“The very act of writing it down made her realize how easy it would be to forget, how important it would be from now on to put everything, everything, down on paper.” – Donna Tartt
“Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.” – Albert Einstein
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin
It is critical to write and track progress on paper to ensure that we attain our musical goals. This is true in all aspects of our life, not just piano. If you do not write it down, it is not real. Progress will be left to chance; and chance is not kind.
Note: If you haven’t read my general practice guide (Practice = Sections Repeated Correctly), please do so before continuing with this guide.
The Double Dynamite Practice Method
Learning a piece of music is akin to tunneling through a mountain. There’s a right way to go about achieving the goal, and an incredibly inefficient way about doing it.
We could grab a spoon from the kitchen and start digging. Scoop after scoop of earth would be heaved and moved from the earth. Hours, days, months and years would be spent exerting that poor spoon until it’s a mere sliver of silver worn away from the toil. After decades of perseverance, we may emerge on the other side of the mountain: our life force spent to dig through that single hill. Or, we could mix nitroglycerin with some diatomaceous earth. Imbue the ancient fossils with the explosive power of nitrogen and make a quick work of the tunnel!
A mere 2 years after the American Civil War, Alfred Nobel (yes that Nobel!) invented dynamite. He mixed the explosive liquid nitroglycerin with diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth is the fossilized remains of ancient, microscopic, aquatic life forms. Their fossilized remains are made out of silica, the same material that glass is made out of. The nitroglycerin soaks into the ancient skeletons and forms a stable clay-like substance. Wrap it in paper, stick in a fuse, and you’ve got dynamite! If not for dynamite, mining and many engineering feats would be difficult or impossible.
If learning music is the goal, the Double Dynamite method is the way to achieve it with the least effort in the shortest amount of time.
A pedantic aside: Colloquially, though not technically, Dynamite is often called TNT (thanks to Bugs Bunny and various Hollywood representations of the explosive). Though scientifically TNT is different chemically than dynamite, we will use them interchangeably for mnemonic purposes.
Double Dynamite
TNT TNT stands for “Test ‘N Track: Tempo ‘N Timing”, hence Double Dynamite!
Like actual dynamite, the double dynamite method enables us to accomplish quite a bit of work in a very short amount of time. Typically, a student will receive a metronome mark from the teacher to practice for an entire week. Then the student will come back and perform the piece with the metronome for the teacher. If the piece is secure enough, (<1% mistakes depending on the difficulty of the piece etc.), then the teacher will assign a new metronome speed to practice for the next week. With Double Dynamite, the student is able to make weeks worth of progress between lessons rather than waiting for the teacher’s go-ahead to increase the metronome.
Before the student is ready to use TNT TNT, there are two prerequisite steps:
- The music, if longer than 4-8 measures, must be broken into manageable sections. See my practice guide for more info. In short, they are usually 4-8 measures long per section, though sometimes more or less depending on the density of the music. Don’t worry too much that they’re the perfect size with exactly the right stop and end point. You can section by dynamic marks with reasonable accuracy. Then label all the sections with a boxed letter [A], [B], [C] etc. We need the lettered sections for the testing phase.
- They should be familiar with all of the notes, rhythms, finger numbers, and articulations for each section. That is, they can play each section hands together at a slow tempo. It might be possible to jump into hands together with the metronome right away, but more often than not, it takes a bit to get to that point. Anything more than a few days without metronome in a section means it’s likely a bit too difficult to work on and more accessible repertoire should be chosen.
Make a tracking sheet with the title of the piece, the sections laid out 1 per line, then put “♩=”, “♪ =”, or , “♬ =” after the section letter. For instance, a piece with 4 sections might look like this:
Beyer Op. 101, No. 16
[A] ♩=
[B] ♩=
[C] ♩=
[D] ♩=
Then, take section [A] and Test it with a slow Tempo. 60 to the quarter or eighth note is usually a reasonable place to start though it could be lower or higher. Then as you Test it, focus on your Timing. That is, make sure that your notes go exactly with the metronome. It’s quite easy to neglect the timing and be a fraction of a second before or after the beat. It should feel like you’re right on top of the metronome click. Sometimes it even creates the illusion that you can’t hear the metronome since it’s sounding at the exact same time and the sounds overlap. Another way I refer to this exact timing is being “locked in”. A common expression for when multiple members of a rock or jazz band play super together with no rhythmic slop. Assuming everything goes perfectly (a rare occurrence on the first try), Track the metronome speed by writing it in your tracker.
Beyer Op. 101, No. 16
[A] ♩= 60
[B] ♩=
[C] ♩=
[D] ♩=
If you can’t play it at a slow speed, reduce the metronome by at least 10% and try again. If it’s unbearably slow, switch to a smaller subdivision. “♪ =”, or , “♬ =”, Add a flag to the quarter note to make it an eighth note or a 16th note. Then the metronome clicks on the faster notes making it easier to stay locked in with the metronome. For example: “♩=40”, “♪ =80”, or , “♬ =160” are all the exact same speed, but “♪ =80” is likely the correct tempo to practice at since between 60-120 is the sweet spot for perceiving a steady beat. Faster or slower than that range make it difficult to keep an exact steady beat. Thus, we change the subdivision we practice with to make keeping a steady beat more productive and enjoyable.
Once you get all your sections at a slow speed where you can play each section perfectly: all the notes go exactly with the metronome. You have your Base Speed. But you only have your base speed for the sections. Now you can try and string together sections and play the whole piece at the base speed. Once you can do that now you Push the tempo. Warm up each section once or so with the Base speed then try the Push tempo. 3x then one more time base speed. Go through all sections. Write down all times on your tempo tracker when you practice. Only write down once the section is correct and secure.
A Note on the Double Dynamite Method VS Practicing:
The Double Dynamite Method isn’t actually “practicing” in a strict sense. You’ll recall from my practice guide that Practicing is Repeating Sections Correctly. So we certainly do some of that in that we take the sections and play them repeatedly as we work up the tempos, but the Double Dynamite method alone does not build rock solid muscle memory. Rather, the primary function of the Double Dynamite method is a way to track progress, set goals, and efficiently organize our limited practice time. By knowing exactly where our tempos are for any section of our music, we simply look for the lowest tempo number and work on that section first. If you don’t know objectively which sections of your music are the weakest, you are just blindly guessing what to work on and wasting an incredible amount of time and effort.