I have found that isolating certain skills, like playing triplets, can help significantly when you go back and apply them to the tune.
I have found that isolating certain skills, like playing triplets, can help significantly when you go back and apply them to the tune.
It’s a bit like ice skating, you have to pick and push to the next string, especially if it’s a string jump.
Exercise, learn clean tremolo first.
Then do chunking on the same string with the pick almost touching the string all the time.
The pick stays as close to the string as possible at all times while fret hand plays patterns on the same string.
Precise, metronomed coordination between both hands is key, use metronome while chunking.
Simon, I’m just curious … what led you to resurrect a six-year-old thread? I’m always curious when this happens and have never asked anyone why before.
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If I think clearly about the exact reason… (sometimes, often in fact, I get triggered to think in a certain way by news/cookie-personalised news)
It was because I’ve just been practicing two (difficult-for-me) tunes in a set and with repetition I’ve made a bit of progress on tempo and clean picking.
I wanted to help others with their progress by sharing my meagre insights.
I did a search on MC for ‘speed’ and pasted my ideas with the thought that if it helps at least one person or makes MandolinCafe a happy place then it’s worth it!
Many thanks for all of your insights too, Mark.
Seems this is a constant topic, at least for me. Speed eludes me so any hints I can get that might be helpful are always welcome.
Northfield F5M #268, AT02 #7
I’m glad it was resurrected. Speed is something I’ve been working on lately. It seems like the 110 bpm threshold is a common plateau and I’m looking for exercises to help me break through it
When people talk about speed and also talk about metronomes. I sometimes get confused. Are we talking about quarter note beats per minute? i.e. set the metronome at 200? 4/4 time? see, if I think about it too much I confuse myself again . . . .
"I confuse myself...". Ok, I bite. Speed of dance tunes is often specified in beats per minute (bpm). to identify the beats, stand up from your chair and walk in time with the tune (here is a good one, Trip To Kilburn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCIM6ZHXv1I). Observe how you alternate right foot and left foot.
If you want dance moves always start from the same foot, the tune must have an even number of beats. this is one reason reels and jigs are usually notated as "two beats per measure", 2 groups of 4 8th notes or 2 groups of 3 8th notes. (waltzes have 3 beats per measure, to stay on the same foot, there is always an even number of measures, 6 beats per 2 measures). (there is also crooked tunes to go with crooked dances).
Trip To Kilburn has four 8th notes per beat (in the B part) and could be notated 4/4 as a reel. or it could be notated as 2/2 to indicate the 2 beats per measure.
Baltimore Consort play Trip To Kilburn at about 100 bpm. (For an English Country Dance, 110 bpm. For a Contra dance, 120 bpm). This means:
- 100 bpm is 100 beats (steps) per minute, if your step is 0.5 m, this would be 0.5*100*60/1000 = 3 km/h, walking speed.
- 100/2 = 50 measures per minute, a typical 32 bar AABB tune will play in 32/50 = ~0.6 min, a set of 3 tunes each repeated 3 times will take about 5 minutes.
- 50*4 = 200 quarter notes per minute
- 50*8 = 400 8th notes per minute = 400/60 = 6.6 8th notes/sec, each 8th note is 150 millisec long.
- 50*8/2 = 200 pick down/up cycles per minute = 200/60 = 3.3 Hz picking repetition rate
if you want to practice this tune with a metronome, you have choices:
- 1 click per measure ("downbeat only"), set to 50 clicks/minute
- 1 click per beat, set to 100 clicks/minute. (walk to the metronome, 1 click is 1 step)
- 1 click per down picking (minor beats), set to 200 clicks/minute
- 1 click per quarter note, set to 200 clicks/minute
- 1 click per 8th note, set to 400 clicks/minute (impractical at dance speed, but useful for slow practice, say at 60-80 bpm)
many metronomes have special buttons to help with this. mine can be set to "tempo 100" with "2 clicks per", this yields 1 click per down pick. so I never have to set the metronome to crazy fast tempos like 200 or 400. it also has a button for "tempo 100" with jig (3+3) and slip-jig (3+3+3) subdivisions. handy.
clear as mud?
mandocello8, I very much apprecite your explanation, but I find that I till get confused. If I do quarter note BPM on my metronome, set my BPM at 100 then I will, if the tune is primarly 8th notes, pick 200 notes per measure. Right? I know I can't play as fast as many but when I am working on a fiddle tune, I find that I can keep up with 150 to 170 BPM. That is 300 to 340 picked notes per measure. Does that sound in any way right?
