tempo

[dongsang153]

i am currently playing schubert's impromptu in eb.  i have everything down perfectly at a slow tempo.  it's time to start speeding up, and i was wondering what is the best way to do this?  thanks!

[xvimbi]

Play faster! 

Seriously, if you did work out the fingering and all the motions correctly, simply speeding up should work. You will hit speed walls only if the technique changes with speed. For example, a legato scale fragment at slow speed will use the thumb-under technique (TU), whereas at high speed, you need to switch to "thumb-over" (i.e. lateral shift of the hand without TU). If you try to speed up with TU, you won't get anywhere.

This is why it is important to work things out initially at full speed (ideally at even faster speeds), then go back to SLOW-MOTION practice (not SLOW practice), where the fast techniques are carried out slowly without switching to slow techniques.