Playing Faster 1

Does playing faster come naturally, or is it a skill you have to learn? How fast is fast enough?

The answer to the first question is yes, it’s natural – but it’s also a skill. With persistence, you will play faster as the instrument and your favorite tunes become more comfortable. But you can also learn to play faster, and sooner than you might expect. That’s what this article and Playing Faster 2 are about.

As to the question of how fast you should play, this is a separate issue and will be addressed in Playing Faster 3.

Beginners have a lot on their plate, so playing faster is usually just one of many goals. However, as we’ll discuss, even relative beginners can learn to play a tune up to tempo, as long as they work on it in manageable bits.

Speed weighs more on the mind of intermediate fiddlers, who have some playing experience and have listened to CDs, performances, or attended sessions where others are playing faster than they themselves can manage. It’s pretty natural to think, “How will I ever keep up? Can it happen in my lifetime?”

If you stop to think about what it means to play faster, it’s about the tempo, the beat, and not about the notes.  Of course we want to learn the notes, but the priority has to be on the beat, and therefore on the bow, which provides the beat.  In the Playing Faster 2 article, I’ll offer some games using the bow to help learn a tune up to tempo.

Luckily, learning to play tunes faster is as natural as speaking or walking. For example, say the word “straight” out loud. It takes a quarter of a second. Now spell it out loud. This takes about two seconds. It takes as long to say the whole word as it does to spell the first letter! It’s the same with music. If you choose to think of a tune as merely a sequence of notes, you’re likely to get as bogged down while playing it as you would if you were attempting to silently spell out every word as you say it. A tune is not the sum of its notes; it is made up of words (beats) and phrases (usually two measures per phrase) and sentences (A part, B part). You can’t just read or memorize the notes – that would be like learning the lines of a play by spelling all the letters out instead of understanding what you’re saying.

While it’s impossible to speak letter by letter, it’s also stilted to simply pronounce one word after another. We speak by phrases. We don’t say “Pick. Up. The. Fiddle. And. Play.” We say “Pick up the fiddle”, “and play.” These are not thought of a individuals words (much less letters). “Pick up” belong together, as do “the fiddle” and “and play”. We also must lead our listeners to hear the important syllables by saying “PICK up the FIDdle and PLAY.” Without those three accented beats, hearing that sentence would be distracting and hard to understand.

The only way for speech – and playing tunes – to flow at a reasonable speed is to focus on those beats and phrases. That’s how you play fast – by focusing on what you’re saying and letting it flow. Thinking note by note is TMI, too much information.

And don’t imagine that you have to get the individual notes first before putting them into beats/words! The notes need to be learned in groups. Gluing one note to another is a forever task and as wasteful as learning a speech letter by letter.

All the audio, visuals and videos on www.fiddle-online.com are geared toward helping you learn by beat and phrase, whether on tunelearning pages, videos, class materials and technique videos. Learning the music this way leads naturally to playing faster, more musically, and helps you remember the tunes.

In Playing Faster 2, we’ll cover some practice tips for using this info to speed up your tunes. Playing Faster 3 will take a look at how to decide what speed to aim for. Stayed tuned!

(c) 2016 Ed Pearlman