Upper Limits

AUG 1, 2012:  If you've tried the method of crawling from a slow comfortable tempo (where you can get all the notes) to a slightly faster tempo and then an even faster tempo, etc. until you reach your designated tempo and can play the passage with accuracy, you already know about the "upper limits".  When you reach it, you start to lose coordination and balance.

But trying again isn't necessarily going to solve the problem. If you go back three or four times to the starting point and you still hit a stone wall at your former upper limit, it probably means that something needs to be altered---like your fingering for this passage, or your hand motions.  Maybe you need to slow the passage down in your mind instead of trying to mentally rush through the difficulties.  Or it could be that you need to slow that passage down just slightly in order to fit in the notes.

There are many difficult passages that can be solved by the working out of maybe two or three small places in the passage.  It could be an awkward leap or a place where the fingers get gnarled up.

Taking the hands separately almost always works, particularly if most of the difficulties are in one hand.  Then it's helpful to crawl up the metronome with that one hand---and after working out the difficulty, start again but this time use both hands.

If nothing else works, revising the passage is always an option.  If you know the style of the music you're playing, and particularly if you find a way to make something sound similar but still leave out certain notes (or other things, like changing the octave register where it won't be noticed, say, in a fast passage) you can generally find a way to make it work.  If nothing else, you may have to take the whole piece slower.

But as your technique improves, and it usually does if you keep working at it correctly, you'll find that in the long run you might be able to play the passage as written after all.