[This article may require a couple of careful turns to read through. It’s one of my longest. However, I hope it provides some insight into the difficulties faced by the novice musician when learning rhythm.]
Rhythm is one of the fundamental “elements of music”. However, it is easily neglected, especially in the early years, and especially on the piano, when a student is typically playing on their own without the need to “keep up” with other instrumentalists. We can fall into the trap of looking at music merely as a series of disconnected notes to be played in a certain order. Yet rhythm demands that we play those notes for a specific length of time and in the context of other notes, and that brings with it unseen consequences.
So, how can we understand rhythm, and how do we perform it correctly?
Firstly, there is “the beat”, the constant pulse underlying every piece of music. Beats occur in regular groups, called “bars” which are separated on the page by “bar-lines”. When talking about beats in early music lessons, students often use the word “seconds”, but this is not quite correct. A second, the unit clocks use to measure time, is a set length of time which never changes. However, in music we talk about “beats” (or “counts”) because we can vary them from one piece to another, otherwise all our music would be played at the same speed, which would be boring.
Nevertheless, “beats” are similar to “seconds” in that we use them to measure rhythms. I’ve done that in this example. I have represented this rhythm firstly in musical notation, and then as a timeline, each box being one note. The bottom row shows the beats. This one is in “four-four time”, meaning [a] there are four beats in each bar, and [b] we are counting “crotchets” as one beat (the first two notes in this example are crotchets).
We talk about “beat” in the same way we talk about other units of time. Imagine catching a bus: it might depart “on the hour” (say, at one o’clock) for a journey which lasts “one hour” (arriving at two o’clock). So, the word “hour” can refer both to a specific point in time, and a duration of time. The same is true of “beat”: most of the notes shown here are played “ON the beat” and their length is measured in “beats”.
Looking at our example, note that the spacing of the musical notes approximates the rhythm being represented – longer notes are usually given more space, shorter notes are given less. This helps the musician appreciate the rhythm at a glance. However, it is impractical to do this consistently and accurately, especially where music contains both very short and very long notes.
Notice also, that the beat itself is not actually shown on the musical notation, apart from the bar lines. So, the length of one note determines when the next note begins, and to understand where each beat falls we need to know the duration of every note.
When we begin to learn music, we commonly think about the beginning of the note but forget its end. In doing so, we neglect the beginning of the next note, and we’re in trouble straight away! This shows itself most clearly when we begin playing quavers (see the pair of notes above the second “2” in the example). Students easily understand that a quaver is half a beat, and that two halves make a whole, but playing them is a different matter. You can see from our timeline that a pair of quavers occurring together will sound like a group of three notes – the third note being the one that follows on immediately from the quavers, each separated by half a beat. Students usually play them as a group of two followed by a pause and then the next note, but this incorrectly lengthens the second quaver.
This also manifests at the end of any piece of music. Our last note (a minim) is two beats long. It begins on the third beat of the bar, but where does it end? Imagine your bus leaves at 3 o’clock for a two hour journey: it will arrive at 5 o’clock. Our minim must end on the first beat of the next bar, and that is not represented in the musical notation at all. So, it’s common for students to end a piece of music on the fourth count, thus robbing our minim of one full beat of its duration.
Another difficulty occurs because of the way music appears. Students typically look at each bar, play that, and then begin to think about the next bar. This stop-start approach distorts the rhythm. The problem is often exacerbated when moving from the end of one line of music to the next. Imagine pausing at the end of every line while reading this paragraph, instead of at every full stop: it wouldn’t make sense. An experienced reader looks continuously through the paragraph, their attention flows from one word to the next without stops or pauses, beyond the word they’re currently reading to see what is ahead. A musician must learn to do the same.
Finally, while many students think that their main difficulty is playing quickly enough, the really problem is often playing slowly enough. We don’t like silences or lengthy pauses, so we tend to skip over long notes as unimportant, uninteresting or easy. We also fail to appreciate just how long our longer notes should be to allow us to play the faster notes accurately. Even when playing at speed, the main difficulty is usually keeping our fingers under control so that they don’t run away with us. So, from the outset, it’s important to consider the fastest notes in any piece of music, using those to set the duration of the longer ones, and then playing slowly enough when the time comes.
Here are some tips for getting rhythm right:
1. Get familiar with your music. The more comfortable you are with what’s on the page, the less surprises there will be to process on the way. Inaccurate rhythm is the first sign that a piece of music still hasn’t been practised enough.
2. Count. Doing so aloud is best to begin with. With practise, you’ll easily graduate to counting silently – and accurately – to yourself as you play.
3. Clap. When you first encounter a new or tricky rhythm, clap it through – this means you don’t need you think about the note names. Count aloud as you clap.
4. Slow down. Don’t play quickly just because you think something is easy. Things will probably get harder and you won’t be able to keep up.
5. Wake your hands up! One of the dangers of long notes is allowing your hands to relax on the keys while holding them down. Have your hands alert and ready to move on, with the weight of your arms supported by your muscles, not the keys on the piano.
6. Keep your fingers on the keys, especially thumbs, which tend to slip off the keyboard if they’re not used for a few notes in a row. The further they are from the keys, the longer it will take to get them back there when you need them.
7. Play with a metronome, or play with a friend. Nothing holds you to a rhythm like needing to keep up with someone else! It’s tricky at first, but well worth the effort. There are a number of free metronome apps available for download, so there’s no need to go to the expense of buying one especially. Some books also have accompanying CDs which you can play along with. And I enjoy playing along in lessons, too!
Piano with David 