Reply To: Questions about at tempo chaining

[Luca Dovalina]

Well, the syncing issue is simply not being able to play an interval cleanly. Where; because some intervals require you to put fingers down in one hand and lift some up in the other, it can be hard to do that in sync without a crack or blip sounding. The various movements need to be coordinated into one single unit. Usually in a passage the technical mistakes happen because of these reoccurring intervals.

Basically whenever I come across an interval like this that doesn’t sound clean, I just have to find out how to retrain playing it, and then find out how to integrate it into the passage that I’m working on.

I’ve noticed that the reason why certain fingers are slower than others is because of their position (like with violin, some of my fingers tend to go flat instead of curved) and because of tension (which is caused by posture- I don’t balance the instrument well and a lot of the weight ends up falling on my left hand).

It has helped so far warming up with exercises that include those intervals, as it’s a way that allows me to also better focus on the posture and each finger position.

So if these problems are caused by a certain bad habit that’s I’ve integrated, and the solution is to substitute that habit for another more optimal one. How would you recommend doing this so that these new habits become muscle memory? Where they’re integrated so well that when I encounter these intervals in context they don’t degrade in quality?<div>
I’d assume that the warm up would help a lot, but that’s something that- at the moment- I can only do well for about 3-5 minutes because it requires lots of conscious focus to do well (that’s also about as long as I can do deliberate practice for). Should I only do 5 minutes of deliberate practice at a time before taking a break and doing it again, and then increasing the minutes little by little each week? Like the interleaved schedule- where you work on piece 1 for 5 ms then go to piece 2 for 5 then 3 for 5 and repeat that cycle 3 times, only spending those first 5 minutes of each cycle doing deliberate practice.

-What’s the main idea/ factors necessary to build a habit up to the point where it doesn’t require much conscious attention?<div>
Thank you,

</div><div>Luca</div>