At the piano
How to practise slowly
The single most useful habit — and the hardest one to accept.
3 min read
Playing slowly is not a gentler version of playing fast. It is a different task: at a slow tempo you have time to notice what your hands are actually doing, and that noticing is the practice.
How slow?
- Slow enough to play the passage correctly three times in a row.
- If you make the same mistake twice, you are still too fast.
- Speed up in small steps, and go back down whenever the mistake returns.
Every lesson here has a tempo slider for exactly this. Using it is not cheating — it is the method.
Practise with a steady pulse →Tip: Practising a passage fast and wrong teaches your hands to play it wrong, quickly. Slow is not the detour; it is the road.