Recently a student said this when he tried to play Rieding’s Violin Concerto in A minor. He desperately tried to increase speed to original tempo and failed.
His problems were not only the lack of sufficient practise with this particular piece. He was too slow in general.
How can we increase our basic speed?
There are some really excellent exercises around, I’ll show show you the best one I’ve seen so far. Take a look at this:
The last bar will be a bit tricky at the beginning but after some days it will get easier.
Then we do the second exercise:
Wenn you did it, increase speed in small steps until you reached 60 bpm again. With four versions.
Let’s go to the third exercise:
OK, that’s a hard one again. Practise it as you did it with the previous versions.
As you can see we proceed mathematically. Here is the complete pattern:
1 – 2 – 3 – 4
1 – 2 – 4 – 3
1 – 3 – 2 – 4
1 – 3 – 4 – 2
1 – 4 – 2 – 3
1 – 4 – 3 – 2
The last one is pretty easy again.
Let’s return to the basics. You should practise all six patterns regularly. Best would be – do it daily. It takes you only a few minutes, and that’s worth it!
Always use a metronome for this exercise. It’s almost impossible to cheat with a metronome. And don’t forget, you would cheat yourself!
The first days will be hard, perhaps even frustrating. You should know that. Give your brain the chance to develop the synapses, and that takes it’s time. But after a while you’ll greatly improve your basic speed. You’ll need less time to play new pieces and you’ll do it much faster.
And above all – you won’t have to sacrifice your precision and intonation.
Have fun practising!
Technorati Tags: Left Hand, Speed
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great tips here– I am a slow player and mostly focus on tone rather than technical “noodles,” so I can never really play anything very fast. However, thanks for the advice, I will give it a shot!
Thanks for your comment, Rob.
It’s a longer process that will take it’s time and it can be pretty frustrating in the beginning. But on the long run you’ll definitely increase your speed and precision.
Better give it more shots…
When you focus mainly on tone the upcoming series about vibrato might be interesting for you. As soon as I finished the shifts I’ll start with it.
Have fun!
Interesting exercises and worth a try. I was always told to play as slowly as possible, so when we formed an orchestra it quickly became apparent that a lot of the classical fast movements are set at about mm=132. They sound like funeral marches much under 120.
I have tried the cliche “set the metronome and increase the speed slowly method”. The problem is I always top out at about mm=110 for a lot of passages. The “scale” like notes are OK at 132 but my stumbling point is always when the string crossings alternate (e.g. see measure 44 in the 4th movement of the Haydn Surpirse Symphony). Spending a lot of time with hand position, posture etc helps but I still have a barrier at about 110. Not sure if others experience this after a lot of practice. I have written out some of my own exercises for this problem but am always seeking others.
Thanks,
Fritz
Another great tips on how to play the violin faster. This post is really detailed on how violinists can practice to develop speed in their playing.