How slow is slow? · The Practice Room

How slow is slow?

This is from my daily email, series you can get it here: https://www.jonbjorkmusic.com/lessonvault/

My method for building fast, clean, and reliable technique is based on loads of slow, perfect reps.

Now, the first question you might have is: How slow is slow?

As with most things in life, it depends.

If you’re practicing a technique like Transition Time—where the goal is to move as quickly as possible from note to note with full control—we’re talking one note per beat at around 50–80 bpm.

That’s really slow. But it’s necessary if you want to get the full benefit from that kind of practice.

When it comes to repeating a lick or playing an exercise all over the fretboard, you can gauge your slow tempo like this:

“What’s the tempo where I’m fully relaxed, in complete control, and every rep is perfect?”

That can be a much wider range of tempos depending on what you’re practicing.

The important thing is not to get hung up on the number.

Practice tempo will always be much slower than your top playing tempo.

By getting in thousands of perfect reps, you’ll see your technique naturally get faster and cleaner—without ever having to do the old “push the metronome and clean it up later” method.

There is no "later."

Do it right now.

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