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[Sue Lee's Piano Technique] Why I have to practice slowly?

 [Why I have to practice slowly?]




There's something that piano teachers usually say a lot.

"Practice slowly"


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Why is that?


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When we play the piano, there are two main technical problems.


1. When your finger muscles get tight

If you hit it quickly, your fingers will get tight without knowing it, and your arms will hurt and your sound will be all gone.


​2. when you hit it with pressure on your fingers.

Especially when you make a loud sound, you have to make a loud sound somehow, and there is no time, so without realizing it, you bend your fingers, give it strength, and hit it to make a cracking sound.


​I think more than 95% of the problems that come out when playing fast are these two problems.



Let me give you an example.


​Running fast and eating something, is it possible? Why don't you have complicated thoughts when you're late for school or work and you're so busy? Rather, you may have experienced the distraction disappearing when you run fast or do aerobic exercise.


If you play it fast, you're busy seeing what the next note is. It's impossible to figure out the weight of my fingers, the arms, the feeling of the keys, the back. 

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But what if you only practiced quickly, or just at the right speed?

I'm sure you've practiced a lot, but surprisingly, you can experience something that doesn't improvement. Especially when you go on stage in that state, the sound flies and collapses at a very high probability.


You have to practice more slowly than you think.

But if you do it slowly, it'll be too boring, right?


You have to concentrate so much in your head that you can't feel bored.


What's the weight, what's the connection between notes, what's the finger like before when you go to the next note, whether you're holding on to extra forces, how does it sound... If you think about this, your head will explode.


I often tell the students that piano is "intellectual labor."


There are too many things to think about.


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If you're just turning your hand, please stop.

If you find practice boring, please stop.


Don't try to practice the song from start to finish, just say one phrase, one line, and one word.

But you should definitely feel that part.



When the base is established to a certain extent, it will be efficient to increase the tempo, and to re-extract and practice the difficult parts.  



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