Re: Speed and accuracy

[John Santana <santana@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 6 Jun 1995, W Findley Griffiths wrote:

> I am a beginner who has been practicing for about four or five
> months now, and I have run into a problem getting those short 
> quick notes.  I am also having problems getting the right hole
> when attempting to play with any speed at all.  Anybody out there 
> know of some sort of exercise or something to work on that?  I

My advice: slow down.  Don't play anything faster than you can play 
accurately.  The speed comes with repetition and trying to play faster 
than you are able will only gain you a litte speed and cost you much in 
accuracy.  If anyone has a shortcut to speed,  I sure want to hear it.

To gain accuracy in hole to hole playing,  practice different intervals, 
especially octaves,  until you know where all the notes are.  If you have 
a chromatic,  pracitce scales in *melodic octaves*: C, C1, D, D1, E, E1, etc.

Again, with speed, the fastest you should play anything is only as fast 
as you can play the hardest parts;  don't play the easy parts fast, and 
then slow down for the hard parts.  Be patient, and practice, practice, 
practice.  Speed comes by itself (in spurts, don't be discouraged by long 
periods of little improvement).

I look forward to hearing what others have to say on this.  This advice 
is very *classically* based and applies to all instruments.

Let us know how you do.

JS