Are you chasing speed over competence? Have you (wittingly or unwittingly) become a speed demon?
I hope by now you have relented and incorporated Scales into your practice as a warmup! They make the case themselves simply because they are essential, central, and so easy, you have to wonder why you wouldn’t do them!
There is one little thing that bears mentioning though. Because, while it’s easy to fall into this trap, it can kill all your gains in an instant! What is this little thing?
Speed
Somewhere along the line we decided that playing faster faster faster meant being good. After all, if you were good, you wouldn’t be slow. You see it in every instrument – being a speed demon hot shot is a goal even in elementary school and middle school.
We have talked before about slowing down while learning new music. And the importance of working slowly through challenging passages for getting all the notes, rhythm, fingering, and phrasing accurate – and then moving into playing more quickly.
But what about when working on technical elements? Well, that might be when taking your time and staying in control is the most important. We know that all our music is made of up the patterns we practice when we do the “grunt” work – so we should be expending attention and energy when we do it!
There are so many things of which to be cognizant while doing this “grunt” work. Things like posture, breathing, being relaxed, finger order, complete closing, memory, tone, legato, timbre, and more. And that’s a long, but incomplete, list! Each time you do a good, complete, focused scale you learn a little more about your harp, the notes and their relationship to each other, and frankly, about yourself!
So take the time to do your scales with care, not speed (technical exercises as well). Focus on whatever you are trying to learn – whether that is using the right finger at the right time; keeping all the notes even in time, in rhythm, in volume; using a rhythm pattern; getting different weights out of each hand; learning to hear the interplay of notes in different intervals, or just to learn when you have warmed up enough to be ready to take on the stuff you need to work on. These are all important things. Being able to play faster is one of the things you need to learn – but it’s certainly not the only thing!
When your scales begin to be easy, change what you’re trying to learn – so that you are always learning. Did you start playing the harp so you could get stale? Probably not – so don’t let it creep up on you! Don’t leave out getting faster, but don’t let it be your be-all end-all either!
Take your time. You’ll be glad you did. With a little of that time, drop a comment about if you’ve been chasing speed over competence? If so, what changes will you make? If not, how do you keep improving? Can’t wait to hear from you!
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