A Simple Pomodoro Routine For Getting Songs Up To Tempo

Note: This article is entirely focussed on songs that you can play, but can’t play at the required tempo. We’ll cover what it means to “play” in the Pre-Routine section below.

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a baroque keyboard piece, which I’ve transcribed for two guitars - hopefully I’ll have it released on my Youtube channel soon.

Being baroque, it’s quite intricate - lots of 16th notes, stretches and large jumps and transitions.

After learning the notes and fingering for the piece, I found myself struggling to get the piece to tempo.

Frustrated, I sat down and thought about the problem, and came up with a simple routine that is helping me make measurable progress every day - it’s fantastic. I’ve been using it for several weeks, and it’s helping my step towards that goal.

It uses the pomodoro technique, a method for breaking down work into short and highly focussed chunks.

Let’s go over it so that you can use it in your playing.

Pre-Routine

Before working on the routine, you need to have the following figured out:

• Where the notes go on the neck
• What fingers you are using
• How to play the rhythm accurately to a metronome

If you are weak in any of those areas - this method will not work for you… so go back and get those elements nailed!

You should be able to play through the entire song to a metronome or drum machine, albeit slowly.

Pomodoro Routine For Getting Songs To Tempo

We will use four pomodoros, each 12 minutes long:

1. Warm Up Play the song at the tempo where you can accurately play it with very few (if any mistakes)
2. Speed Training Increase the tempo by 3bpm and play the song again. Then again. And again. Mistakes are ok. Keep going until the song completely falls to pieces.
3. Correction Take a small section where you were making mistakes in the previous pomodoro, slow the metronome down and focus on fixing that section. Increase tempo as appropriate.
4. Conditioning Take a higher tempo than you used for Warm Up, but not as high as your max tempo in Speed Training. You can make a few mistakes at this tempo, but ideally not loads. Stay at this tempo for the entire pomodoro.

Let’s go through each of these pomodoros in more detail and how they work:

Warm Up

In this first pomodoro we are warming up and training our muscle memory.

You should be using a tempo where you can play everything with a few minor mistakes at most, we are looking to play the song several times, exactly the same way (remember the section in the book How to Practice Guitar and Train Your Creativity on repeating things exactly to train muscle memory), to get that muscle memory trained.

Speed Training

Now it’s time to throw caution to the wind and see what we are capable of. We want to find the absolute limit of our ability and then go past that. Increase the tempo by 3bpm, play the song, then increase by 3bpm again.

Keep increasing the tempo until the piece totally falls apart and becomes a total disaster - if you are only making a few mistakes, you are not pushing the tempo hard enough!

If the piece completely falls apart before the 12 minutes is up, then drop the tempo down and work back up again.

You should end up at a tempo where you are frustrated and annoyed with how bad everything has become and you have to give up because you can’t even fumble your way through the song.

The idea with this stage is to find the weak points, and force the body and brain to move and think faster than it’s used to.

Correction

Take the first major mistake from speed training and work on fixing it.

When I was doing this stage recently, I found that upon increasing the tempo I was messing up the picking direction on two notes, instead of:

down up

I was doing:

down down 

Disaster - this was throwing me out and causing me to mess up the following transition.

So I took a few minutes to practice getting the movement correct without the metronome, then as soon as I had wrapped my brain around what I was doing I put the metronome on.

This was a one bar section, with two notes where I was messing up.

I added the picking direction to the score, which helped.

Use your entire 12 minutes on correcting and training the mistake you choose to focus on.

There are probably several mistakes you could choose from, so just go with whatever your gut thinks the biggest problem is, don’t overthink choosing what to work on here.

Ideally work on one mistake and get it completely fixed - it should be a very small mistake like I just outlined - one chord transition, a couple of notes, one erroneous finger placement; it should NOT be an entire section!

Conditioning

You can’t run a 100m race without practising running 100m (well I guess you could, but we all know how futile that would be).

Practising is the same.

You can’t play something faster if you don’t practice playing it faster.

So find a tempo that is higher than your Warm Up tempo, but a lot lower than the max tempo you reached in Speed Training.

Here is an example from my practice today:

Warm Up:              83bpm
Speed Training (max): 95bpm
Conditioning:         89bpm

At this tempo you should be making some minor mistakes, but not major mistakes.

The idea here is that we are conditioning the body (and mind!) to the higher tempo and push ourselves, but not right at the edge of our ability.

Keeping Notes And The Following Day

When working through this process, you’ll want to keep notes on the tempos you reach and the sections that you work on. Here is an example from my practice:

When fixing a specific problem, for example picking direction or fingering, make sure you notate it in your score, for two reasons:

• It will focus your mind on the problem
• You’ll have a written reminder for when you practice the following day

If the problem is something like missing a transition, put a big asterisk * in your score.

When working on the piece the following day, use the previous day’s Conditioning tempo as your new Warm Up tempo, or if that is a bit much, use a tempo that is between the two.

For example:

Day 1: Warm Up:      83bpm
       Conditioning: 89bpm

Day 2: Warm Up:      87bpm
       Conditioning: To be discovered!

Conclusion

This is a great routine for getting a song you are struggling with up to tempo. The gains you make each day will be small, but, they will be consistent. This routine is something you will want to apply everyday to a piece that you are struggling with.