I remember when I learned how to do this, it seemed like magic. I could take every tough section of my music and learn each one in minutes. Trevor Wye talks about how to do this in his books, and I learned it from my college band director.
How Do You Do It?
First, you take a tough section of music, like below.
Then you change the rhythms to a dotted eighth/sixteenth pattern. Do not write it out, just make the changes in your head.
Change the rhythm to a sixteenth/dotted eighth pattern.
Change the rhythm to a triplet pattern. When it ends unevenly, just make them into quarter notes at the end. In a case like this, you could start with two quarter notes and do triplets to the end, in addition to how I wrote it below.
Play as written.
If the tough section is longer than four bars, then take it in four-bar sections, overlapping by a measure.
Why Does It Work?
If you already feel your eyes glazing over, just skip this part and say that it’s magic. 🙂
The first two steps force you to make a quick change between first one half of the notes, then the other half. The root problem is that your fingers are revolting against some of the switches between the notes, and this technique forces your fingers to behave.
The third step, with the triplets, forces you to think about the notes differently. You’re changing the natural accents of the notes, and you’re also doing the math in your head rather quickly. Because you’re paying such close attention to the notes, you learn them faster than normal.
The fourth step is important because it brings everything together. You realize that you really can play that tough section. Afterwards, when you put the tough section back into context, it helps your brain say, “I’ve got this!”
In What Situations Do You Use This?
You use this when there’s a small, fast section of a piece of music that’s really hard to play. You’ve run through it a few times and your fingers just get tangled on themselves and don’t know what to do. This is my go-to technique for small, fast sections because it’s fast and it (usually) works.