The maxim of “Practice slowly to play fast.” is based on the principle of teaching your hands to play accurately before accelerating. If you can’t play something well at a slow tempo then practicing at a fast tempo simply means that you are likely to be practicing (and getting skilled at making) mistakes or playing sloppily.
This approach doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t practice playing fast, it means that you need to listen to what you are playing and tend to your shortcomings. Work slowly to play cleanly, then ramp up the tempo beyond your comfort zone. You’ll probably play some phrases well and others poorly. Ok, so now you know what to work on, right?
A couple years in, now, and still learning!
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You're probably getting confused about the way people in different genres of music count beats, especially fiddle tunes like reels. Bluegrass players might set a metronome at 4/4, but Irish/Scottish trad players would use 2/2 on the metronome. The reels are still notated in 4/4 to keep the notes compact in sheet music, but they're actually played in 2/2 on a metronome which confuses things.
Here's how Irish/Scottish trad and Contradance players think of it, a video by Jamie Laval and it's the best explanation I've found for how the count is related to human dance rhythms.
aha! point of confusion. the difference between how fast a tune feels for a dancer (in steps/beats per minute) and how hard you are working at playing it (in quarter notes per minute). lacking dancers (concert, busking, practicing) you can play at any speed you want. but dancers/callers/dance masters will require that you play at the speed they demand. (try Morris dancing to discover why Morris tunes are played "so slowly").
classic computation. say we are playing for a contra dance, going at 120 bpm. we play a jig into a reel. both have two beats per measure, so we are going at 60 measures per minute. jig has 6 8th notes per measure, reel has 8 8th notes per measure, so we have to speed up from 6*60=360 8th/min to 8*60=480 8th/min. this is a big increase in playing speed, and dancers feel it and go "Wah!", while still dancing at the same tempo of 120 bpm. a neat trick!
an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4h-lXHlL_A. Frog Hammer play a contra dance at 120 bpm. Salmon Tails (polka, https://thesession.org/tunes/2903) into Accordion Crimes (reel, https://thesession.org/tunes/19662). try to play along. no problem keeping up with the polka. accordion crimes? good luck! (polka to reel speed jump in notes/min is a factor of 2). (BTW, excellent octave mandolin playing by Glyn Collinson).
this disconnect between playing speed and dancing speed exists not just in ECD/SCD/Contra/Square family of dances. any dancing where footwork is connected to the music will have dance speed measured in steps/beats per minute and music speed measured in notes per minute, without any obvious connection between the two. (until you start playing and they start dancing, that is).
BTW, the "Impropriety" ECD book series avoid all this confusion by specifying dance and tune tempos in notes per second: reel (2/2 or 4/4) half-note=100 (two beats per measure), waltz (3/4) quarter-note=120 (3 beats per measure), slip-jig (9/8) dotted-quarter-note=115 (3 beats per measure), jig (6/8) dotted-quarter-note=80 (2 beats per measure), 3/2 tune half-note=95 (3 beats per measure). (this is why good tune books are worth their weight in gold).
As I wrote above, I’m not knocking the practice of resurrecting old threads, and not knocking you in any way, I always enjoy our interchanges, Simon. It’s just eery for me sometimes as well as a little nostalgic and sentimental to see very old threads resurrected and read posts by members who have died and members who are no longer active for a number of other reasons.
Anyway, getting back to the thread topic, my personal favorite exercises for building speed are 1) scales, 2) arpeggios, 3) phrases of tunes or solos that I like or find challenging. I like to take these and play at slow or moderate speeds working on tone and accuracy, then practicing to metronome and increasing speed by increments.
I also try to synchronize those exercises to tremolo speed sometimes. But so far, I haven’t been very successful at that. My tremolo has never been very good in and of itself in my judgment, though, so those exercises tend to do double duty for me.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
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"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
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HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
Marcel explains this well:
https://youtu.be/08USF-1_9ik
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