How do I play faster?

[sbhikes]

The jam was last night. It's definitely that I have trouble with the pick. I have a hard time when I have to switch strings in the middle of a run of notes. My pick gets stuck too deep in the strings. I probably am trying to play too loud but I can't hear myself of the time.

I will try to work on it more. At least I can play this at home without bothering people too much.

[journeybear]

I just saw this over on facebook. It's pretty cool and all - an elderly gent showing some chops - but for the purpose of this discussion, this is NOT what you want to strive for. He's got some speedy fingers for sure, but his timing is off. So far off, his riffing is counter-productive to his performance. It's almost non-musical. Better to be at a comfortable speed in the groove than fast and flashy but not in the groove.

http://societyofrock.com/81-year-old...ire-shop-staff

[T.D.Nydn]

That old guy is alright man,yeah,,he sounds a little rusty,,I bet he could really rip that off when he was younger,like 60 or 70...

[Pasha Alden]

Agree with JMP. That's what I do to play faster. I play songs bit by bit, bar for bar, learning the value of each note, I piece them together and then play slowly, then slight faster. Where there is a error filled part, or a tricky part, I repeat. These done until I have the desired tempo.

[sbhikes]

I found this lady's tutorials online. They seem really helpful to me. I really know so little about playing the mandolin.

[Randi Gormley]

I'm coming to the conversation late, but I was wondering, if you have problems with your pick getting stuck in the strings, if you might consider changing the angle of the pick in your hand. I had a student whose pick was pretty nearly perpendicular to the stings and she would slide them within the double courses as if she were carving out letters on a wood block. If you hold your pick at a different angle to the strings so it doesn't slip within any small space it might help a bit.

I once asked a talented instrumentalist how to get faster and he gave me no helpful advice -- just that it would come. it did, eventually, come -- but only after having played a score of tunes ad nauseum for hours and hours and hours and years and years and years. By then, I was so bored with them, knew them backward and forward and could add runs within the slow places, that I wasn't even paying attention to my hands. Then I got faster. Now I detach my mind from anything but listening to the music as it's played and the speed mostly is there. I still occasionally get left behind, but there will always be people who play faster than I. That's when I put my mandolin down and sip my drink and enjoy.

[sbhikes]

Thank you. I've been practicing. I don't know that I will ever be all that fast. I may never be able to handle Irish music, which is too bad, because I like Irish music. I can play the flute to some extent (it's often too fast for me on flute, too) but the trouble with flute is it is loud. Less loud than pennywhistle but still pretty loud. I have no time to ever practice except if I get up really early in the morning and go outside in the garage, and only the mandolin is quiet enough I can practice at 5am in the garage and not bother people. It frustrates me that I rarely have time to myself to make noise and not bother people.

[jshane]

I have been following this thread for awhile now, and something has been nagging at me.... I finally figured out what.

Do most people consider playing faster to be synonymous with playing "better"?

[BJ O'Day]

I don't know that I will ever be all that fast. I may never be able to handle Irish music, which is too bad, because I like Irish music.

Irish music sounds wonderful when played slowly. Don't think you have to keep up with someone else. Play at your speed and enjoy the music.
BJ

[foldedpath]

I have been following this thread for awhile now, and something has been nagging at me.... I finally figured out what.

Do most people consider playing faster to be synonymous with playing "better"?

I don't, but I also recognize that there are some genres of traditional music where the music itself "wants" to be played at a certain tempo, because it's part of a tradition.

The OP is interested in getting up to speed on Irish traditional music. That genre has some built-in expectations of minimum tempos, because the tunes are (or at least were originally ) targeted for dancers. If you can't dance to it, or at least get your foot tapping, then you may not be in the groove for this music.

You can play a reel slowly, expressively, and I play a few tunes like that. The "Morning Dew" is one, following a great example on a John Doyle recording where he does it slowly on guitar. You can do that all you like at home, but if you go out into the wider world and play in an amateur Irish pub session, these tunes will go at something close to dance tempos.

