Rhythms for Practicing Piano

The ability to play fast seems to be one of the most coveted skills for piano students.  It’s impressive to hear, fun to do, and often (but maybe a little less than most students think) sounds cool.  Some fast pieces or passages are intended to create an effect, e.g. the howling of the wind or the trickling of water.  Other excerpts have more musical and thematic integrity.  There are even works that seem to be fast simply for the sake of playing fast.

The exact tone and articulation of each individual piece will need to be different, but what they all require is a solid technique in order to play them well.  I am far more impressed by a student who can play a slow piece thoughtfully and expressively than one who barrels through a showpiece sloppily and with no musical direction.  The following exercises appear to be so simple that they could easily be undervalued and even ignored by many students.  However, I have seen first hand, both as a student and as a teacher, the miracles that these exercises can accomplish when combined with diligence and determination by the student.

The exercises can be summed up in 4 simple lines:

1. long short
2. short long
3. long short short short
4. short short short long

Sure, they require explanation, but once you understand what these mean, it is truly as simple as that.  When you see fast passages, they are generally a string of 8th, 16th, or 32nd notes (but usually 16th.)  They also usually occur in groups of 4 notes.  Occasionally you will see triplets or sextuplets, but let’s see how it applies to the most common examples first.  You can even practice scales with these rhythms.

In fact, let’s start with a 2 octave C scale.  You can try this with each hand separately to start.  Simply go up the scale in groups of 2 notes.  The first rhythmic pattern (long short) would mean that you play the first note as a long note, then the second note extremely short, going right into the next note.  The groupings would look like this: (ascending) C, DE, FG, AB, CD, EF, GA, BC, (descending) BA, GF, ED, CB, AG, FE, DC.  At each comma, make a pause, and play each paired group quickly one after the other.  Essentially, you would be playing a dotted 8th, 16th note rhythm, but you don’t necessarily need to think of it in exact terms.  The second rhythm would be: CD, EF, GA, BC, DE  etc.  Make sure that you feel the first note of each group as the beat, not the second note.  The third rhythm involves 4 notes: C, DEFG, ABCD, EFGA, BC(descending)BA, GFED, CBAG, FEDC.  Finally, the last rhythm would look like this: CDEF, GABC, DEFG, ABC(descending)B, AGFE, DCBA, GFED, C.  Again, feel the first note of each group as the beat, not the last.

For triplets, take the same idea in three note groups:

1. long short short
2. short short long

CHALLENGE:

To sum up this blog, I challenge you to try these rhythms with all of the scales that you normally practice along with a piece that has fast passage work in which you struggle with speed, evenness, and cleanliness.  When you get more comfortable with these rhythms, you can try more unconventional groupings.

I have plenty more information about using these rhythms as a tool, but get accustomed to the general idea first, and then look for future blogs that take this idea a step further.

A Sympathetic and Encouraging Approach to Students with Complaints

“It’s too hard.” “I don’t really get it.” “I don’t like this piece anymore. Can we do something else?”

All of these complaints are 100% legitimate and should be absorbed with careful consideration when they are made. However, when they are made in combination with each other (along with a few others) or are used on a regular basis, it is usually time to do some deeper investigating.

Often times, students will get elbow-deep into a piece before realizing that its charm has fizzled either because of unforeseen difficulties or because it has taken many months, and they are still not progressing well or at all. This can be the result of an overly ambitious choice by the teacher or the student, and there comes a point at which the benefits of pulling the plug far outweigh the reward of persevering to the end. In such situations, it is important to choose an easier piece that doesn’t necessarily sound much easier.

(There are pieces that are extremely rewarding to play but are fairly easy, and others that are ridiculously difficult but do not appeal so much to the untrained ear. For example, if one student played Rachmaninoff’s C# minor Prelude more or less well, and another student played the Chopin 3rds etude extremely well, someone who knows little of piano technique or the repertoire might still be more impressed by the Rachmaninoff.)

While these situations do occur, more often the issue is that the student has become unmotivated to practice. Perhaps practicing is being done in a mundane fashion, always playing the same thing the same way. Maybe there is simply a group of measures that is particularly dense and is preventing the student from continuing. It could even be the energy that you’re bringing (or not bringing) to the lesson, and therefore the student does not feel the same way that you do about the piece.

