Frank (an imaginary saxophone player) has been practising a transcribed solo all week. Each day, after a ten minute warm up of long notes and scales he launches into it with gusto but has yet to get through correctly in one pass.

“This time though”, he says to himself, “I’m going to play it perfectly”.

He charges into it yet again with much enthusiasm. He makes a fair job of it (he’s been playing for a couple of years now) but there are several places where he came unstuck for various different reasons.

“One more go”, he says.

This time it’s worse than the first attempt with a completely new set of mistakes. “To hell with it”, he exclaims and gives up. “I’ll play something easy instead”.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

That’s a common scenario with beginner and intermediate players. They play a tune repeatedly, expending a great deal of energy and wasting a great deal of time in the proccess, only to end up no better at the end of it all. “My fingers won’t do what I want them to” they say,”I haven’t the speed”.

Ah speed. It’s not the answer I’m afraid. Most professional players encounter difficult passages that they find difficult play on a daily basis, particularly if they are session or theatre musicians. They cope with the problem rapidly, though, because they know how to approach the problem areas.

On being given a completely new piece of music, pros will skim through the pages and quickly identify the tricky passages, particularly those that present fingering problems. Then they practise only those parts, slowly at first, and gradually increase their speed. It doesn’t take long - after all, they’re pros and their technique is already very secure - and they soon have it all ‘under the fingers’ ready to play through.

This is precisely how Frank should be approaching his transcribed solo, homing in on the hard bits and concentrating on those parts first; slowly. Here’s a few guidelines for Frank and anybody else who may be experiencing practice problems with tricky fingering passages.

• Play the piece through at a slow to moderate speed first and identify the problem arrears.
• Mark the tricky sections with a pencil. If there are too many for one practice session, leave some for another day. If there are long phrases, break them down into smaller, more manageable junks.
• Play these passages repeatedly, very slowly, until your fingers can cope with the unfamiliar movements.
• Practice the articulation just as carefully, matching tongue with fingers.
• Increase your speed gradually, but only after you’re satisfied that fingering and articulation are ’spot on’.
• When you’re happy with all these individual passages - it may be minutes, it may be days, it may well be weeks, depending on your level of ability - play the entire piece through and notice the improvement.

This approach to practising is invaluable. The more you work this way, the quicker the whole process becomes. That’s why the pro session players can cope with almost anything put in front of them. They have always worked this way and have it down to a fine art.

Any questions? Do you have something to say on the subject of practising hard-to-play passages? Leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

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