Irish music sounds wonderful when played slowly. Don't think you have to keep up with someone else. Play at your speed and enjoy the music.
BJ

I disagree, at least a little bit when it comes to a traditional tune format like Irish trad. The tunes want to go at a certain speed, and while there is some variation in what works, if you play them too slowly you lose the life and the lift in the tune.

For example, here's Martin Hayes milking some tunes for all their worth in a performance context (and if you actually count the bpm, some of this is not that slow!):




And here's Martin playing in a pub session, with a pair of reels played at what you'd find in a higher-end pub session:



You'll have to keep up, if you're playing outside your house in that kind of session. Listen for that pulse on the off-beat. It rocks!

@sbhikes -- If you love this music, you'll find a way to get there with the tempos. It just doesn't come easily, and it can take a while. I've been playing this stuff on mandolin for 6 or 7 years now, and I still struggle sometimes to keep up with the fiddlers and pipers at sessions. But the fight is worth it! It's wonderful music, and it needs to be played in a certain way.

[Mandoplumb]

I have been following this thread for awhile now, and something has been nagging at me.... I finally figured out what.

Do most people consider playing faster to be synonymous with playing "better"?

Anything that you can't do limits you, playing fast is one more skill to learn and yes each skill you have makes you a better musician BUT it is not the skill that defines your ability. We all have certain limitations even Chris Thilie!

[Beanzy]

For ITM (and baroque music) I find it normally best to identify the key components of the melody and make sure you get those bang on. Spending some time playing the strong beats only when you practice will let you get the feel for the structure of a piece and can give you a way of playing when you would otherwise get left behind when playing with others. I like to learn how to build up blocks of associated notes and phrases which recur frequently in many tunes and practice them as units and move them up and down multiple semitones so I'm not stuck with just one or two finger patterns for those groupings. So patterns of quadruplets, triplets and duplets will begin to be recognised from earlier tunes and you begin to think of them as items rather than separate notes. These will also be further ornamented by adding grace notes, subdividing further as you get more familiar with the tunes and those ornaments will begin to have their own identities as well. Once you can play the strong beats fast then you get a feel for where everything else needs to fit and you can draw on your practicing of those units to apply them to your new tunes, which will be learned much quicker as a result. The skill then is the application of the correct feel and flow to play the tune as it should flow, rather than making it sound like building blocks.

When practicing slowly to get the fills and runs of notes it really helps to have a strong awareness of where the main beat notes are, otherwise you can loose the feel and rhythm if you're not up to speed. By having those beats well locked in you have a good lattice into which the rest can fit. So in a 4/4 piece running at speed with just beats 1and 3 or even just the 1, can get you a good flow going with your head filling in the rest. In 6/8 beat 1 & 4 are good to lock-in on. The main thing is to not let anything else get in the way of those and, until you're practicing slowly to get the other notes right, don't let mistakes interfere with the flow. This is different to practicing for notational accuracy or learning patterns in your fingers and the brain is pretty good at discarding unwanted information from mistakes if you train it to. So when practicing for the push and pull of a tune at speed get used to throwing out the clutter of mistakes. If you find yourself repeating a mistake at speed, then it's time to swap to slower investigation of that segment to understand what's not working. Don't just keep running it fast, bail out and zoom in on what's tripping you up so you can eliminate the problem and move on.

From this you'll have gathered that practicing for speed, practicing for feel and practicing for accuracy need different approaches and you need to practice them all. I certainly can't focus clearly on improving several aspects in one pass. I need to play tunes over and over again, looking at different aspects each time. They'll all get covered in a practice session, just not at the same pass.

[Randi Gormley]

Nothing like reading an earlier post and noticing an error -- that student's pick was practically parallel to the strings, not perpendicular. sigh.

