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Jun 19, 20211 min read

Starting a piece from zero: This is what I do (Part 1)

This is WHAT I DO when I START A NEW PIECE, from zero šŸ


I made a video talking about it as many students wanted this topic in the channel so I hope it will be helpful to many other striving guitarists out there šŸ˜Š


Happy practicing!

Merce



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Unknown member
Jun 21, 2021

Excellent info.

For the intermediate player: I think we all fail to practice slowly!! And we practice the bits we're good at more than the difficult passages.

Seld-discipline is very hard - I find that when you learn a piece with a teacher, you are 'forced' to look at dynamics, and not avoid the difficult measures, and go slowly, and practice it (because you HAVE to perform it for the teacher).

When you are on your own, it is easy to let the discipline slip. I will flip through many pieces in a session, and play at speed - until I hit the hard part, where I muddle through, and then back to full speed.

I think that actually performingā€¦

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Unknown member
Jun 21, 2021
Replying to

Hi Deni! You are so very right with this. I think it's always a turning point and i takes a while maybe to 'adapt' when you are no longer a student and you have the practice structure given for you. If you don't have teacher anymore, maybe a good thing, aside from the recordings (which I totally love and I think it's immensely useful for a musician) would be to program some masterclasses with a Maestro you admire. It's always a great thing to keep ideas flowing and sometimes get through these practice bumps where we seem to get nowhere :) Thank you for the insightful comment!! Wish you a great week!

M*

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Unknown member
Jun 20, 2021

Hello Merce,

Thank you for this informative video. I have a follow up question. I am highly organized in learning a piece. I employ many of the disciplines you list (and more). However, once all the measures are learned and I begin the process of piecing the measures and phrases together, I do have difficulty building speed and fluency. Meaning. I can usually build and perform a piece at about 80 percent of the actual speed it should be performed, but I hit a speed wall. Recently, I have been employing the Dr. Molly Gebrian's interleaved speed increase technique with promising results. I am encouraged this technique could be the missing link from completing my learning to building the expā€¦


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Unknown member
Jun 21, 2021
Replying to

Hi Kari! That's a very good question! I guess different musicians have different strategies to build up speed. Most of people focus on the metronome number, but for myself I experienced this: If I focus on metronome numbers ONLY, I get to obsessed on raising the BPM number and it becomes like a race, like 'lets see if I can make it that fast!', but eventually, one hits a ceiling as well. Through years, I understood that if I want to make my speed ceiling a lot higher (this is just me, my hands and my approach) I need to practice it slowly for much longer while I focus on keeping my hands relaxed (thats super important!) as I play theā€¦

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