Learning fast notes

Learning fast notes

One of the pieces I am (re)learning (having played it 28 years ago) is the Sonatine by Dutilleux. Today I spent an hour learning 15 seconds of it and want to share that process.

It will need more work - as you can hear in the clip - but this is day 1 of this bit and where I got it to in an hour using this technique.

Step 1
Played the section really slowly concentrating on tone. Figuring out air speed and direction and making sure each note was speaking clearly, in tune and at the right dynamic.

Step 2
Broke it down into small sections (chunking) of 6-7 notes each (this can be even smaller sections if needed, sometimes even 2 notes). Each small section was then practised with as many different rhythms as possible to change the emphasis on each note, make it more even and create muscle memory.

Step 3
Each small section was then played a few times fairly slowly with the written rhythm and then added to the previous section.

Step 4
The whole 15 second section was played with the metronome starting at 71 bpm and gradually increased in 5 beat increments until I got it to the target speed of 116 bpm. I also ensured that at each speed I could do the dynamics, tone and accents I wanted before moving to the next speed.

NB - for harder music, or music further above the level you are currently at, you might need to increment by even a beat at a time. You may also need to do individual chunks with the metronome and get each individual chunk up to speed before trying to speed up a whole section.

Step 5
From about 90bpm I added in the entire section before this one once learnt at each speed to connect them.

Step 6
I played it at speed without the metronome several times, adjusting accents, tone etc…

Step 7 - tomorrow’s work
This will be going back over it and finding the rough edges you can hear and practising those bits again. This will be individual bits slowly again and with different rhythms again and then adding back in. I always do this the next day as I find that once I have initially learnt it, it needs time to settle.

Excuse the bad recording on my phone!