Nick Cutroneo

I believe I’ve mentioned this before on my Blog, but every so often I find myself speaking to my students about the same concept, whether it is an interpretive, technical, or practice idea.  For the past few months now I’ve been speaking to students about Stop Practice.  My first exposure to the technique of Stop Practice was during my Junior Year of my undergraduate degree at The Hartt School of Music.  One of the classes that I was taking was called Teaching Principles (TPR for short).  This purpose of this class was to expose upperclassmen to teaching experience by both reading and researching about the topic and styles plus practical application of these concepts in our own teaching.  I do not recall the particulars of when or how we learned about Stop Practice, but it has stayed with me ever since.

The concept of Stop Practice is pretty simple.  Take a difficult passage you are struggling to improve or play.  When you have isolated where and what your problem and most importantly how to solve your problem, you can use Stop Practice to work in your solution.  For example, take this excerpt from de Visee’s Ouverture de la Grotte de Versailles:

In this example, the transition from the last 1/8th note in the 14th measure to the downbeat chord in measure 15 can be a bit awkward.  Using Stop Practice one can work out the awkward shift and make significant improvement in the fluidity of the section.  In this section, I’d stop between the end of the 14th measure and start of the 15th measure.  During the pause, I would take as much time as I needed to ensure that my shift was smooth, the fingers take on the new chord shape comfortable and effortlessly, and that my left arm was balanced.  It is important that these things are addressed and brought to my awareness as they are essential to performing the passage smoothly and effortlessly.  I wait until I’m able to see that all of these ideas are in place before I continue into the 15th measure.

As I become more aware of these concepts and see that they are happening quicker in my body, the pause becomes smaller.  It is at this point, when I put a metronome on.  I’ll place the metronome at my performance tempo (138=quarter) and pause for 2 beats in the same spot.  During the pause, I’m still checking to make sure the above points (smooth shift, well placed figures and chord shape, and balanced left hand) are all being met.  When I’m comfortable with the 2 beat spot and am able to successfully play it multiple times in a row, I’ll pause for only one beat.  Typically the one beat pause is very telling of what may be going wrong during the problem area.  Due to the small amount of time you are unable to focus on all the points at one.  If I find this to be the case (and I’m not making any progress with the one beat pause), I’ll combine the stop practice with slow practice.  To keep everything simple, I reassign the metronome click to the 8th note, instead of the quarter note.  This increase of proportionate time allows me to further pick apart the problem and continue to reinforce my solution.  I typically use the ratio of 5 times slow for every 1-2 times fast.  I’ll go back and forth a half a dozen times or so.  At that point I’ll test out section at tempo with no pauses.  I give myself a few chances (2-3) to see if I can successfully play the section.  From there I typically either reinforce my solution so that I have a better success rate, or continue to drill out the section for increased success.

An alternative to stopping before the problem area is to stop after.  I’ve found this to be most effective in helping me reduce a build up of tension in difficult passages, or to assess how I’m progressing in practicing a problematic area.  Taking the above example, instead of stopping right before the chord on the downbeat of measure 15, I’d play straight through and stop after the chord.  Typically I will practice this way after I have already practiced stopping before the chord.

While the above example was of an awkward chord change, you can apply this way of practicing to dealing with a difficult right hand fingering, learning to grab a difficult chord shape in the left hand, etc.