Beware Tempo di Mediocre

Don’t know about where you are, yet here right now the mornings are crisp and clear, the days warm and rich, and the nights ablaze with stars. A great time of year.

Yesterday afternoon I responded to an email on practice. And as I did so I realized something quite worthwhile. I realized that when I practice challenging passages requiring a quick tempo, I spend almost no time playing them at a medium or in-between tempo.

In fact, no less a violinist the Joseph Silverstein once called such tempi, ‘tempo di mediocre.’

Now there are exceptions. If I’m practicing to acquire a specific technique, like up-bow staccato or martele, I want to develop it over a range of tempi.

Yet to perfect Paganini’s 5th Caprice, where I know the goal is ‘as rapid as possible’, I’m not going to waste much time on middle ground. The point of the Caprice is not to learn spiccato – though it COULD be used to do so. The point is to stretch ones ability to get all over the fiddle at a full on gallop.

And by the way, as of a few years ago I play this caprice with the 3+1 ricochet bowing Paganini asked for in manuscript. Fact is, once mastered it’s easier to change bow directions twice per beat than 4 times per beat, but this is getting me off topic.

Slow, conscious practice is where the mental uploading is done and the hands are trained. Once accomplished, it’s about mental compression and a controlled explosion of energy. If the ‘test firing’ doesn’t go exactly as planned, I’m right back on hyper-slow re-examining all the pieces for inefficiencies, contrary motions, tensions, or a better way to ‘compress’ all the information I want to download in a hurry.

It’s funny, 15 years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of expressing this using a computer analogy. But there you have it, We are, after all, essentially biological computers. Might as well get with the program, so to speak.

Anyway, when you work with my Kreutzer program, especially volume 1 you benefit from all the detail I put into the slow practice – detail that is as much about deleting old, useless movements as it is about the pure fundamentals you want to cultivate.

In volume 1 I even perform them slowly to demonstrate the attitude of relaxation and ease that must be present before moving up-tempo.

All the best, Clayton Haslop

P.S. And just thought I’d mention that there are 3 etudes in volume 1 of Kreutzer for Violin Mastery that I carry in my head at all times and refer to frequently; numbers 2, 8, and 9. Two is great for tuning up one’s detache and right/left hand coordination. 8 and 9 are just super for developing the ability to move around the instrument seamlessly.