Playing with accuracy

[dougl122]

Not sure if accuracy is the word that I'm looking for, but I'm hoping for some exercise suggestions.

I've been working on increasing the tempo on some songs. I start at a place where I can play error free and slowly dial up the tempo. Once I get to the 200-210 tempo range, both hands can move fine at that speed (playing eighth notes), but they don't move in unison, meaning I'll hit quite a few notes that aren't picked and fretted quite at the same time, leading to dead notes and such.

Rather than just continuing to practice these same songs over and over, which could just be solidifying bad habits, can anybody suggest some specific exercises to deliberately work on accuracy between the two hands?

[bigskygirl]

I'm in the exact same boat and I dial back the speed a bit to the point I can play it well, I spend a bit of time there reinforcing things and then speed it back up. Sometimes it's not so much my hands out of sync but the fact that I don't know the tune very, very well which causes hesitation hence things get out of sync.

Many times I find its only a certain point where things get out of sync so I will just practice those few measures over and over until comfortable, by dialing back the speed I don't practice mistakes. It's a bit frustrating to go back but I found that after a short time I actually increase the speed faster.

There are exercises, you can probably find them by Google, also Mandolin Exercises for Dummies seems a good place to look. John Moore has some here...

http://flatpickapprentice.blogspot.c...exercises.html

Good luck and have fun, don't get frustrated...I sure do...but then I get over it...ha

[Toni Schula]

What helped me a lot for improving left hand right hand coordination were the FFcP exercises on www.jazzmando.com. Give it a try, its good for any melody playing not only for jazz. Follow the instructions, start verry slow and aim for cleanest legato notes. I still use some of these exercises for warm up.

[Tom Wright]

Do use the FFcP exercises, but here is a practice technique from violin teaching---change the rhythm from equal notes to a dotted rhythm, or like a jig instead of a reel. Long---short-long---short-, etc. And practice in the opposite pattern, too: short-long---short-long---. It kind of hurts the brain at first but helps focus the attention on exact timing by making it arbitrary.

After you get some progress on this, you realize you can play at the speed of the short (fast) notes.

[farmerjones]

Yes, the point at which for one reason of another, the tone suffers. Fingers get late, or the pick gets late. That's your personal threshold. Shear mileage can help. But I've conceded that I wasn't born Ricky Skaggs. Both nature and nurture. If one could play & jam all week every week, I believe that one would get quicker if one desired. But a threshold still there. I've peaked some years ago. As the man said, now I'm only half fast.

[Perry]

Play a major scale to a very slow metronome beat and concentrate on holding the note until just before the next click and change of note. More difficult then it sounds but will
pay dividends.

[Tobin]

There are lots of reasons to play slow. Like when learning a new piece and trying to get the string changes correct or the frets right.

But when it comes to learning to play fast and solving the coordination issues between picking and fretting as you are describing, there's only one way to do it. Play fast. Until you break down. And then keep playing just below that speed long enough that it's comfortable and smooth. Keep experimenting with speed and repeating this process. It will take years. Playing slow will only get you so far. The dynamics change greatly when you get up to speed.

There is a very fine set of coordination that has to happen to get smooth notes. When you hear a player who plays fast but sounds choppy, they're either doing that because they want to sound like Bill Monroe or because they don't have the coordination down for that speed. If you hear them missing notes or getting thud sounds because they picked the string before getting the string fretted fully, they just don't have that coordination built yet for that speed.

It is all about landing your fretting fingertips at just the right time, but holding them long enough after the note is picked as well. It's a timing thing (duh), and you just have to do it over and over and over, working on the coordination.

There is no shortcut to this.

[bigskygirl]

Agree with Tobin, slow is good to get the tune under your fingers/in your head but at some point I dial up the metronome until it breaks down and then back off a few BPM and stay there until I'm comfortable at that speed then do it all over again...sometimes I'm at a speed for awhile longer than I'd like but then all of a sudden there is a breakthrough and I'm ready to bump it up again...

[jeho2a]

I found Marilyn Mair's exercises helpful for this, especially this one: http://mandolinsessions.com/?p=991

[almeriastrings]

T
But when it comes to learning to play fast and solving the coordination issues between picking and fretting as you are describing, there's only one way to do it. Play fast. Until you break down. And then keep playing just below that speed long enough that it's comfortable and smooth. Keep experimenting with speed and repeating this process. It will take years. Playing slow will only get you so far. The dynamics change greatly when you get up to speed.

