5 facts about slow practice, and 8 ways to actually do it

Slow practice gets recommended in every studio, but as long-time musicians and teachers, we sometimes forget to break down for our students what it's actually doing, and how to do it properly. This list covers both.

Caveat: this list is written from the perspective of a piano teacher. Much of its advice and ideas is applicable to other instruments, but not always precisely. Adapt as you need for your instrument!

Facts about slow practice

1. Slow practice is for everyone, not just beginners. Even Rachmaninov practiced at a snail's pace.

2. If you learn something slowly, you'll forget it slowly. That's Itzhak Perlman's line, and it holds up: whatever gets built into your fingers slowly and correctly is what survives under pressure.

3. Slow practice does three separate jobs. Learning notes, refining notes, and maintaining notes.

4. It's not just for new pieces. Slow practice can be used right up to the day of a performance without undoing any progress.

5. It trains musicality as much as accuracy. Go slowly enough, and problems with tone, phrasing or pedalling become as obvious as wrong notes.

How to actually do it

1. Set an actual tempo, not a vague idea of "slower." Half speed or quarter speed, set on a metronome, is something a student can act on.

2. Practice hands separately, then together. It catches problems that get hidden when one hand covers for the other.

3. Don't test a new passage at full speed straight away. Leave it alone after the slow work is done.

4. Come back to it slowly again the next day, and the day after that. Resuming slow practice over several days is what makes it stick.

5. Use "slow and firm" for anything that feels out of control. Fast passagework, runs, playing that's lost its precision.

6. Use "slow and musical" for everything else. Drop the metronome and let the ear lead: tone, phrasing, articulation, pedalling, dynamics.

7. Use "slow yet fast" for tricky jumps. Keep the overall tempo slow, but move between positions at full speed, exactly as you will at performance tempo.

8. Use the feedback loop. Decide what you want to hear before you play, play it, then check whether it matched. If it didn't, be precise about what was different, not just that something was wrong.

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