Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

I wanted to play fast. Everyone starting out does. Speed looks like skill, so I’d take a difficult passage and hurl myself at it at full tempo, stumbling in the same spot every time, backing up, and hurling myself at it again.

My teacher watched this for a while and then made me do something that felt like punishment. Play it slowly. Absurdly slowly. So slowly that there was no possible way to get it wrong. Every note clean, every finger deliberate, at a tempo that embarrassed me.

I resented it, and it worked. Because what I’d actually been doing was practicing the stumble — drilling the mistake over and over until the mistake was the most rehearsed part of the piece. Playing slowly, I was finally practicing getting it right, and only then was I allowed to inch the tempo up, a hair at a time, never faster than I could play it perfectly.

The speed came. It came faster than it ever had when I was chasing it directly. And the lesson stuck to everything else in my life: slow is not the beginner’s tempo, it’s the craftsman’s. Speed built on error just gets you to the mistake sooner. Speed built on clean, correct, patient repetition is the only kind that lasts.

I still hear that teacher whenever I’m rushing something I haven’t earned yet. Slow down. Get it right. The speed is a reward, not a shortcut.

– Serguey Asael Shinder