There is a very fine set of coordination that has to happen to get smooth notes. When you hear a player who plays fast but sounds choppy, they're either doing that because they want to sound like Bill Monroe or because they don't have the coordination down for that speed. If you hear them missing notes or getting thud sounds because they picked the string before getting the string fretted fully, they just don't have that coordination built yet for that speed.

+1.

You will not get it smooth and accurate immediately... you really have to work at it, over time. With a new tune, I get it it up to speed first then 'polish it up' , taking all the rough edges off (accuracy) and getting it silky smooth over the next week or two...

For whatever reason, the play it S L O W and gradually built up speed never really did it for me. I would start off slow, yes, while my fingers 'learned' where to go, but after a certain point I just "go for it". It might be a bit rough initially, but the following "polish" process soon takes care of that. That is the method that works for me, anyway. If I am teaching, I cover both approaches: The 'build it up slow' method and the 'go for it' method. I do find some people seem to do better with one or the other. In fact, I'm teaching all next week at a camp here in Spain with Alice Gerrard and attaining speed with accuracy is always a major topic.

[Toni Schula]

There is no shortcut to this.

That's very true, indeed.

[dougl122]

Interesting finding over the past couple months. I've been steadily increasing the tempo on several songs, just moving up 1 bpm at a time once I'm comfortable at a previous tempo. With some songs, I seem to hit a tempo range that I can't play well at, but can do fine above or below.
For example, I can play Soldier's Joy comfortably at any tempo under about 205 bpm. I can also play it comfortably between about 225 and 240. Above 240 it slowly gets sloppier and sloppier, but I can mostly hold on as I increase it. Between 205 and 225, I get VERY sloppy and have had difficulty with correcting that. This has happened with a couple other songs, but it's not always the same tempo range, seems to depend on the song.


Has anybody else encountered this? You can't play in a certain tempo range, but do fine below and above? Any thoughts or explanations?


I have one theory:
At lower tempos, I treat each note like it's own - a strum on the right hand with a fingering on the left hand. I think when I get to higher tempos, I instead treat my right hand like a metronome almost constantly moving up and down in the eighth note pattern. So it just goes off on it's own and just keeps to the right string, while the left hand does it's business. In this case, instead of thinking about each eighth note, I'm instead thinking about the different notes (i.e. like a quarter note) as an exception to the strum pattern.
Eh?

[Mark Wilson]

Play a major scale to a very slow metronome beat and concentrate on holding the note until just before the next click and change of note. More difficult then it sounds but will
pay dividends.

The last book I read on practice suggested playing a scale (or the tune) at 60bpm (1 quarter note per second) for 10 minutes looping. This has improved my accuracy the most of anything I've tried. It's harder than playing fast.
It's so hard - I doubt many folks can stand to do it. You have time to perfect each stroke and finger placement.

After this exercise I play tune at 2/3 speed til I can complete w/o one mistake. I go back to the 60bpm if I have to. It absolutely works for me. ymmv

I'm a novice still but this has done the most good for my playing of anything I've tried so far.

[Pete Martin]

Do use the FFcP exercises, but here is a practice technique from violin teaching---change the rhythm from equal notes to a dotted rhythm, or like a jig instead of a reel. Long---short-long---short-, etc. And practice in the opposite pattern, too: short-long---short-long---. It kind of hurts the brain at first but helps focus the attention on exact timing by making it arbitrary.

A classical violinist showed me this MANY years ago. It REALLY helped the coordination between my hands. For 1/8th notes, play the short note as short as possible and the long note as long as possible to still get them both to equal 1 beat.

[jshane]

I agree with Tobin, above, that at some point you have to practice it fast-- but I also believe strongly that you MUST dial the speed back to practice at the point you can play it correctly. After working there, you can attempt to dial it up. If you arent careful, you wind up practicing it "wrong" and the sloppiness becomes what you are embedding. At least this has been my experience.

[farmerjones]

Once you get the melody in your fingers;
Metronome. Metronome. Metronome.

[Ted Eschliman]

One issue you can't overlook is the difference in difficulty in passages within a song. You cruise along at 180 mph and all is going great but you get weird string crossings or awkward fingerings and wham! Clams.

Wrong answer: Start from the beginning and play it to the end, over and over til you get it right.