To address each problem in order, I want to begin by suggesting that you try giving the student different practice techniques. For counterpoint, have them try humming one line while playing others. Try different rhythms (SL, LS, SSSL, LLLS.) If you are unfamiliar with these rhythms, look soon for a blog about them. If there are one or two lines of music that are hindering a student’s progress, skip them and come back to them later. Have the student finish the piece; psychologically it is far less daunting to have a single line left to learn rather than the same horrible line AND the rest of the piece.

Finally, try evaluating how you are approaching the piece, the student’s reaction to your energy/personality, or invite them to offer an interpretation of it and have a conversation about it. If students can connect with a piece on a personal and creative level rather than regurgitating a replication of your own ideas note for note, they are far more likely to have an interest in the piece again and therefore practice more.

Feel free to ask a student how he or she is feeling too (without prying too much.) If you feel them shy away from the question, perhaps there is something happening in their lives that is troublesome. Give them space, be encouraging, and maybe be slightly less demanding for a few weeks to see if things level out. Try getting to the point where you can talk openly about their progress when it is not up to par. If you approach it with tact and show that you care about them as people as well as students, then they are sure to open up to you. If all goes well, the music will eventually take care of itself.

5 Practical Tips on How to Improve Your Sight-Reading

Just Have Fun and Play

One of the greatest ways to enjoy music is to just sit down at the piano and play it. Whether there’s a piece you’ve heard for a while and finally found the sheet music for it, or you have a friend who wants to sing or play an unfamiliar piece with you, sight-reading music can be a rewarding experience. By practicing the following tips, you too can do this with ease and enjoyment.

Many of you are probably thinking something like, “but wait, sight-reading music is not easy!” No matter what level difficulty piece you can play, the pieces that you can sight-read are always going to need to be a little (if not much) easier. I can count on one hand the number of people I have known whose reading was equal to their playing ability.

Why is Reading Music So Difficult?

Nearly every piano student, including myself, has felt the agony of defeat when faced with a sheet of music which may as well be a inkblot test. Even a student of 2 or 3 years can feel that their reading does not improve much. There are two main reasons for this: 

1.  Simply put, there is just not enough frequent exposure to reading music. When you learn to read your first language, you are exposed to it daily. Even if you wanted, you could not go through a day without seeing written language somewhere. With music, the average student spends anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour each day looking at sheet music. The difference is enormous.

2.  Most importantly, it is the way in which we learn to read music that holds us back. You could spend 4 hours every day reading music, and yes, it would get better, but still not to its full potential. Besides, who has 4 hours a day to spend reading music?

So, what can you do? Try a little reading every day, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. The key is frequency, not overall quantity. And above all, make sure you are not just struggling your way through the music, measure by measure, line by line. Make every minute of your sight-reading practice count by using the following effective techniques to take you from “sounding out words” to fluency faster than you ever thought possible.

Tell Me the Tips Already!

1. Flashcards – These tips assume that you already know the basics of reading: note names, time values, key signatures, etc. But if you are just starting out, flashcards are a great way to start. They can be found at many local music stores. However, even for flashcards, I have a tip! Do not fall into the habit of seeing the card, naming the note, then moving on to the next card. This works for math, but music must be taken a step further to truly register. Look at the flashcard, and if possible, do not think of the note name. Simply try to recognize it as the note on the piano, and play the note – no more, no less. The more you verbalize what you see, your brain needs to travel more pathways and therefore takes longer to process what it sees. This will take a little time and patience, but you must fight the urge to say the note name. You will be able to do it after some time, just stick with it.
2. Patterns – It will never be possible to read many notes while keeping a steady beat if you are looking only at each individual note as you come to it. There are many patterns in music that reoccur all the time, and if you can recognize them quickly, you can instantly play a group of 4 or 5 notes without even thinking about them. Some common patterns are:

•  Scale-type patterns. If you see that you have just steps going up or down, you need to look only at the first and last notes to know where to begin and where to end. Sometimes there will be the occasional skip or repeated note, so be careful, but still try to see everything as a group, not individual notes.
•  Skips – As with flashcards, begin to drill yourself by recognizing different intervals up to the octave. Be sure to practice harmonic and melodic intervals.
• Chords – This is just taking skipping patterns to the next level by recognizing many skips within a single chord. For starters, practicing reading chord inversions including V7 chords. This will cover the majority of the chords you’re ever going to see in standard music.
• Specific patterns – There is no way to cover every pattern that is going to come up in piano music. You simply need to try it out as it comes. However, certain technique books like Hanon and some Czerny are very pattern oriented. If you are using these books for daily technique practice, be sure to actively read everything you play, even if it is the 147^th time you are playing that exercise. Every bit of reinforcement you can do for your reading helps it.

