Tempo ladder practice

A tempo ladder is a short set of tempos that you climb in order, with a clear rule for when you're ready to move up. Many of us practice by nudging the metronome whenever a passage starts to feel easier. A ladder asks for a little more planning. You choose the rungs before you begin, and you treat each one as a small test of what you can really play.

The aim isn't to reach the top rung. The aim is to find the fastest tempo where the music still sounds like music, and to be able to find it again tomorrow.

What a ladder looks like

Suppose a passage starts to come apart at around 84. That tempo is your edge. A five-rung ladder for that passage might look like this:

Notice that every rung has a job as well as a number. Notice, too, that the last rung goes back down. Ending on a tempo you can play comfortably means the last thing your hands remember is a clean performance.

Choosing the rungs

Begin below your edge, at a tempo you can trust today rather than the one you reached last week. About 15 percent under the edge is a sensible starting point.

The rungs should be close enough together that each step is a real but manageable change. Steps of 3 to 5 percent work well at any tempo. That's about 3 BPM around 72 and about 5 around 120. Near a technical ceiling, or in an exposed passage, take smaller steps. For why a percentage works better than a fixed number of BPM, see How much to raise the metronome each time.

Decide at every rung

Before you start, decide what earns the next rung. Two or three clean runs in a row is a good standard, because a single lucky pass tells you very little. After each round, make one of three choices:

• Climb when the pulse, the motion and the shape of the phrase all hold.
• Hold when the passage works but still takes too much effort or concentration. Staying on a rung is part of the method, and it is often where the real learning happens.
• Step back when tension creeps in, the rhythm loses its clarity, or the same mistake keeps returning. Go down a rung or two and climb again.

When the climbing stops

Every player reaches a rung where progress stalls for a while. When that happens, change one thing at a time. Make the steps smaller. Shorten the passage to the spot that breaks. Change the rhythm. Or isolate the one transition that keeps failing. On some days the wisest choice is to stop at a clean tempo and let a night's sleep do its work.

In your next session, begin a few rungs below yesterday's best. A tempo you can find again from a cold start is worth far more than one you touched once.

For the full method, including what to do at a speed wall, see How to speed up a hard passage with a metronome.

Ladders for other kinds of practice

• Scales and exercises: a longer ladder of five or six rungs, with a set amount of time on each rather than a count of clean runs.
• Warm-ups: fewer, larger steps on material you already know well.
• Pieces that change tempo: a ladder for each section, followed by careful work on the joins. See How to practice music that changes tempo.

Try it

Write your rungs down first. Then open the free online metronome and move it by hand after each round.

Gradus: Metronome for iPhone is built around the ladder. Each block is a rung with its own tempo and a length in time or beats. The paid version lets you choose the count-in sound. You can raise each rung yourself, or use the one-time unlock to lock the blocks together, so that moving one rung moves the whole ladder by the same ratio. Gradus is coming soon to the App Store.