Really Slow Practice Advice from Victor Bailey

 

This is an amazing video of Victor Bailey playing Coltrane’s Countdown solo. As amazing at that is...do not miss the amazing nugget of wisdom that Victor gave us in the comments for the video…

“The secret is to practice really slow. I transcribed this when I went to Berklee in 1979 so I’ve been working on it for 35 years.”

I have been experimenting with “really slow” practice and I can testify that it works but it does take an extreme amount of discipline for it to be effective. Here is what I learned going through the process.

First, you have to start at a tempo where you can play the music you are practicing perfect every time. (Tip: This tempo will much slower than you expect!) Every time means every time. Not every other time or once in a while. 

Second, you have to be critical of your playing. Playing it correctly means playing each note with the correct articulation, time, intonation, etc. Since the tempo is slow, it sounds simple but it is not easy. Ingraining the correct playing at a slow temp is key for this method to work.

Once you found your starting tempo, it is time to increase the tempo slowly. I found increasing one BPM each time I play the musical section correctly to be a powerful way to put in the repetitions. If I mess up, I drop a couple BPM and try again. I log my final tempo at the end of practice. The next day, I will start practicing at a tempo just below where I finished the previous day. That seems to work best for me.

I recently used this approach on a sonata I was learning. The section where I used slow practice was technical but with all the slow repetitions became very easy to play. Since the other, not as technical, section seemed like it would be easy to learn, especially after I just finished the technical section, I tried to learn it at a moderate tempo. I hate to admit, but it took me longer to feel comfortable with the less technical section than it did with the technical. I wish I had used really slow practice on the whole piece!

How can you incorporate really slow practice today?