Right answer: ISOLATE the measures that trip you up and play just those til you get it right.

If you are working from print, pencil around the tough parts and focus your practice on them. It can be as short as five notes or two measures. No need to woodshed the easy parts. If you are working aurally, record yourself to uncover what you need work on.

When you're comfortable with the difficult, then and only then increase the tempo. Playing the easy parts repetitively is a waste of your time. Polish what needs polish.

[foldedpath]

One issue you can't overlook is the difference in difficulty in passages within a song. You cruise along at 180 mph and all is going great but you get weird string crossings or awkward fingerings and wham! Clams.

Wrong answer: Start from the beginning and play it to the end, over and over til you get it right.

Right answer: ISOLATE the measures that trip you up and play just those til you get it right.

I agree with this advice as a general rule, but I think there may be an exception with "fiddle tunes," where phrases are short and repeated as A parts, B parts, and so on. If you have a rough patch in the A or B part of a fiddle tune, it's going to come around again so fast that you might as well just play those 4 bars and repeat.

There is another aspect to this, and that's what I'd call the "setup" and "exit" for that rough patch. Making sure you're coming into and out of the rough patch with the right pick direction and tempo is important. It's something I have to keep aware of, when playing something like a quick flurry of 16th notes in a Scottish strathspey tune. I have to make sure I retain the rhythm pulse of the tune after that quick little run, and don't speed up or slow down as the tune continues. The overall context matters.

I don't disagree with the main point though, that it's important not to just skip over a rough spot. They need attention!

[Mark Wilson]

I find good results with Teds isolate method. Mike Marshall suggests for an exercise, try playing same phrase on different course of strings.

What I've noticed is that sometimes the tick I'm having seems tied in memory to the previous phrase. I can play the phrase in question perfectly when isolated until I add the previous phrase. Its a mystery but a fun one

[9lbShellhamer]

All great advice above... This month I've really focused on ergonomics and found that by readdressing my wrist and trying to get it as loose and tension free as possible has yielded large dividends in speed. I play slow and speed up until my wrist feels tension, I then release that tension and try to play faster with no tension, and keep this two steps up one step back momentum.

[pops1]

I find that it is harder for the left hand to keep up to the right. Think about slowing the right hand while keeping the left hand the same. It sound weird, but for me that helped. At some point they will be together at all tempos.

[JeffD]

Wrong answer: Start from the beginning and play it to the end, over and over til you get it right.

Right answer: ISOLATE the measures that trip you up and play just those til you get it right.

I like it. I worked on the B part to Maggie Browns Favorite (Planxty Margaret Brown), for months. The A part I got right away.

[indie rock]

In Indian classical music before we can start playing a song we are made to practice different scales and tempos for at least 1-2 years( this may vary) and this really helps in accuracy and speeds. Like for example

C major scale C D E F G A B C

( we practice the following exercises in 3 octaves and 3 tempos) ''3 tempos'' i mean- 1 note/beat, 2 notes/beat, 4 notes/beat , its all continuous, non stop.

Exercise 1 : C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C and reverse
Exercise 2 : C D E F, D E F G, E F G A, F G A B, G A B C, A B C D, B C D E, C D E F..... and so on, keep playing till you complete the 3 octaves, then reverse C B A G, B A G F, A G F E.................a set of 4 notes sequence.

Like this there are hundred of exercises, but only few are taught.

Then we move on to tremolo exercises.

Exercises 1 : CC DD EE FF GG AA BB CC DD EE FF GG AA BB CC DD EE FF GG AA BB CC and reverse
Please note: 3 tempos for tremolo would be- 2 notes/beat, 4 notes/beat, 8 notes/beat

Exercise 2 : (CC DD EC DE, CC DD EE FF), (DD EE FD EF DD EE FF GG), (EE FF GE FG, EE FF GG AA)........follow the pattern. and then reverse.

There are many other exercises which are based on complicated tempo system-not just 4s and 8s. we have 5s 7s 9s 13s and so on.

After C major scales we move on to other scales'' at least 15 diatonic scales are practiced like this''.
For the next level we have sliding exercises: scales are practiced with just slides, less of plucking and more of sliding.

There's no substitute for practice, speeds will happen once you PERFECT slower tempos.

I don't know if this can help you in any way, but music is a universal language. It has helped me, might help you too.
Cheers!!