The Power of Slow Practice: How Slowing Down Can Help You Master the Piano 

I've made the mistake of learning incorrect habits and they're even harder to erase. Slow playing to begin. Always!

I am so guilty of not practicing slowly. When I do, improvement is evident. Thank you for reminding! Going to do or right now.

I recently heard the phrase "practice makes permanent" which is just a way to underline what is being said here. Take your sweet time, savor the process, focus on the moment, be aware of what it is you are trying to do. Thank You for this!

Your commitment to teaching and sharing so much of your training & experience is incredibly helpful. As an older man taking up piano considerably late in life, I was uncertain how well or whether I could do it. Your rich content and calm, encouraging style of teaching have made learning piano albeit slowly a reality. Thanks so much for sharing a part of your life with us here.

It feels like listening to an extremely informative yet caring podcast. Thank you so much.

I'm finally convinced. You convinced me today I should be doing more slow practice. Thank you

thanks so much for this video, I’m more than halfway through Ballade No. 1 by Chopin I’ll be incorporating this into my practice!!

Thanks and greetings from Brazil

This was very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks. I do slow practice but not often enough. I’ve been thinking that it will help me learn to play more connectedly from measure to measure. I’ve noticed over the ten months I’ve played that my maximum tempo for playing anything has gradually increased, and I bet that if I didn’t worry about how below the suggested tempo I sometimes play (110 bpm is my current max), I’d probably make better progress.

You are great, thank you very much! My student has been following me since 9 and now she is a terrible teenager at her 15. She is on the final stage which she has to get done her grade 8 exam recording however none of my instructions she listened, witch long finger nails, creative fingerings, consistent incorrect notes, freely tempo…I am desperate. Last time I saw her she even lost her marbles, crying and yelled at me and saying she is not gonna waste anytime to practice slowly but also she says she can never compete this exam. 😭😢😩

You are a great teacher, many thanks for all your videos.

I love your content! It's helping a lot and very insightful. Thank you!

Thank you for this advise, Im Sure, IT works and will Help me...😺

Miss, thank you so much for this video. I find your tips to be GREAT because you've "connected the dots" and "erased some question marks" in my mind. My teacher, who is a great pianist and a very good teacher is always getting on my case about not playing slow enough. I start off playing slow, but impulsively speed it up before I'm ready to??!! He mentions how Rachmaninoff and other great pianists, spoke about how slow practice was essential, however, he never "connected the dots" as you have! And everything you've stated make all the sense in the world to me! Thank you so much!

Excellent video. I practice slowly. Videos like yours reminds why it is important.

I’m frustrated with a piece I’m working on and doing slow practice. Slow practice definitely helps. Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 4. The broken octaves in between the call and response from RH to LH. I’m having to practice letting gravity do more of the work for me. This piece is a head scratcher and requires a light touch it seems.. it’ll be rewarding when it’s finally done.

Thank you ma'am for making this video showing the importance of slow practice and the many benefits accrued. Appreciation from London UK👍.

I always seem to want to play about 10% faster than the speed I can play everything correctly at. 😬But when I can force myself to play at what seems to be tortoise speed it helps my performance and my confidence. I like to play around with my practice pieces by not only playing them at different speeds but also playing them with improvised variations and even repeating certain measures over and over within the piece, then going on. Just "experimenting" with the practice piece or playing a simplified version as I am trying to learn it . I like the saying, "Amateurs practice until they can play it right, professionals practice until they can't play it wrong." 🙂

Very good. I liked the point about slow enabling you to finish feeling positive. I learned this from Shura Cherkassky.

👍What should be the metronome tempo for slow practicing?

Great advice. And usefully detailed. Thanks! So for an ethereal kind of piece at 72 bpm (Rachmaninoff prelude Op23#1, Largo) half speed would feel very lethargic. What bpm might you aim at for a general slow run through?

Awesome video!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Very clear, thank you.

Perfect.thak you❤

Great vid.

If you can't play it without making a mistake you aren't playing slow enough. I'm a guitarist not a pianist and a teacher and I talk about this with my students. Play slow and speed comes. It is not just about the mechanics, we are also forming a correct sound of the music, not one filled with errors. This is particularly important when working without recorded versions of what we are trying to play because the reality is, if you can't hear it, if you don't know what it sounds like, you can't play it.

Pro tip: watch this video at 0.25x speed

I love slow practice, for all the reasons you mention. The only trouble I think can happen is if you decide to do only slow practice for a long time and try to inch your way up to tempo with a metronome. I think that when you do that, you can engrain movements that only work at slow tempos and you just cannot get up to speed in the end. So I like to spend a little while learning notes with slow practice, then quickly try to speed up to or above final tempo in very short fragments, just a measure or two, then hook up the fragments. I don't worry if I make some slips or mistakes, because I find that a little repetition at fast tempo lets the hands figure things out on their own. Then, once my hands know what sort of movements they are aiming at for full tempo, I go back and intersperse lots of slow practice to get the calm and control you are talking about. The few times I tried to get a piece up to tempo by playing so slowly that I never ever made a mistake and just gradually upping the tempo metronome click by metronome click, I never really liked the final result, maybe because it was more like speed walking than running. I think it helps to jump around between lots of different tempos, and it's OK to play fast and sloppy a few times in the process, as long as you do not just mindlessly do it again and again without ever cleaning up at slow tempo.

Makasih Kak ilmunya salam kenal nich🙋👌👍🤩

Practicing slow helps a lot! But what about people who hear a song (pop music usually) for the first time and start playing it flawlessly in one shot? Is our take away that the music is easy enough for them so they don't even need to practice? Can this be achieved through training? Because it would be like a training about 'being able to play a song from the first time I hear on it's original speed and flawlessly', it goes against first playing slowly. The motivation for being able to do that is so that we can gather friends, ask them to name a song, and not take more than a minute to play it on piano. Really interested in your comments regarding this ability!

South Park reference! Subscribed!

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

You are seriously beautiful....😍 Oh and the tips, I like the tips. They will surely help prepare me for my recital. Thank you

Do you look at your fingers while playing piano? I'm struggling to focus on the sheet music once I sort of know a section. I find myself trying to follow the notes on the page, but I'm not really interpreting them. Does that make sense?

I practice slow but thats only because im trying to play songs way above my grade...is that good or bad?

Did find this vid helpful, but an example at the piano would have been helpful. Esp musical playing at the slow tempo.

💥 You forgot to say that people need to play slow, but with a steady tempo. You should play very slow, but keeping the time is essential. If not, if you stop to read some chords and go faster on the easier parts, this is a complete recipe for disaster. 🎉❤

I ****ing HATE slow practice. My mind just turns COMPLETELY off whenever I practice this way. It isn't engaging or rewarding enough for me to continue and I end up not being able to play better anyway. I have no way around this.