Lesson 51: A Complete Baroque Suite Movement

• Take a complete dance movement from a first sight-read to a performance-ready tempo.
• Build a practice plan that uses chunks, slow tempi, and targeted hardest-bar work — not start-to-finish repetition.

A piece is finished when it sounds inevitable, not when you can play it through.

This lesson takes one complete dance movement from cold sight-read to performance tempo over several practice sessions. The piece below is a Bourrée — an upbeat duple-meter French dance, light on its feet.

The piece — Bourrée in G major

Two strains of 8 bars, each repeated. The dance begins on an upbeat eighth note (the “levé”) and lifts forward through every phrase.

Practice plan — four sessions

Plan four short sessions instead of one long one.

Session 1 — map the terrain

Both strains at half tempo; mark the hardest two bars.

Session 2 — hardest bars first

Work the marked bars in isolation: eight repetitions slow, four with the bar before, four with the bar after.

Session 3 — chunks

Each strain as one chunk, at the Session 2 practice tempo.

Session 4 — bring it to tempo

Add metronome clicks until you reach the target; if a bar collapses, drop back to it slow.

This is the procedure in the reference; apply it to every piece from here on.

Practice chunks

Two specific bars from the Bourrée that learners typically need to isolate.