Nancy from Kentucky: I am working on Little Liza Jane. When I get to 5:45 on the Full Play-Along Track it becomes too fast.

  • First, work on your timing at a comfortable medium speed.
    • If you can’t do this, then you won’t be able to play fast
    • Use a metronome
    • It might be hard at first, so start with very simple things, like going single notes and rhythms on open strings
    • When you want to speed up a tune, speed up the most challenging parts
      • These parts will set the tempo for the whole tune
      • As you speed up the hardest parts, you’ll be able to speed up the whole tune
  • The Jedi-knight method of playing fast: play things VERY SLOWLY with a metronome
    • This is hard
  • Don’t worry too much about playing fast
    • If you focus on fundamentals, this will happen more easily down the line
  • Will a metronome help my fiddling?
  • Metronome tracks

Further learning

This micro-lesson is an excerpt from an office hours webinar I gave on July 15, 2020. View the entire live-stream with indexed questions here.

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