Simpedia

Robin T., Tennessee

Write them a speeding ticket. I’ve made ones and printed on NEON YELLOW and have them play duets with the audio recordings.  Emphasize not that “this is how it is written” but that it is actually harder to play slower sometimes. Children often think that playing FAST means that they have “gotten it”. Then when they try to play it slow, they can’t CONTROL THE EVENTS and make their fingers slow down. Then, play some of those improv games with them like, “I want you to play Chester Chills out as if you were watching the sun rise peacefully on a beach”.

Louise H., Michigan

I think there are several factors that contribute to overly fast playing. One of these is a matter of perception. I truly think that some students do not realize how fast they are playing, and us telling them to slow down does not change things until they hear it for themselves. So I would suggest that you record their playing, play it back to them and have them be the teacher. They need to tell you one great thing they did and one thing they could improve. Pointing out small mistakes doesn’t count in an assessment because everyone makes mistakes. A question that needs to be brought up is “Is this how the piece should sound?” Invariably students will be surprised at the recording because they are now hearing it from a different perspective. Until they understand this they will continue play fast, and practice fast at home. Also record them when they play it beautifully and ask them which sounds best.

I also think it is a matter of trust. They need to believe and trust you that you know what you are saying when you say “slow down please”.  It is a claiming territory issue when they do not respond to what you are asking them to do. Perhaps they don’t get to check off their playlist at home until it is played the way it should sound. It doesn’t take that much longer to play pieces beautifully, mere seconds. As their teacher, you understand the benefits of slower playing and need to convey to them that it is much more than about executing the song. So many bad habits can develop from overly fast playing, lack of musicality being just one of them.

I think it is also just part of being a kid. Kids like to do things fast. As I get older it seems they get faster and faster. Maybe I just get slower and slower! Coming at it from an understanding that this is a developmental issue that will not quickly go away may help you as a teacher. Just working on it once or twice is not going to solve the problem. It will be something that you will have to deal with every week for awhile. I think it takes some of my student’s months to finally get that I mean what I say about slowing down, after hearing it week after week. Enlist the parents to help you in reminding them at home to slow down.

Finally, compliment them when they do it well. I also look back at the parents and say “Wasn’t that beautiful” as they are all smiling and nodding in agreement. Give lots of encouragement when it is done right. And if he goes back to execution mode remind him that you have already had that conversation about playing fast and you want to hear it played slowly and carefully every time he plays. It’s great that this is a group lesson, because once one student slows down and gets praised, the other will quickly follow.

A Thai N., California

I once said to 9 year old “I am going to play the song with you. If you play faster than me, then you’re going to have to do 10 pushups.” It was a joke, of course, but it worked!

Esperansa F., California

I tell them “okay this is too fast”, and then I say something like “do you think you play the song this way?” then I sing it really fast. Then I say it is like if you are in a concert and someone is singing Amazing Grace like this (then I sing it super fast, I really exaggerate it). They laugh. Then they hear it obviously is not the way to do it. Then we just sing the song they are working on that is fast and they following me keeping the beat clapping. If they are reluctant to sing, I tell the parents to join me because it will help the children. Once they can do that, we do it on the piano.

We do it on the piano, just two phrases or so while others keep the beat with me. Then I say, was s/he keeping the beat? In other words, with our clapping or drumming (this time they use a little drum or sticks to keep the beat, even though I only put an instrument on their hands once they can first do it clapping). Then of course we switch. That has been working great but of course some songs are more difficult than others and they always need practice with all that.

Laura L., California

How about “Slow Song Races”?  Whoever finishes the song last wins! I do “Slow Bow Races” too, with my violin students. Whoever gets to the end of the bow last wins!

Joy V., Texas

All these suggestions are excellent ones. I would just like to add a couple of things.

Firstly, I don’t fuss about going fast or playing it the way it’s “supposed to be played” — not that it is not correct, but I am all about encouraging self-expression and getting them to improvise and compose and step outside the box. The more I draw lines around the box, the harder it is for me to get them out of it.

That said, I do have ways of dealing with it:

1. Comments on occasion that a student is going fast on a regular basis — not encouraging comments, but rather acknowledging to the rest of the group that this is not what I’m looking for.
2. Comments to a student who is going the correct pace to encourage the speeder to slow down.
3. Singing with the student where there are lyrics. I sing slower than they are playing and let them know that a good accompanist is hard to find, because they won’t follow the singer. I will even play with them and start the song with the note hanging until they realize they have to watch me and wait for the second note in my voice — eg. “Siiiiiiiiiiiiiting here with youuuuuuuuuuuuu.”
4. For Blues, I tell them that if they can’t do their neck like a chicken while they’re playing the Blues, it’s too fast and demonstrate it.

They still play fast many times because that’s what kids do. But I encourage them to be capable of doing it both ways, because after all, playing Dreams quickly increases dexterity for those more difficult songs later on.

Marg G., Australia

This is going to be a bit long but hopefully helpful.

DISCOVERY: Some 18 years ago, as a traditional teacher, I discovered something which TOTALLY changed the way I handled this situation. This speeding has, of course, nothing to do with SM but is within the person. If you look at your whole student body you may well realize you have students who either play everything very moderately and it’s hard to wind then up to play something a little faster.

MY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE: Physically we all work on different body mechanisms. Some have a fast tic (I think that’s the spelling) and some have a slow tic. People with a fast tic are very good at short distance swimming and running while people with a slow tic are much better at long distances.

My sons were having sprint training and my eldest son was very slow off the mark while my youngest son was up and gone before we could blink. The trainer explained that they had opposite tics which caused this difference. Anyone can start to improve the fast or the slow speed by understanding this.

