Abstract
One of the most popular rehearsal strategies for middle school and high school orchestras is to play slower than the performance tempo. Teachers often rehearse challenging passages extensively at a slower tempo, and in some cases, they may rehearse an entire piece under tempo until they feel that students are ready to increase the speed. We can probably all think of times when we heard a student hastily playing through a piece, not bothering to stop and fix errors, and we quickly and instinctively advised them to slow it down. More broadly, one study finds that 99.45 percent of classical musicians of varying expertise use slow practice (Allingham and Wöllner 2022). The more widespread and instinctive an approach is, the more useful it can be to question its effectiveness. Slow practice undoubtedly has its benefits, and many of the most proficient musicians resort to it as a common practice strategy, but is it always the best strategy?
Despite its widespread usage, many musicians and music educators have long questioned the benefits of slow practice. In 1940, music psychologist and educator Jacob Kwalwasser (1940, 52) asserted, “I can see so little value in slow practice that it is disturbing to think that so few educators have ever expressed themselves unfavorably on the subject.” More recently, violinist Martin Wulfhorst (2012, 45) has critiqued the common strategy of starting under tempo and gradually speeding up with a metronome, claiming, “Eventually this strategy is likely to lead to your goal, but often it takes too long and produces uneven results.” Bassist Jeff Bradetich (2009, 146) elaborates, “One of the other major problems with slow practice is that it forces the player to play in a way, especially with the bow, that does not necessarily emulate the final product.” Similarly, violinist and conductor Robert Gerle (1983, 14) argues that basically, a piece practised slower than its proper tempo is a different piece. The only way to get a true idea of a piece and its problems is to play it in its performance tempo, even in the early stages of learning.
As someone who faithfully adhered to the slow practice ritual and found satisfying results with it, I remember feeling skeptical and even a little shocked the first time I heard these ideas. However, after many years of trying this alternative approach in my violin playing and orchestra teaching, I now feel confident that practicing at performance tempo can be a much more efficient way of learning music, even for young ensembles. In this article, I will examine some of the physical and mental problems with playing under tempo and then provide alternative approaches aimed especially at ensemble rehearsals.
Untransferable Motions
The problems with slower practicing or rehearsing become more obvious the longer we work under tempo. We can probably all think of a time when we worked on a piece under tempo extensively, and then when we decided to start bringing it up to tempo, it was not as simple as just gradually bumping up the speed on the metronome. There was likely a whole new set of problems to sort out that we did not encounter during the slower practicing. It can feel as if we hit a roadblock at a certain point on the metronome, because many of the intricate motions used at slower speeds will no longer work at performance tempo.
While it is true that we learn to walk before we can run, improving one’s walking skills is not a good way to improve at running because the two skills involve fundamentally different motions. In a similar way, string playing uses motor skills that fundamentally change at different speeds. Playing something faster is more complicated than just performing all of the required motions more quickly. Many of the motions we would use at a slower tempo are what I consider untransferable motions, meaning they cannot simply be transferred from slow to fast because the motion itself must change. A straightforward example of an untransferable motion is playing a slow bow stroke on the string when it will end up off the string at performance tempo. As Bradetich (2009, 146) points out, if the fourth movement of Mozart Symphony #35 is played at mm=60 it will be impossible to practice with the same bow stroke as called for in the piece as it will tend to be played long and totally on the string.
The only way to find the best bow stroke for this music and refine it is to try it up to tempo.
Some teachers rightly encourage students to try to play in a way that resembles a faster tempo when practicing slowly, effectively starting with motions that will hopefully be transferable to a faster tempo. While this can work well with some more obvious techniques, like using less bow or bouncing it, it would be nearly impossible to mimic all of the subtle motions required at a faster tempo, especially when working in a large ensemble. Nuances like left-hand finger angles and rebounds and right-hand preparations for string crossings all contribute to a different feeling at a slower tempo, making the journey to performance tempo that much more complicated.
Mental Gaps
In addition to the mechanical differences, there is also a significant gap between how the brain works during slow practice and how it works at performance tempo. Extra work is needed to transition our brain from slow mode to fast mode, but that extra work is sometimes unnecessary, and we could have simply worked mostly in fast mode to begin with. Music has both ordinal structure (pitch accuracy) and temporal structure (the timing of those pitches), and we process these structures in different parts of the brain (Schubotz and von Cramon 2001a, 2001b; Ullén and Bengtsson 2003). Slowing music down effectively turns the task into much more of an ordinal one, leaving out the temporal aspect until we choose to increase the tempo. However, brain research reveals flaws in this approach and suggests we might learn more efficiently if we keep the temporal and ordinal aspects combined. In one study examining the learning of a pattern of finger movements, some participants had to move their fingers at a constant rate on a computer keyboard, while other participants had to hit the same keys but with a particular rhythm. While we might think of the rhythm as an extra challenge that would interfere with learning the pattern, the participants working with rhythm actually learned the pattern much more quickly than the others (O’Reilly et al. 2008). Though the neurological reasons are not entirely clear yet, perhaps the temporal aspect of a task is an important tool for learning that should not be removed.
