PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE SLOW PRACTICE

The concept of practising slowly is simple enough: take a passage that’s giving you difficulty – then slow it down! There can’t be many proficient pianists out there who’ve not spent considerable time practising slowly, but there’s more to doing this efficiently than meets the eye. I’ll start by looking at some of the more obvious advantages of practising slowly, and then turn to the potential pitfalls of over-relying on it to the exclusion of other approaches.

There can be little doubt that slow practising helps pianists enormously. Our brains need time to digest, absorb and ingrain the complexities of what we are learning. Allowing ourselves to play too quickly too soon increases the risk of learning incorrectly – this could mean ingraining