Go Slow To Go Fast

Metronomes are magic.

Practice Slow- a new sketch for a relief print

I love my metronome, but I didn’t always. (For any non- music folks, a metronome is a steady beat you practice to) For the longest time I thought they were to help you go fast. I thought you were supposed to set it as fast as you could play something and then just try to keep up. When I learned they were actually to help you slow down and stay slow, It was like my music practice went from black and white to color.

I did a workshop with the amazing banjoist Bela Fleck. I’ll always see Bela’s show if I’m anywhere near it; I’ve been a fan since I was a teenager. We were playing at The Harvest Festival in Arkansas the same weekend, Bela on the main stage and my band on a little woodland stage. I remember it was hotter than I’m ever going to be ok with. We’d just finished our set, and I hustled through the woods carrying both my instruments and crammed in with about 100 other people under a tent made for 30.

Bela was taking questions, except the questions that people kept asking weren’t actually curious, they were just statements with a "don't you agree?" mark at the end. I loathe speaking up in these types of settings, I prefer to be an invisible observer,but it was obvious that if I wanted to actually hear Bela talk about making music, I was going to have to swallow hard, raise my hand and ask what advice he had for practice. He answered without hesitation, "Slow down.” At the time I was obsessed with trying to play fast. I was trying to break through a ceiling that just wouldn’t seem to budge with flatpicking fiddle tunes on the guitar, and it was killing me. I was spending hours with a metronome set at 120 bpm (beats per minute), trying to inch my way up to 130 and I just couldn’t seem to get there. I always felt like cartoon charachter holding on to a train and getting dragged behind it. Bela went on to say that he spent at least 80% of his practice time working at less than 60 bpm, and sometimes even a lot slower.

A heartbeat at rest is about 60 bpm. Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” is about 60 bpm I put that tempo in my headphones and I have never looked back.

It's actually pretty hard to slow down that much. You’ll hear every squeak and squawk you have been glossing over, but it gives you the time to figure out how to make the sound you actually want to make. It really shows you how erratic your own internal rhythm can be, but when you can find your groove down there, you own it. It helped me learn to pay closer attention. It helped me break things down and work on smaller pieces. And, ironically, it did help me play a lot faster too. It was the best bit of musical advice I could have gotten, because the feeling of being at ease is a super important part of playing, and you actually have to train that feeling of ease into your muscle memory. I learned that I could get those tunes up to tempo, inch by inch, but it takes the time that it takes to get there. There’s no shortcut.

There are neurological explanations for this- Daniel Coyle lays it all out in “The Talent Code” - how our brains create the correct networks and connections at the slower tempo and strengthen them over time- especially when we sleep, so the fastest way to get anywhere is to go slower than you might want to.

Do less in more time. It’s the opposite of every productivity hack out there, but nothing has helped my music practice more than that: than doing less in more time. Fewer notes- but more space and time for expression and connection and all the reasons we play music in the first place.

I just started reading Cal Newport’s new book “Slow Productivity” and it really strikes me how similar his whole premise is to what I have learned through practicing to a slow metronome. It also has become apparent to me how we can KNOW something, know it on a deep level in one part of our lives, and then just never cross it over into other parts of our lives. The concepts in Cal’s book are: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. He’s basically describing everything I know from practicing slow with a metronome, but instead of music: it’s life. It’s projects and to do lists. One of my recurring lessons in life is to not have so many different things going at once.

This week, instead of panicking, I’m trying to tune into what tempo I have my life set at. I know that way too often I am doing life with the metronome set way up high, and I am not keeping up. I’m not getting more done, I’m getting nothing done because there is no space around my focus. When I tune into my body, I can feel it. How convenient that my heartbeat wants to hang out at 60 bpm. I need to allow myself the grace to use it and turn that LIFE metronome to a real practice tempo. I need to use that beat to keep me there in the slow and steady. Use it to keep myself where I have the space to breathe. Use it to stay at the tempo where I can actually make things beautiful.

SONG TIME:

Y’all- I’m going to start sharing more of my music.

Here is my song “Lady Of The Mountains” which is nice slow love song for the snow, because right now I’m sweaty and busy, and I know I need an antidote.