Kotsu Kotsu

This entire post is pretty much paraphrased from my awesome piano teacher, David Leonhardt . Most people, when they begin to play with a metronome, start by setting the metronome to slow. They practice until they are proficient at that speed, then they gradually speed up the metronome. Very seldom do people start the metronome at the speed they would like to play the tune, and then step by step, slow the metronome down . This is kind of like a Tai Chi of music. When you slow the music down to the point where you have big gaps between the chords or notes you have to play, a lot of really interesting things happen. You can no longer play "automatically." It's just too slow. You actually have to know what you're going to do next It's a great focus practice, because, oddly, you're going so slowly that it's easy to lose track from one chord to the next You are going slowly enough to expose your (beneficial and not-so-beneficial) thought processes...

When I use my Amazing Slow Downer to slow down the music of my favorite musicians, I can take the most rip-roaring tune to half speed and find that each note is precisely on the beat. There are a couple of lessons here for all of us: 1. If you're not practicing with a metronome, you're not practicing.  2. If you can't play it slow, you'll never play it fast. I posted this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and got a lot of response from people saying they wished the others they play with would listen to my words. Well, since you can't control others till you control yourself (one of my Sensei's favorite aphorisms), I decided to approach my metronome with renewed enthusiasm. Stage 1 of practice with the metronome is of course to make sure you don't generally slow down or speed up, or both. I have to say that was the goal my first 2 years of practice with a metronome. A lot of people go this far and they think "OK, done practicing with t...