focus on left hand problems but often it is the bow that needs to be sorted out. Once the notes are basically familiar it sometimes helps to tell them to focus on the bow getting it exactly in time and the left hand will follow.

Sorry it's such a ramble - hope some of it helps

I would also play with a metronome and gradually increase its speed. I would generally start at slightly below the speed I think I can play it perfectly at (This is still generally an over-estimate!). If I can play it without mistake 3 times in a row at this speed, I put the metronome up a notch. However, if I make a mistake, I put it down three notches. You will quickly find yourself on a speed that you can play it at comfortably. If you find yourself constantly falling back down the metronome, try increasing the number of times you have to get it right and/or how far you go down when it's wrong.

Carry on like that until you reach a speed you've decided on - that could be the speed you're aiming at, or something slightly above. I think the longest I ever spent on one section doing this was about 6 hours, which seems like a long time, but after that, I never played it wrong again!

The other thing I've found useful (this is mainly for recorder playing, so might not apply in quite the same way to strings) if I have a particularly tricky section that needs speeding up is to practise the transitions between each pair of notes really quickly, then each set of three, then four etc etc until you end up with the whole section all in one go. This way, you quickly find exactly where the problems are and it is also a lot easier to concentrate on exactly where your fingers are going at speed with only a couple of notes to think about.

For the semis, practise them with a different rythym eg a dotted one, scotch snap etc. This will change the speed that she has to do certain shifts so that when she does them normally, it will feel much easier. Also, another trick is to learn them backwards! ie start with the last set of semis, then go onto the last but one and put both sets together. This means that the last sections get practised the most and will therefore be most familiar, which is a nice feeling when you are getting to the end of a difficult section! Build the speed up slowly, as everyone else has suggested.

For the triplets, practise them split up in parts eg 1st triplet ending on the 1st note of the section, last note of the first triplet, 2nd triplet, ending on 1st note of the 3rd triplet. It all builds up a very sound muscle memory which in turn enables you to play the section faster with confidence.

Hope this helps!

Yes, doing dotted rhythms for speeding up even passages, every time. That way you speed up alternate notes - just remember to do it both ways.

To make the notes come quicker your daughter may need to use shorter bows too, depending on how the piece was taught to start with. She may have already been taught it using slow but shortish bows in preparation for playing it faster later - but if she is still using longer bows on each note, remind her that she will physically get to the next note quicker each time if she uses less bow on each note. As she shortens her bows ask her to make sure that she is keeping the up bows the same length as the down bows otherwise her fingering and bowing may start to get out of synch slightly.

Thanks Minstrel and Charlie Cello. I use dotted rhythms and overlapping triplets when speeding things up on the oboe but didn't know if it worked on stringed instruments as well and didn't want to try in case it got her totally confused.

And Minstrel you are right about the bow being a problem - she always seems to end up at the tip of the bow.

Dotting to speed up works really well for all stringed instruments because you are effectively speeding up half the notes/note changes at a time. So make sure she does it both ways - d'daaah, d'daaah as well as daaah-d' , daaaah-d' so that she's practiced 'both halves' as it were. Get her to work carefully with the bow to make sure that she uses equal bow lengths on both the longer and the shorter notes, so that she is having to speed up and shorten the bow on the shorter notes and save it on the longer ones, otherwise, yes, she will quickly run out of bow and arm.

Get her to warm up with a scale in the key of her piece, first straight notes, then using the dotted rhythms to get the hang of what she needs to do with her bow, before letting her loose on the piece.

Good luck, have fun!

Thanks for the bowing tips.

This being France, the only scale she has played on the cello is C major and the piece is in A major and A minor so I think I'll give the scale idea a miss.

P.S. I'm not sure that "fun" is the operative word. Part of the exam format is that the piece has to be learnt in a limited time and she has only three weeks left to speed it up and polish it. She has made huge progress - when she was given the piece I didn't think she'd ever be able to play it as it was much longer and much more difficult than anything she has ever played so far - but I will still be glad when it's all over.

Sorry, the 'fun' bit was tounge in cheek, I couldn't find an appropriate smiley. Good luck to you and your daughter.

I had no idea they don't teach scales in France either. Perhaps a holiday project for next summer then?

It seems that using a metronome to gradually rack up the speed is popular, but I don't like to do that at all, and do not find it effective. Much more successful (at least on piano) is to first learn to play the section very accurately and rhythmically at a slow speed. Then to make the leap to playing short sections (even a bar or two) at a much higher speed. By playing short enough bursts it is possible to retain accuracy. When the short sections become fluent and comfortable they can be strung together.

This would probably be a popular holiday project She knows 5 scales on the trombone and keeps saying it is a pity she doesn't know more on the cello and wondering when her trombone teacher will "let" her learn a new one. The other day she asked how many scales there were altogether and was enchanted at the idea of there being so many.



I don't know if this is just me or if it is true for other people but I use a metronome a lot to increase speed on the oboe and hardly ever on the piano.