Causes of Hesitations

[bwv]

I applied Bernhard's practice methods to my last piece, a Bach prelude, and learned it rather quickly. I feel I am more 'comfortable' with this piece than previous ones, I can start from just about anywhere, and I feel I somehow 'know' it better.

With this new piece, also a Bach prelude, I think I may have done something wrong, maybe my sections were too big, maybe not enough overlap, I don't know, but I do seem to have developed a hesitation between two sections.  Section 1 I can do at speed, section 2 at speed, but sections 1+2, well, I slow down in preparation of section 2.

I have overlaped my sections though, section 1 + 1 note from section 2, section 2 + 1 note and so on.  There is still that lingering hesitation.

I am curious to know what *all* the possible causes of hesitations are, this happened on a lot of my previous pieces, and not on others, and I just can't pinpoint what I'm doing wrong (or right).

I would also to discuss various cures for these hesitations. I tried the 11111+22222, 1111+2222, 111+222,  11+22, 1+2 not method and it does not work for this particular hesitation.

I have not tried rythmic variations as discussed in another post, that method I will try when I get back home.

Thanks!

[bernhard]

Increase the overlap. Sometimes a single note added at the end of a bar is not enough. Try using a whole bar as overlap (or even a whole phrase). This means adding the first bar (or first phrase) of section 2 at the end of section 1, and adding the last bar (or last phrase) of section1 at the start of section 2. Once you can do these two (enlarged) sections without problems, you should have no hesitation when joining them.

Hesitation typically occurs for two main reasons:

1.   You do not know the music well enough, so you do not know where to go next. This is particularly the case with fast passages. The way out is to memorise the music (and by this I do not mean being able to play without the score – you can use the score as a reference even though you have memorised the music).

2.   A far more common reason however, has to do with too many options. This really a technical problem. As you repeat a passage, if you keep changing the fingering, or if you use a different movement every repetition, your brain will be undecided about which option to use when it gets to the passage in question. Therefore you hesitate. So when doing repeats of the offending section, make sure they are indeed repeats, that is, you must repeat exactly the same movements and use exactly the same fingerings. Fingerings and movements are not written in stone. Spend time investigating the best movements/fingerings for your physicality and for the musical result you are after. However once you reach a decision, stick by it and use your focus and concentration to make sure that you are indeed repeating these movements fingerings. In other words, hesitation may be simply the result of sloppy practising.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bwv]

After thinking about it a bit, I think you are right quite right.  I was *really* careful in my first prelude to pick sections that were easy, and slowly (as in slow motion) practicing them.  With this second prelude I don't think I was as careful. I'll be extra careful and attentive in the second part of the prelude. 

I think xvimbi had similar thoughts on practicing in his reply on the thread teaching/perfect accuracy. Fighting laziness and slopiness as he put it.

By the way the rhythmic variations trick got rid of those hesitations like magic.  Some variations are more difficult than others but the process works quite well.

Many thanks for your reply and for the great work you do here.

[sznitzeln]

If the piece you are learning has a varying difficulty, as most often is the case, then you should practice the the difficult parts (passages) many times until you know them, then you should "install" it into your piece... Hofman used to add 1 bar on each side of the passage, then 2 bars, and so on...
Also practicing by bars can be very boring... the pieces will have more logical divisions... (phrases). If you want to memorize a poem... will you memorize 4 words at the time? No you will more likely memorize sentences...
If a piece is very easy for you... then you can learn it by playing it over and over again... it all depends... dont use strict rules that are uncomfortable for you.

Hofman suggested a nice method I think is very time efficient...
Play the piece several times from the sheetmusic... then take some time and try to remember it in your head, then take the sheetmusic and read it and see what things you forgot... At some point you should sit at the piano without the sheetmusic and play everything you remember, then take the sheetmusic and play ONLY the parts that were messed up... (I think he suggested that the actual memorisation is done with sheetmusic, without piano, but you can of course modify).

Then to keep a large repetory play each piece you know a couple of times each week, but not consecutively, but play different pieces in succession... then you notice how the first piece you played is fresh when you finish the last one...