I'm a (relatively) shy person and it took me years to feel confident enough to play loud on anything -- including (silver) flute, which I played for something like seven years. Your desire to play as softly as possible to not disturb others may also be one reason why the hunt for speed is so difficult. It takes a lot of effort to be quiet and a lot of tension, depending on circumstances, and that sometimes translates to less fluidity in your hands. The nice thing about a loud ITM session is you actually can play with abandon and as long as you're reasonably close to the melody, much of what passes for mistakes gets overcome by the din. At least that's been my experience. Granted, most of the sessions around here attract upwards of 10 to 15 people and that includes at least one box of some sort and the occasional pipe. I was once sandwiched between a very fine box player and a very enthusiastic bodhran player. At that point, I could have been playing the Star Spangled Banner with piccolo solo and nobody would have noticed.

I also recall when I was younger I had a pair of shoes that squeaked. To me, every step I took shook the walls and caused even the statues in the hallway to glare. Actually, I was the only one who noticed. So you may not be playing as loudly as you think you are. It might just be nerves and perception. Just a thought.

[JeffD]

I have been following this thread for awhile now, and something has been nagging at me.... I finally figured out what.

Do most people consider playing faster to be synonymous with playing "better"?

I find non-musicians, friends and family that listen out of obligation and no particular interest, often make this association.

Playing fast is a part of playing well, but not the only part, not the most important part, and like some kind of zen thing, it seems it is not something that happens by going after it directly.

I think that in a performance situation, I have to play one or two numbers fast, in order to show the audience that when I play slowly, its an artistic choice that has meaning in the context of the piece being played, and not just easier.

In a jam situation, I just gotta keep up with the fiddles.

A few months ago we organized a slow jam. Not a beginners jam necessarily, but an opportunity to play stuff out slowly, to see what we have missed in the tune by always playing fast. And also to focus on slow airs and mournful waltzes. It was a great time, and eye-opening.

[JeffD]

I also recall when I was younger I had a pair of shoes that squeaked. To me, every step I took shook the walls and caused even the statues in the hallway to glare.

A most evocative description. I love it. I get it. In two sentences you got me deep down inside where I know what that is all about.

[foldedpath]

For ITM (and baroque music) I find it normally best to identify the key components of the melody and make sure you get those bang on. Spending some time playing the strong beats only when you practice will let you get the feel for the structure of a piece and can give you a way of playing when you would otherwise get left behind when playing with others.

That's an excellent point, and I heard this advice also in a recent workshop. It was a one-day Scottish Dance Band workshop where the melody players were led by Deby Benton Grosjean, a great fiddler.

After a few familiarization passes on the tune sets at a slower tempo, she moved to the actual tempos we'd be playing at the dance that night (112 bpm for reels, counted as 2/2). She knew that speed was challenging for some of the players in the group. It was a mix of hotshot players and more intermediate learners. Her advice was exactly what you mentioned... just play the important notes, the ones you can manage to hit at tempo and still sketch out the skeleton of the tune. In a mixed group of melody players, all playing in unison, there is plenty of cover for anyone who can't hit every single note.

It's not something you should try if you're really stumbling and hitting wrong notes, because that would be distracting for the other players (and it gets into the "don't play if you don't know the tune" category). But if you know the tune well at a slower tempo, and you're able to just drop the notes you can't quite play fast enough and hit the rest correctly, then it's a great survival technique for Irish sessions.

[sbhikes]

Some playing fast things that flummox me:

1. Doing fast things when you have to switch over to another string, especially to a lower string.
2. Going fast between notes that use the same finger.
3. Paying loud as I can and fast at the same time.
4. Playing really fast period. I found an online metronome but there's only so fast I can go before I can't stay on time anymore.

I'm finding that holding the pick differently than I was before has helped and that trying to play some Irish tunes to the metronome have helped. I had to choose fairly easy ones. Nothing like Morrison's (see number two above.) Still not session speed though. The reason I want to play faster is so I can play at the session. Irish tunes don't lend themselves to simplification quite as readily as old-time tunes. I can sort of fake some rolls here and there but that seems like cheating and doesn't help with every tricky part.

I'd say that pub session video above sounded sort of slow compared to how fast our session can get if certain people are there.

[JeffD]

1. Doing fast things when you have to switch over to another string, especially to a lower string.

For me that was a right hand problem. Most of the time just needing practice with the down up down up picking, but sometimes it was that the instance required a momentary violation of strict down up picking to get it in rhythm. This stuff is only diagnosed, IMO, by playing it reeeeeal slowly and gradually faster while watching to see what gets screwed up.