3. Look ahead – Pianists have it tough. There is just so much to look at: chords, fast notes, right hand, left hand, so many notes all at the same time. To make your way through a piece, it’s best to look at the simplest part first. So, when you are playing a measure of music, look ahead to the next measure to see the simpler part (usually left hand, but not always.) Then, you’ll already know it, and you can focus on the difficult, more “notey” part.

***To really challenge yourself, (you may need someone to help you with this,) look at the first measure of a piece before you play, memorize it, and then have someone cover the first measure with an index card. After you finish playing the first measure, have the person cover the next measure. You will need to have already memorized the second measure by now. When you finish the second measure, have the person cover the third measure, and so on. By instantly memorizing each measure, you can be playing that measure while looking at what’s coming. Sight-reading is essentially a constant juggling act between looking ahead, memorizing, playing, looking ahead, memorizing, playing… al fine.***

4.  Play just the downbeats – This is a shortcut to help you start looking ahead more comfortably. It’s easy to say “you must look ahead. No, you’re not looking ahead, keep reading ahead.” And many teachers find themselves frustrated, and the students find themselves disappointed because they can’t keep up. However, it’s no one’s fault. It’s good advice, but you need to build that skill just like any other.

The best and fastest way to building this skill is playing only the downbeats, in tempo. In other words, play only the first notes (or chords) of each measure, no more than that. Go through the whole piece like this until you can do it comfortably. It’s a good idea to count the beats when you do this too. Then, go through the piece again playing only the 1^st and 3^rd beats in tempo. If you can do this comfortably, add the second beat. So now, you are playing the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd beats of each measure. If the piece is in 3 / 4 then you are essentially playing the whole piece. If it’s in 4 /4, there’s still one more beat to go. Finally, try all of the notes for the whole piece, and see if you are moving across the page any more easily. Some may notice a difference instantly. For others, you may just need to do this with a few more pieces, but the results will be amazing.

5. I’ve Got Rhythm – Finally, the last tip I have for you will take you out of your comfort zone, but this is a good thing! It may be very surprising, but trust me on this; it is the only way to break free of feeling like you can’t keep up with the page. You can do this with a piece that is already somewhat familiar to you, or with a completely new piece within moderate difficulty (not too difficult though.)

Make your #1 priority the rhythm and nothing else. If you come to a group of 8 sixteenth notes that you just cannot take in all at once, play 8 notes in time, no matter what they are. Try to get the general shape of the pattern (if it goes up, go up, for example,) but do not concern yourself with playing the correct notes. The perfectionists in us cringe when we play wrong notes, but what about wrong rhythm? Why is it permissible to us to play all of the notes correctly with absolutely no rhythm? Why do we never try the opposite? Are both things not equally important?

The reason I stress the importance of keeping up with the rhythm ties into the logic behind tips #3 and #4. Your eyes must always be moving across the page at the right speed. If you drop a few notes here and there, sure, maybe people will hear that. But if you stop to look at what is happening, figure it out, and then move on, everyone will always hear that. A wrong (stopped) rhythm is 10 times more noticeable than a wrong note.

The first few times you try this, you may play every note wrong, it may sound terrible, but do not feel bad about it. Laugh at the wrong notes, it’s hilarious! Joke that you’re playing modern music. My point is, it’s not a big deal, especially because this is not a performance. This is one of the many paths to learning something new, and playing all of the notes is not your main focus.

