After looking over the piece fairly thoroughly and working out fingerings, I am now going through and rehearsing sections slowly. The way I am doing it is looking at 1 to 4 measures at a time and reviewing my fingerings to make sure they work the way I want them to. After that I set the metronome at 60 bpm (beats per minute) and play through the section. The way the music is written I'm actually doing it at 30 bpm according to the time signature so it's fairly slow. I then play through the section until I have played all correct fingerings with the metronome 5 times. Once I have completed the section, I highlight it in pink and go on to a new section.
I don't know if you can tell but I've highlighted some spots in yellow as well. I marked these spots to identify sections I thought would be the most difficult. Another thing you'll notice in the picture is my counter (looks like an abacus). I was using a LEGO man as my counter by gradually adding a piece of his body to keep track of my count. With this I just slide a bead over each time I complete the section correctly.
I decide on how many measures to work on by how difficult they are. Sometimes I'll try 4 measures and it feels like it will take forever to get 5 times correct. So I scale it back to 2 measures or even 1 depending on my level of focus. When I come back to the piece the next day I review the sections I worked on the day before. I try to play through an entire section once at 60 bpm (or 30bpm depending on how you look at it). I do that until I get it right.
By now I've worked through about half the piece with this system. I'm guessing it will take about 1 - 2 weeks to get through the rest of it. Then I will create a new test system to work through sections. I will try to make the sections longer and make the challenge harder.
I'll keep you posted.
SDG
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