2. Going fast between notes that use the same finger.

Try to minimize the movement. If its the same fret, perhaps you can do a single finger double stop, covering both courses with one finger while picking them separately. This is a crucial technique for some traditional tunes.

3. Paying loud as I can and fast at the same time.

Play softer. At least till you can get the thing down.

4. Playing really fast period. I found an online metronome but there's only so fast I can go before I can't stay on time anymore.

Playing faster seems to me to be about getting all the little things right, and out of the way, and the result is that you can play "free of the debris". Not about trying to play faster. My experience anyway.

[Purdy Bear]

For me personally, playing fast has got nothing to do with better. Playing the piece as the composer wanted it played is everything, not whether it's fast, slow or indifferent. For me the person who has that certain zing in their playing, who stands out is the person who is the better player - for instance James Galway on the Flute just has something no one else has. I can hear lots of flute solos but as he starts to play I know it's him, there is just that something. I feel everyone has that zing, some with instruments some with other things.

As someone told me once, many can play the piano but few are concert pianists. Yes some of it is talent but most of it is pure hard work.

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

sbhikes, based on what you've described here, I'll suggest a few things no one else has yet mentioned:

1. The most important part of playing music well is to make it sound effortless, no matter the speed or technical difficulty. To sound effortless, you have to be smooth, relaxed, efficient, and clean/precise. That all comes from countless hours listening closely to yourself while you play, paying attention, not giving yourself permission to keep sounding "wrong" or "off" or not as good as you want to sound. All while letting go of tension and nurturing a positive, can-do attitude. When something sounds off, stop and figure out what's causing the problem, then woodshed on that until it sounds "on."

2. To get better at picking notes that jump from one string to the next, practice alternating picking (DUDU) on two adjacent courses of strings. The tunes will have phrases that set you up to do this in two distinct ways. Let's use the E and A strings for the sake of discussion. First, pick down on the A, then up on E, down on A, up on E and so on. You'll be picking the "outsides" of each course. (But be sure to pick through both strings in each course.) Then flip it: pick down on the E, up on the A, down on E, up on A and so on. Now you're picking the "insides" of each course (still picking through both strings in each course). Though these motions are similar, they feel slightly different, and you need to be comfortable and efficient with both because they both occur naturally in tunes.

3. Watch Mike Marshall's video on the basics--they are essential! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmagoBQunZI

4. Instead of focusing on the notes of a tune, play the phrases, stringing them together. Knowing where to place the strong beats is more important than accurately hitting all the notes (eventually you want to be able to do both). You can't play smoothly or "fast" if you can't shape the phrases and pulse of a tune into a coherent whole.

5. Think of a tune you know really well. Lilt it in your mind. Now mentally lilt it again but faster than you can imagine playing--faster than you've ever heard anyone play it. Then imagine it back at "normal" speed and try to play it. Some people get stuck always hearing the tunes in their heads at their customary tempo. If you can't imagine it faster, then you won't be able to play it faster.

6. Make a commitment to play (focused) for at least an hour (two is better) every day, even if it's in 20 minute installments, for three weeks. If you've improved at the end of those three weeks, keep it up. If not, find a teacher to help get you on track.

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

P.S. For most people, jigs work best when picked DUD DUD.

[jshane]

sbhikes, based on what you've described here, I'll suggest a few things no one else has yet mentioned:

SNIP

In my opinion, this is REALLY REALLY good advice!

Particularly the part about phrasing.

[sbhikes]

I don't necessarily WANT to play louder but people complain I'm too quiet.

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

I don't necessarily WANT to play louder but people complain I'm too quiet.

When you're fluent with the tunes and on your instrument, loud or soft is a choice, not a limitation. Same goes with everything else--tone, swing, timing, speed, style, etc.

[Mandoplumb]

When you're fluent with the tunes and on your instrument, loud or soft is a choice, not a limitation. Same goes with everything else--tone, swing, timing, speed, style, etc.

Well said!