Don’t get clicky, and don’t make your hands fall off. 

Any single practicing technique can go too far; any one trick can become overused and drive us crazy. “Clicky” is what I call the mental state after a little too much time working with a metronome. We get focused and driven and then realize we’ve been at it too long. (Turn it off. Do something else.) Don’t get clicky.

Last week I advised a student to do a specific and highly effective technique, but I think I forgot to add “a ma non troppo.” He was facing a common problem: you’re trying to speed up a section of really quick notes, and it won’t get fast fast enough. There is the obvious method of starting slow and making it faster very gradually, but eventually you need to mix your practice up. Here’s the trick I taught him: try speeding up using an exaggeratedly uneven rhythm. Try long-short throughout the passage, because that quickens the connection between two notes at a time, and gives you time to breathe and think in between those pairs. Later, be sure to counter with similar work with a short-long rhythm, exaggerating the quickness of the other pairs. (Simply dotted rhythms may work, but I advise that you take even more time between the quick notes, as if there is a fermata between each pair.)

Today, working with this student, I realized I hadn’t sufficiently pre-cautioned him against overusing a given practice technique. His hands felt tight and numb and like they were about to fall off. It reminded me to restate here: let’s remember to mix it up. Don’t get clicky, and don’t practice your hands off.