slowdown syndrome

[Jim Rowland]

I didn't see this covered in the listed topics. My little group consists of retired school teachers,all pretty much new to our instruments. When I learn a new mando piece,I keep at it until I can run through it at a respectable pace which would probably be described as medium fast. When I introduce it to the other three,they all yell "slow down" in unison,but when I slow down to the speed they want,I can hardly struggle through the tune,makeing boo koo mistakes. What is happening here? I've notice pros on some instruction tapes having trouble finding notes they just played at warp speed on the song demo when they slow down to instruction speed.
Jim

[jmcgann]

To play at any particular tempo, you have to spend a lot of time there. Everyone is good at playing in a particular "pocket", but few without working on it can play fluently at all tempos.

I might suggest you may not know the tune as well as you think you do if you can't play it slowly...are you playing each note clean at the faster speed? If not, practice slowly, with good groove, and then work the tempo up. Work witha metronome to keep honest. Don't give up after 10 minutes, and don't settle for BS. To really play music well, you need strong focus and determination.

Playing slow in good time is as hard as playing fast in good time. The people making instructional tapes probably never practice slowly anymore, but that doesn't mean they didn't at one time!

[Dfyngravity]

Playing at slows speeds and messing up? It's a tendency that happens to everyone. What happens?, well what usually happens is that you are playing slow enough for your brain to really truely think about every note that is come up. Therefore you begin to think too much about the note and what should be played next and forget about playing it. It's just like when you are trying to remember something. You sit there and think about it hour after hour and you never can remember it. It's only when you forget about it and think about something esle when what you were previously trying to remember comes to you. Your brain is a very powerful tool, yet in many ways it is still undeveloped so you just have to train it. Practice at unbarably slow speeds with a metronome and hum the melody while doing so. You'll actually find that your speed will increase by doing this too. What you are really doing is teaching your brain how to think about what you are playing and at the same time it is telling your right and left hand what to do and timing them together. So if your brain has a hard time doing this at slow speed how do think it will do at a high speed....the add nerves and pressure....but that's a whole other ball game there


In all, practice playing slow, and practice with the other people you play with at slow speeds...soon you'll be able to hear what everyone is playing and maybe even where they are going with their playing.

[Bertram Henze]

Everybody has that. I think the reason at the bottom of it is that different speeds are trained in different areas of the brain, so after playing fast for some time it feels like your fingers 'know' how to play, but you yourself don't. It is like trying to describe a route you drive every day to someone else - you will inevitably forget to mention a turn or some crossing. This is the brain's training economy at work, good for you, but without any use for others.

Do what the other posters said: start slow and beautiful and stay slow as long as possible.

I experienced a similar effect when singing on stage: after a while, I would split up and, standing beside the singer (my other self), I would muse about retuning after the next song, about what to do during the break, about how funny it was me standing there and singing and everybody listening... This way, for long stretches an apparently human singer would do the song like a robot without any need for mental guidance. Then all of a sudden that singer would ask me in my mind "what were those words of the next verse?" and I would ask back "how am I supposed to know?" and with a start we would rejoin and concentrate again.

Bottom line: it is good to train yourself for many circumstances (speeds, audiences, co-players) or else your perfection is easily derailed.

Bertram

[neal]

Stop thinking, use the force, young Luke.

There's some truth to that.

[Pete Martin]

What John said is spot on. You need to use a metronome and practice at all tempos. Your playing will improve a ton.

Start at say 30% of your intended eventual tempo, and go up one click or 3 to 5 beats per minute (bpm) each time on your metronome. Make sure each time playing slow is exact, just like you want it to sound fast. Best of luck.