TOPIC: Playing Slow and Playing Fast

I'm incorporating into my practices an extra slow pace and, a few rounds of standard (live) pace. It seems to be a good lesson of patience and work. Does anyone else do the slow/ fAST thing? If nothing else, it's fun.

The slow fast thing is pretty well established. Sometimes the way you play something slow just won't work up to tempo. By playing fast you find out if the whole "technique" breaks down when you try to go faster to see if I need to change something. Not much sense in playing fast beyond that until you have it just right playing it slow.

A wise instructor told me recently that if you can't play it perfectly then you are playing it too fast.

Then I'm pretty much playing everything too fast. I was told by a similar wise instructor that you have to play as slow as the weakest link in the song. If you hit a riff that you can't play at the same speed as the rest of the song, slow it all down until you can play that riff correctly. Then speed the whole thing up.

Another Wiseman said play, just play...we're all living our music.

Good stuff:)
Different angles bring new ideas

I'll climb back up on an old soapbox here. I really believe in recording myself (I don't do it often enough, but I still really believe:). If you record yourself at slow tempo and then use software to speed up the recording you can see how you would sound at speed. It can be amazing how something that doesn't sound right at 60 BPM can really come to life at 180 or so. Also, if your timing is off at 60, you'll really know at 180.

Then, see if you can play along with your own recording at the higher speed, or find the fastest speed you can play along cleanly.

Handheld digital recorders have gotten pretty cheap and can transfer your recording to your PC im MP3 format, or if you have a built in mic you can just use that. Audacity or The Amazing Slower Downer are programs that can change the tempo of a song without changing the pitch, and they're free.