To sum up this point and consequently all of the other tips here, let me just put this in bold, italic, underlined letters: sight-reading is a DIFFERENT skill from performing, or scales, or musical phrasing, etc. All of these things will make their way into your reading as you get more comfortable with the complexities of making your way through a new piece. But you can’t be musical if you can’t get through the piece. Your only goal is to get through a piece with most of the right notes, or in the beginning, even 25% of the right notes is a good goal. Your reading will always have mistakes. As I said, I’ve known only a handful of people who could sight-read well enough to perform a piece on the first reading. However, if you try these tips and try some sight-reading of both new and familiar pieces even just 15 minutes per day, within a month, you will be a different pianist.

A Practice Technique for Intermediate Students

During a piano lesson today with a new (to me) intermediate student, I taught her the concept of blocking sections of music to which she replied that I was “brilliant.” While I humbly accepted this compliment, I was reminded that although this brilliant concept is a staple of practice techniques for more advanced students, it is too often neglected to be taught by many teachers. If you are a teacher who does not commonly share this idea with your students, I do not see much harm in starting sooner rather than later. If you are a student who has never heard of this, an earth-shattering breakthrough awaits you in the paragraphs to follow.

How It Works

Blocking is a technique that helps you to learn a new section of music more easily than just playing note by note. Probably most importantly, it saves an incredible amount of time and frustration.

The first movement of the Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven is a great example of how this technique can be employed. Instead of learning each individual note of the right hand one at a time, you can play each group of 3 notes (each triplet) as a single chord. That would mean in the first measure, rather than playing G#, C#, and E one after another, play all three notes at the same time. Then, for the whole measure, you are thinking in 4 beats rather than 12 individual notes. If you plan to learn 4 measures in one session, 2 measures, even 1 new measure at a time, this process can more than cut your practice time in half. Even when the melody of the right hand makes its entrance in the 5^th measure, you can still block it as part of the chord.

Where It Applies

This technique can be used all over the classical repertoire. You can find places in virtually every Mozart, Hadyn, or Clementi piece for piano that breaks a chord into individual notes. If you are not already familiar with the terms broken chord or Alberti bass, it simply means that the notes of a chord are broken up. All of these composers among many others use broken chords, usually in the left hand as an accompaniment figure.

Another famous piece you may be studying that uses broken chords is Mozart’s C major Sonata, K 545. The left hand begins exclusively with an Alberti bass. You can simplify the study of this piece by blocking each 4-note group of the left hand into a single chord while playing the right hand over it.

Why It Works

Blocking is more a note-learning tool rather than a way to put things together as they should be played as a finished piece. For this reason, some students are hesitant to try it. The thinking is along the lines of: “Since this is not the way the piece will actually be played, why should I spend time doing this when I will still need to spend time learning how it really goes?”

Perhaps an analogy with language might illustrate the difference this technique can make. Say, for example, you are attempting to memorize a line of words: “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Whether you know this Joyce Kilmer poem or not, it is probably safe to assume that in no more than a few minutes you could memorize, recite, and rewrite these words from memory.

Now, try memorizing this: “В некотором царстве, в некотором государстве, жили-были старик и старуха…” Unless you speak Russian, I would feel fairly confident in saying that it would take longer to rewrite that line from memory than the Kilmer poem.

Why is this? The answer is obvious, yet many students choose to ignore its relevance in music.

The first phrase is easier because in English, we see each word as a unit and remember its significance in the context of a complete thought. In the Russian fairytale, not only are many of the letters different from what we already know, we have no idea what the words mean. We would simply be learning an arbitrary collection of symbols that have no apparent connection to each other.

Learning a line of music is no different if you have not yet learned the intricacies of harmony, the relation of one chord to another, or even which notes create which chords. By blocking chords, you are learning the equivalent to words in a sentence. In time, you will learn exactly what their place is, how they connect to one another, and so on. Blocking is one way to make sense of a seemingly random array of notes.

After completing his undergraduate studies at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, Sean will be moving to Kansas City in mid-September.  Here, you will find the latest news about him including upcoming performances, audio and video recordings, information on lessons and bookings, and the occasional short essay about music, composers, pieces, or anything else that seems to be of interest.

In addition to being a musician, Sean has also enjoyed the study of foreign languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Russian.  Tutoring for Spanish currently available.

Feel free to comment below with any questions or feedback.  For a formal reply regarding lessons, bookings, or other engagements, please use the form on the Contact Page of this site.