NOW – you say – what has this got to do with the topic? At the same time, I had a student who was an excellent well rounded young musician. HOWEVER he simply COULD NOT get his scales up to speed. We had agonized over this and nothing worked. One lesson we were talking and he mentioned something about swim training and I had a light bulb moment. I asked him if he did long or short distance swimming. He replied, confidently, that he was a long distance swimmer as he had a slow tic…. WOW – he know about tics… SO I suggested my brand new light bulb theory that maybe this tic crosses over to other things and that is why he was having such difficulty. His eyes lit up and he said it made sense to him. I might add he was about 11 or 12 at the time so a little older than your chap but not much.

He went away armed with this information and came back with faster scales!

WHERE TO NEXT: I then took my theory to the FAST players, of whom there were many. I asked if they preferred long or short distance running. Invariably they ALL were better at and preferred short distances or liked to run around the playground at top speed.

It’s like standing in a shopping centre and watching people. Some are striding and rushing like there is no tomorrow and others are meandering along as if they have all day and then there are the in-between ones. THANK GOODNESS for the in-between ones.

APPLICATION: SO – HOW has this helped? I really believe it helps the person (adults do this too) understand WHY they do it as it’s not really a decision they are making it is actually innate. This also helps us because we realize they are NOT being difficult – they actually have to work hard at slowing down. It’s not in their nature to go slowly.

All the other suggestions coming in help them to put their reins on which is great. I just believe it really helps them and us to understand WHY because if we know a reason it’s easier to work on the solution.

CHALLENGE: How about you all check out your students one week and ask each of them how they run, swim or play and see for yourselves if your students follow this modeling. The only ones who sort of don’t are the in between ones who can mix it up. However they are usually not in the extreme ends of the fast or slow spectrum. Parents are particularly interested in this and can actually relate to it themselves. After all it’s in the genes……

Mark M., New York

Interesting stuff. I’d like to ask more about the application.

At first, I thought, reading this, that there was no real advice for how to change anything. It seemed that everything you were saying was that there is this innate quality to the slow/fast issue, and you kept reiterating that, but you didn’t move on to explain just how to help someone achieve the result that isn’t innate for them. So I was simply going to ask.

Then, I wondered if you were saying that simply letting them know that this is the case, that this is something innate in them, is all you need to do. That once they see that it is innate, that’s what makes them realize for the first time that if they want to make a difference they will actually have to work on it in some concerted way, and so off they go to do so. This was the best I could make of what you said about actually applying this.

If that’s true, if that’s the application you’re suggestion, I’m skeptical about its usefulness for most people. With not only Simply Music students but people in general, there are a small number who are more open than most to self-change and learning, who only need to understand where a barrier is so that they can now gladly act to remove it. Many, though, respond to such revelations with an oh-well-that’s-just-the-way-I-am attitude. They didn’t care so much about changing in the first place, and pointing out an innate barrier merely gives them even further justification to avoid change. Many others might be interested in putting work in to change but have no idea at all how to overcome their innate quality. They might now see the barrier they couldn’t see before, but still they have no clue how to move the barrier out of the way, or how to move themselves around it. These things lead me to believe that most people will need more than merely being made aware of a quality as being innate in order to build up an opposite quality that is being blocked by that innate quality. Can you comment?

Shanta H., Minnesota

This is a really helpful way of thinking about it. I’ve always known this as a singer, but I’ve labeled it differently. I call it the “internal metronome.” Two singers can sing the same song beautifully and artistically, but because of the individual instrument that each was born with, they are each most comfortable at different tempo. You might sing the song best at a tempo that feels like a dirge to me. If you sang it at my pace, it might be too fast for you to articulate all the notes. It’s VERY hard work to sing a song well at what feels like the “wrong” tempo.

The beauty of playing an instrument that isn’t completely contained inside your body is that you have much more flexibility to go beyond the tempo that your internal metronome wants. This is something I’ve really enjoyed about learning to play piano as I’m teaching Simply Music. I find that if I need to play a song slower than I want to, it helps me to imagine the micro-beats going constantly underneath the music. Think of it as feeling the quads going constantly under the singles, even if you’re only playing singles. For someone like me, with a very fast internal metronome, It really helps keep the energy going even when you’re playing at a “slow” tempo.

Sheri R., California

Something that has helped many of my speedy syndrome students is to play tic-tac-toe. I have found most kids like to win so having to earn points by going slow is motivating. If they can play a particular chunk on the keypad without one mistake they get to mark to board, if they make a mistake I get the point. Sometimes I do this with a group of kids and everyone is very intent on watching when we do this.

Sometimes I ask one student to do a particular passage three or five times in a row for the point. That really forces the issue and I always ask them how long they think it took them to learn the chunk and win the game. Of course it’s always a very short amount of time, usually under a minute or two. When they can see in class how what took them all week not to learn can actually be learned quite quickly they start to get how important controlling the events on the keypad is. Just keep doing this for as long as it takes.  Whenever I hear someone say “oh, I always mess up there,” out come the keypads and the game.  Sometimes to earn a point they also have to talk aloud. Controlling the events, using the keypad, and talking aloud are not magic, just incredibly practical.

Sue C., Australia

Could an example of how to build that quality be to have the students using teddies or dolls, act out Dreams Come True for an example? Mention that the teddies would like to “sit here with you” longer than one or two seconds, so they can enjoy the experience. Also point out it takes a while to “listen to thoughts”.

Maybe this could help in a non judgmental way to help the student experience slowing the song without realizing that is what they are actually doing.