In fact, if we must choose between focusing on accuracy or speed, studies of young athletes actually suggest speed would be better. Beginning hockey players who focused only on the speed of their shots ended up being at least as accurate as those who focused only on accuracy (Belkin and Eliot 1997). Young softball players who focused on speed threw not only faster, but also with better technique than those who focused on accuracy (Engelhorn 1997).
Aside from these studies, we all know from experience how differently our minds work with fast playing compared to slow playing. We read and experience the notes more in groups than individual notes, and the motions feel much more automatic. Why not start with that mode of thinking to begin with? Starting at performance tempo would have the added benefit of avoiding the many roadblocks caused by untransferable motions, as well. The big question this raises is how to start at performance tempo without completely falling apart, especially in a middle school or high school ensemble.
Strategies for Rehearsing at Performance Tempo
First and foremost, rehearsing effectively at performance tempo does not mean playing through large sections mindlessly and skipping over mistakes. Faster practice can still be very careful and methodical, engaging intense listening and stopping as necessary to fix errors. Assuming the repertoire is at the appropriate difficulty level for the students, there are many strategies for rehearsing even the more challenging parts up to tempo from the start. Instead of slowing down, we can stay at performance tempo but limit the challenge in other ways that are less destructive to our progress. Essentially, we can simply focus on a smaller number of notes or tasks at a time at performance tempo. We can then put these segments together (segmented practice or chunking or looping) or start with one segment and gradually add more and more notes to it (additive practice or chaining). The following strategies are practical applications of these concepts in middle school and high school orchestra rehearsals. Figure 1 illustrates how each strategy might be used in mm. 39–40 of the cello/bass part in Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik (see Figure 1; Mozart 1883).
Six alternatives to slowing it down.
Group Loop
One simple strategy for working through challenging sections at performance tempo is to loop small, manageable sections of the music. The ensemble keeps repeating a few measures together until the teacher says to stop. To avoid mindless repetition, add a measure of rest at the end of each iteration, allowing you or the students to interject suggestions based on what you hear and see from walking around the room. Interjections like these can often go a long way when looping passages up to tempo: “Half the amount of bow,” “Half the amount of effort,” “Release any tension in your right shoulder,” “Every note clean,” “Each time more expressive than the last,” “C-sharps in tune,” and so on.
Independent Loop
Looping can also happen more at the individual level within an ensemble. Decide on a short segment length, like two beats, and have the ensemble loop that segment at the beginning of the challenging excerpt, ideally with a metronome on at performance tempo. Each student continues to repeat that segment until they feel ready to move on to the next two-beat segment. Of course, some students will move on before others. This strategy can be useful for especially challenging passages or whenever you want the students to control their progress more. Try to choose segment lengths that prevent backward bowings, but even if the bowings are incorrect in a few places, the benefits usually outweigh the slight awkwardness. If the challenging section only applies to one instrument section, the rest of the group could potentially continue playing without any looping, with everyone following the metronome.
Group Chain
With chaining, notes are also repeated in segments to build proficiency, but the difference here is that the segments get longer each time, like adding links to a chain. Chaining can easily be done with the whole group through call and response, led by the teacher or a confident student. The leader plays a short segment followed by a “ready, go,” prompting the group to echo that segment. The call and response on that segment can continue until the leader is happy with the sound, at which point they play a slightly longer segment for the group to echo. Even though the leader would be playing a single instrument part, the whole group can still respond by playing their own parts, requiring everyone to see how their part fits with the rhythms of the challenging part. For further refinement, the section leader can use this strategy during student-led sectionals.
Independent Chain
To make chaining more student-centered, decide on a small number of measures to focus on. Set the metronome at performance tempo and have everyone play as much as they can with excellent intonation, tone, rhythm, etc., even if it is just the first two or three notes, and then rest for the remainder of that segment. At the end of the segment, everyone immediately repeats back to the beginning of the segment, always trying to add at least one more note if feasible. It can help to use a programmable metronome that always accents the first beat at the beginning of the segment. With this strategy, the students who add more notes become the models for the others in their section to follow. The teacher is also free to walk around, finding the students playing fewer notes and using their silences to interject suggestions.
