Have you ever had a student play a piece with frequent hesitations throughout, even though you know they can play much better than that? This phenomenon can occur with all ages/levels of students. Why does this happen? What is going on when this happens? This article will examine possible causes of and solutions for a lack of fluency.
A lack of fluency could be caused by a number of things:
- A lack of the proper technique required for the executing the piece;
- A lack of familiarity of the notes of the piece;
- A tempo that is too fast for the student’s ability at that moment; or,
- A lack of mentally “chunking” the information on the page properly. The analogy I use to refer to Number 4 is that the students feels like they are wearing horse blinders, or are mentally experiencing tunnel vision.