One of the tricks Ive worked with, is practicing something slow and chunked three times in a row perfectly. If you fail you start over, I.e. you may play it perfectly twice, but third time you fail, you start over.
Then once you do a small chunked section slowly perfectly (say 8 measures), you then try at regular speed until you do it three times perfectly.
Then you try playing two chunks (say 16 measures) the same way, constantly building.
For reference, I had a full ride to multiple universities for my music. So at least for me it worked well this way.
This is exactly the way I learned to practice riffs in jazz solos. You start at half speed, then slowly increase the speed, but only increase the speed if you can play the passage perfectly 3 times in a row at the current speed.
It works amazingly well. It also requires persistence and determination, but so does any type of skill that differentiates you from the average person.
I've never been in a university music program, but I've gotten lessons from various people who have, including the director of my college early music group, so I've been introduced to and have implemented quite a bit of that kind of practice.
For traditional music, you need to add variation by rhythmic emphasis as well. Just because something is called a "hornpipe" or a "fling," this doesn't entirely specify the rhythm, beyond the time signature that has been most often used to notate that particular kind of dance. (And it doesn't always even get you that far, actually.) The first note is probably emphasized by giving it a bit more time to varying degrees, and there might be other subtle changes to give it more or less or a different feeling of "swing." To be a very good traditional musician, one needs to listen to and adapt to these changes/variations.
'Chunking down' a piece is pretty much the only way I've managed to learn some harder pieces, at least by my regular-guy standards e.g. Rach Prelude in C sharp minor. That last one was particularly hard as I'm a terrible sight reader, and there's about two pages where you're playing 10 notes every half-beat.
But I think GP has a point about the dangers of this approach (even though it's unavoidable I think). It sometimes results in noticeable 'seams' in an otherwise fluent performance. You can occasionally spot these 'seams' even in performances by world-class concert pianists (though this is rare). I find it weirdly reassuring: no matter how talented you are, those first few days of practising a new piece will always be a tedious grind.
there's about two pages where you're playing 10 notes every half-beat.
There's a bit of stuff in classical music that strikes me as being there so that musicians can show off their speed. It's one of the things that even the lowest common denominator audience can relate to, so of course this happens!
It sometimes results in noticeable 'seams' in an otherwise fluent performance.
The way to avoid seams is to truly make the chunk yours, by being able to morph it in rhythm and time and introducing variation. By the time you can freely do that -- by the time it has become a plaything -- it is truly yours, and you can play it without seams. The problem for me with this and classical music, is that often I really don't care so much for the difficult segments. I'd rather play something beautiful, than something that shows me off.
There's a bit of stuff in classical music that strikes me as being there so that musicians can show off their speed. It's one of the things that even the lowest common denominator audience can relate to, so of course this happens!
Heh, agreed. Though I think the Rach Prelude was more designed to break piano strings :) (they're chords, some of which are marked 'sffff'... also looking at the sheet music it's actually 8 notes)
There seem to be a few etudes like you've described (Liszt comes to mind). I cannot for the life of me figure out what these composers were attempting to teach their students...
Absolutely! I learned to play a lot of fast runs of sixteenth notes by varying the rhythm. Effective and much more fun than starting slowly ticking up the metronome (although I do a lot of that too).
You may want to check out Cortot, who did a series on how to practice Chopin pieces, notably the notorious Etudes. One of the techniques he describes is varying either rhythm or accentuation. I tried especially the latter which works pretty well. But I am a bit unsure whether it is a genuine effect or a consequence that a practice a chunk more often if you do this.
You can avoid seams by learning overlapping (and varied-length) chunks. If you are working on 2-bar sized chunks, then make sure you also work on 4-bar and 8-bar sized chunks, and offset the chunks by half the chunk size.
E.g. if your chunks start at bars 1, 3, 5, 7, ..., then repeat with chunks starting at 2, 4, 6 , 8..., then scale up to larger-size chunks so that you always have multiple chunks than cover up a 'seam'.
Then once you do a small chunked section slowly perfectly (say 8 measures), you then try at regular speed until you do it three times perfectly.
Then you try playing two chunks (say 16 measures) the same way, constantly building.
For reference, I had a full ride to multiple universities for my music. So at least for me it worked well this way.