By using the simplification method you can learn tricky sections more quickly and easily.

Here are a few bars of music:

Looks quite tricky doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be much easier to play this:

That’s what simplification does. With practice you’ll be able to do it in your head. For now I’ll take you through the steps.

1. Remove dynamics

First let’s remove all the dynamics to make it a bit easier to read.

2. Remove other markings

Now let’s remove slurs, dots, tempos and other marks.

3. Get rid of some tricky notes

There are some demi-semi-quavers in bar 7 that look particularly tricky. Removing those will leave some semi-quavers which are not nearly so hard. We’ll also make bars 1-3 a bit easier by removing one of the quavers.

4. Take it further

Although bar 7 looks easier now there’s still a few troublesome semi-quavers there. So in bars 7-9 we’ll remove them and replace with quavers.

5. Removing yet more notes

Admit it! Some of you don’t like semi-quavers at all do you? Therefore we’ll remove them and instead replace the first of each two semi-quavers with a plain old quaver.

6. Hold repeated notes

bars 7-9 have several repeated notes. Instead of playing them individaully we can hold them as one long note.

7. Put it all back together

Now that we’ve simplified the music it’s time to work back through it. Each time you can play the music add a little more back in. Do this until you can play it as written.

This is just an example of how you can use simplification in your practice. There are lots of other ways to do it and remember to only simplify the things that you find tricky.

Everyone’s simplifications will be different. What I find hard you will find easy.