Broken chord accompaniment in the left, melody in the right. Hands separately I can play both cleanly at 92. Hands together at 60 it is fine, at 66 the left hand starts creeping ahead within about four bars, and by the end of the phrase I am a full beat out and having to stop. It is always the left that rushes and it always happens in the same two bars where the right hand has a run of quicker notes.
Something small and mechanical to check as well: broken chord patterns often speed up because of what the hand does physically, dropping into the pattern rather than placing each note. Play the left hand as block chords for a few passes so the harmony and the pulse are obvious, then break them again. It resets the sense of where the beat lives.
Blocking the accompaniment also tells you instantly whether you actually know the harmony or have just memorised finger movements.
Record thirty seconds and listen back with the metronome still audible. Most people discover they are not accelerating continuously, they are jumping ahead at one specific moment, usually a bar line or a leap. Once you know the exact note, the practice becomes tiny and effective instead of vague.
Also try counting out loud while playing. It feels ridiculous and it is very hard to rush while your own voice is keeping time.
@chapter_cass · 4mo ago · 3 replies
This is not a tempo problem, it is an attention problem, and the location tells you so. The left hand rushes exactly where the right hand gets busy, which means your attention leaves the left hand and it defaults to running its pattern as fast as it knows how.
Things that work, roughly in order of usefulness.
Play the left hand alone at your target tempo while singing or tapping the right hand rhythm. Now the left hand is being asked to hold steady against a busy foreground, which is the actual skill.
Play hands together but ghost the right hand, fingers moving over the closed keys or the key surface without pressing. Same coordination, no sound to hide behind.
Put the metronome on beats two and four only, or on the half bar. A click on every beat lets you drift between clicks and correct without noticing; a sparser click makes drift immediately audible.
And practise the two problem bars plus the bar before them as their own unit, twenty times, then join them back on. The bar before is where the acceleration starts even though the damage appears later.
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@circadian_cass · 4mo ago
Sparse metronome is transformative and everybody hates it for a week. Beats two and four only, and suddenly you can hear yourself.
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@sprinter_sage · 4mo ago
The ghosting exercise was uncomfortable in a way that told me it was the right one. The left hand is genuinely on autopilot.
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