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...