Speed is an important aspect of virtuosity; in fact, most people seem to think of speed as the defining quality of virtuosity.
That’s not true, of course, virtuosity is more than just about just moving fast.
It’s about attaining a deep level of understanding of a task, achieving a mastery that enables you to perform it efficiently and with least effort.
But speed is important, not in and of itself, but because it provides a good indicator of your level of mastery and efficiency.
So it is a good thing to strive for.
Because if you have good speed, it’s likely you would also have developed a fairly advanced technique and achieved good mastery. Otherwise, that speed would not have been there in the first place.
The thing about speed is that it’s a completely natural part of the human condition; it is nothing special, in fact we were all born with it.
Yet why is it so hard to get it sometimes?
I’ve found that the problem can usually be traced to two factors.
The first is tension. (By tension, I’m referring here to the nonfunctional excess tension caused by stress or tightness in the body, as opposed to functional tension, which is an essential part of all effort.)
This is no secret. We’re all familiar with the negative impact of tension on performance.
Yet, despite this, I’ve seen all too many players trying to hold their hands tightly in a claw, seemingly oblivious of the tension this is causing their hands.
Or players who are so intent on following some arbitrary prescriptions of how they should hold their hands, who seem to be equally unaware of the tension these artificially imposed positions are causing to their hands and body.
And then they wonder why they can’t develop speed.
Under these conditions, no matter how hard they practice, speed will always elude them because they’ve not created the conditions for it to happen.
It’s as if they’ve left the brakes on in a car, and no matter how hard they pump the gas, the car will only move sluggishly. That’s what tension does to you.
The second factor is alignment, and this is even more critical.
To enable your body to work optimally and without impediment, it’s crucial you align your body properly, so that the different parts of your body are working with each other and not against one other.
Take for example, the right hand.
It is important, when you position your right hand, that the thumb and the fingers are able to work together.
When you pluck with the thumb, that plucking motion should not interfere with your fingers. Likewise, when you play with the fingers, that plucking action should not get in the way of the thumb too.
I’ve seen players, when they play with the thumb, that plucking movement would impact the whole hand, causing it to rock out of position. And when they pluck with the fingers, that plucking action would also cause the hand and thumb to move out of position.
This is a relatively simple point, and yet the impact it has on your playing can be profound.
So as you work on speed, don’t ignore the big picture.
Keep your hand and fingers super loose so that they have minimal tension in them, and make sure that the thumb and fingers are aligned properly, so that movement in one does not throw the other out of position.
Coming back to what I said at the beginning, speed is an inherent part of our human condition.
This has always been the bedrock of my philosophy and is the basic rationale for the AOV.
To tap into your natural speed, all you need to do is free up your body and allow it to function naturally.
Don’t impose any arbitrary conditions on it, don’t try to force it into any rigid and unnatural positions, allow it to work naturally, and you will find that speed will occur naturally and automatically to you.