Brief Pauses
This practice strategy clumps the music into smaller segments but moves through the piece more quickly than looping or chaining. The downside is that it only works with one instrument section at a time, or multiple sections if they share the same rhythm. The students play their notes in quick succession, but every so often, they add a brief pause. Each pause allows time to mentally prepare for the next group of fast notes. For example, announcing and demonstrating “one-plus-one” would mean playing one slow note followed by one fast note, or vice versa, and continuing that pattern through the challenging section. “One-plus-two” would mean one slow note followed by two fast notes, and so on. The strategy is easiest when each slow note lands on a beat. The slow note can be played long or short, though it probably will be most helpful to match the style of the piece. The fast notes should be performance tempo or possibly faster, allowing more notes to be felt as a unit.
Task Breakdown
Aside from limiting the number of notes to focus on, fast music can also be tackled by limiting the number of tasks to focus on. This approach is especially useful when the passage has many challenging tasks or elements besides just the sequence of pitches, like rhythms, dynamics, and musical challenges. The ensemble plays through the challenging passage up to tempo several times but only focuses on one task at a time. For rhythmic challenges, this may mean playing the passage on a single pitch or air bowing. For dynamics, it could mean playing on a single pitch while exaggerating dynamics. Bowing challenges like spiccato or string crossings could involve playing the same strings but without the left hand. Musical challenges can provide creative opportunities like playing as expressively as possible on open strings only or focusing only on the bowing lanes or vibrato. Depending on the difficulty, the ensemble could add on a new task each time or just shift focus to a different task each time.
The Case for Slowing It Down
Of course, slow and fast practice are not mutually exclusive, and there are still benefits to be gained from occasional slow practice. Every advocate of faster practice I have come across also recommends at least some slow practice, but it is important to know its limitations and to use it purposefully rather than habitually. There will undoubtedly be instances when asking a young orchestra to loop four measures up to tempo leads to wrong notes, unconfident tone, and incorrect rhythms with no noticeable improvement. In these cases, there are simply too many challenges for the students to think about in the short amount of time allowed with faster playing. We can temporarily remove some of those challenges during rehearsal, as with the task breakdown strategy. I have argued that tempo is not one of those challenges to remove because of how powerfully it can distort our physical and mental approach to the music, but briefly sacrificing tempo can still be valuable for giving us more time to think and drawing our attention to issues we might not otherwise have noticed. Trombonist Jason Sulliman, who advocates for fast practice, additionally points out that slowing down is still practically essential when trying to “replace a physical habit” (Kageyama 2020, 18:58). We sometimes need to slow down to get out of auto-pilot and become more consciously aware of problematic habits like faulty bow holds or wrong notes.
Some strategies can help minimize the drawbacks of slow rehearsing by maintaining some of the feel of performance tempo. When working under tempo, the motions and thinking should resemble performance tempo as much as possible. For example, the bow should be used in the same way, the left-hand fingers should stay close to the string, and students should try to feel larger beat groupings. If you are conducting, keeping the beat pattern the same can help in this regard. Alternating between slow attempts and fast attempts can also help with staying in touch with the performance tempo. In fact, research suggests this alternation approach may bring you to accurate playing at performance tempo sooner than just starting slowly and gradually speeding up (Donald 1997). If it takes several rehearsals just to get to a point where students can attempt a passage up to tempo, or if there are many passages throughout the piece requiring slower work, then the piece may just be beyond the students’ abilities. Rehearsals on this kind of music tend to get bogged down with tedious motor skill development, taking away from the more enjoyable and fulfilling musical experiences that could occur on music within their abilities.
“Using slow practice as a default rehearsal strategy was one of those habits for me, and rethinking it has certainly led to improvements in my own teaching and playing.”
Sight reading is another instance where playing under tempo often feels necessary, but doing so can initiate problematic habits both physically and mentally that will make it harder to transition to performance tempo. A run-through of a new piece at performance tempo will always be full of problems, but striving for performance tempo from the beginning is like starting with a more accurate blueprint that will better guide all future work. This run-through up to tempo should be possible if the repertoire is at the right level and students prepare with effective sight-reading strategies, like visually scanning the part, air bowing, counting, adding marks to prevent problems, and so on.
Just as students can easily form problematic playing habits without realizing it, so too can teachers form problematic teaching habits over time. Using slow practice as a default rehearsal strategy was one of those habits for me, and rethinking it has certainly led to improvements in my own teaching and playing. The next time you rehearse a challenging passage, consider setting aside the slow-practice mantra and finding ways to rehearse it at performance tempo. The sounds might not be pretty at first, but after a few patient attempts with the right strategies, the results may surprise you.
Footnotes
Paul Trapkus (