> If it’s too easy to memorize, choose a bigger section. This doesn't work with fast passages where the pianist must feel how to use the momentum to their adva

> If it’s too easy to memorize, choose a bigger section. This doesn't work with fast passages where the pianist must feel how to use the momentum to their advantage. Better path-- choose a small enough section that may be played immediately at the preferred tempo. > Practice the section slowly enough, at first, to avoid making mistakes. By playing a bite-sized segment of music at the preferred performance tempo from the outset, the pianist can greatly simplify the entire section in the author's step 2 here. Example of the problem: 1. Pianist breaks up a difficult passage in the development section of the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and applies a comfortable, sensible fingering. 2. Pianist ramps up the tempo. 3. Eventually, pianist hits a critical tempo where the fingering turns out to work against the momentum of their hand. 4. Pianist realizes that the new momentum of the faster tempo opens up a new possibility for a fingering-- e.g., just throw the thumb at a new position and let the torque from the forearm land it correctly. If the rest of the arm/shoulder stays loose that torque is a strong and reliable way to reposition the hand. 5. Pianist now has learned two fingerings that compete in their muscle memory-- one for the wrong tempo, which they learned first and methodically ratcheted up, and one for the right tempo which is newer and must be drilled more than the old fingering. 6. Pianist drills away at new fingering alone in a practice room. 7. New fingering becomes comfortable and seemingly secure. 8. Pianist goes plays at a different location, in front of other people, and that wrong fingering stabs at their brain like a black magic spell. This is all avoided by a) practicing small segments of music at the preferred tempo b) joining them together to divide and conquer the piece. Anyway, this is a common problem for a few reasons: 1. Pianists have a general reluctance to choose very small segments of music to practice. 2. Pianists have a propensity to choose pieces that are too difficult for their current skill level. This means they won't come armed with general-purpose fingerings for virtuosic passages, making them likely to choose wrong fingerings when starting to learn virtuosic passages at slow tempos. 3. Music cognition is an early science. Most amateur pianists know the feeling of playing something wrong even once and then feeling how their body somehow memorizes that mistake and haunts their entire practice. But even professional pianists don't have a shortcut for turning that experience on its head-- i.e., there's no way to play a thing correctly once and have one's body memorize that feeling as solidly as it memorizes a single mistake!