Untangling the Knots!

I wonder whether you have had this experience? You begin to play a piece, and on the whole it goes really well, but there’s one place where your fingers seem just to keep hitting the wrong notes (often the same wrong notes!), and no matter how you will them to play the right ones, off they go again on their own little mutiny!

So you go back a few bars, take that “run up” and …..whoops! the fingers went and did it again!

Yes - you’ve got a knot!  And it doesn’t matter how much you play all the rest of the piece, or how many run ups you take, that knot is just going to get more and more tangled up, and harder to unpick.

Why? Because by allowing your fingers to mutiny again and again, that’s precisely what they’ve got good at.  Experts indeed. After all, what have they been practicing? Mutineering!  The more you repeat something, the better you get at it. So all the “run ups” in the world - with that vague hope that your fingers might just make the correct notes  this time around - aren’t going to sort it out for you.

Imagine you have long hair. You’re giving it your morning brush, to find that the comb goes through admirably, except for one knot somewhere near your right ear.  You have a number of choices.

a)      You can choose to keep combing all the bits that are easy to comb. The knot is still there. 

b)      You can yank the comb through from your parting to the knot and find the comb just gets caught.  The knot is still there. 

c)      You can chop the knot out so you don’t have to bother with it.  The knot’s gone but you look funny

No – if you want smooth hair all over there’s only one thing for it – go to the knot and gently tease out the hairs – one by one if necessary – until the comb runs through even that bit by your right ear, without any yanking or avoiding.

So now, let me help you unpick your musical knot, by suggesting you focus in on the tangle itself, and retrain your fingers, note by note, to do what YOU want them to do, not what THEY find convenient!

1.                  Stop.   If you don’t stop playing in your habitual way, you’ll tangle the knot up more, or at the very least, not get rid of it.

2.                  For now, forget about playing all the bits you know.  Isolate that bar, or those bars, and decide that in this (or the next two or three) practice session(s) you are going to sort the knot out.  Nothing else in the piece is important right now.

3.                  Work out, SLOWLY, with the aid of a pencil, which fingers you want to play which notes.  Write the finger numbers in for every single note in the tangled bar.

4.                  Play that bar, and THAT BAR ALONE (no run-ups please!) SLOWLY, not allowing any finger to move until you know precisely which one is to go where. Do not allow any finger to make a decision for you.  All fingers must wait for you to register the note, register the finger, then “command” the relevant finger/s to strike the appropriate note/chord. However long you need to work it out and do it correctly, that’s fine. Give yourself the time.

5.                  Repeat no. 4 above, SLOWLY. Don’t be tempted to hurry up.

6.                  And again.

7.                  And again ….until your fingers can comfortably play that one bar. 

8.                  Now see whether…SLOWLY… you can play from the preceding bar, into the bar you’ve just worked on.  Don’t be tempted to try and “run in” at the usual speed you play the rest of the piece.  All that will do is reinforce the old habit.  Keep the speed so, that your brain is always ahead of your fingers and can command them before the fingers move.

9.                  Repeat no. 8 above

10.              And again

11.              And again…until you can smoothly play from pre-tangle bar to tangle bar.

12.              Now see whether ….WHOA! SLOWLY… you can play from the tangle bar to the bar after. Again – no running. 

13.              Repeat no. 12…you know the routine now. 

14.              Now go from pre-tangle bar through tangle bar and into post-tangle bar. This is the point where learners often think they can speed up.  Don’t. You’re just making extra work and stress for yourself.  The more you feel it’s time to speed up, the more you should play slowly.  What’s slow? Well, whatever you think slow is, play more slowly than that.

15.              Now go from two bars before, into the tangle bar, and two bars after. 

16.              Congratulations! You’ve just untangled a very irritating knot.   However, if you’ve got any more knots and tangles, proceed from no. 1 to no. 15 for every single tangle

Once you’ve combed out all the knots, I would advise you to play the whole piece AT THE SPEED OF THE HARDEST BIT, not at the speed of the bits you know – otherwise you’ll just be speeding up and slowing down throughout. The object is to get it all smooth.  A metronome is very handy here – watch out for my next article to follow in the new year “Don’t be in a hurry to be in a hurry” on how to make the metronome a fabulously useful tool, rather than yet another source of frustration.

When you can play your piece smoothly and without knots at a slow pace, you’ll find the speed will naturally look after itself.  And the most important thing will happen – you’ll enjoy playing your piece.