 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Rapidcif
Date: 2009-11-19 15:06
Hey guys.
Need all the help i can get on how to improve Rhythm, besides playing with the metronome.
Thx.
Post Edited (2009-11-19 15:07)
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Author: vin
Date: 2009-11-19 15:25
Which rhythms specifically?
If you mean in a general sense, I would get Paul Hindemith's book "Elementary Training for Musicians," which has all sorts of exercises involving clapping and singing and will get your rhythm better fast.
If you mean in clarinet playing, take each rhythmic unit and sing it with the metronome, then tongue it on a single note (w/ the metronome, then play scales with it. As Itzahk Perlman says "Get really used to one rhythm and then destroy it with another."
Post Edited (2009-11-20 15:29)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-11-19 16:53
Yes, you need rhythm, rhythm is good to have.
George Gershwin even wrote a piece about it. "I Got Rhythm".
OK, just kidding, vins suggestion is a good one.
Sing and tap to your music and make sure you understand where the beats and off beats fall. It's important to understand it and not just play rhythm by ear. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-11-20 03:59
vin wrote:
<<If you mean in a general sense, I would get Paul Hindemith's book "Fundamentals of Musicianship," which has all sorts of exercises involving clapping and singing and will get your rhythm better fast.>>
If you're referring to the Hindemith book I think you are, the title is actually "Elementary Training for Musicians."
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2009-11-20 10:25
Rhythm is the symmetry of the sound that you hear. That is, if you play a quarter note at a certain length, ensure that the next one is equally as long and the next and the next. If the length of time the quarter notes you are playing in succession gets shorter, you are SPEEDING UP (accel.) and vice versa.
The SOUND you are producing is what creates the rhythm, not your tapping foot.
This is not as trite a statement as one might think.
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2009-11-20 11:15
When learning tricky rhythms, mark the beats on the music with a pencil.
Play the piece REALLY SLOWLY and then speed up.
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Author: vin
Date: 2009-11-20 15:29
Mrn-
Of course, I don't know what I was thinking- thanks for the correction.
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2009-11-20 18:46
Dance!! Go to Africa, South America, Central America, Cuba... Have these people show you how to dance! Close your eyes and go crazy, have fun! Internalize the feeling. I had a little 3-yr-old Columbian boy grooving to the beat of the metronome when my 14 yr-old student was struggling with the concept. Guess who grew up with South American rhythms? We had a good laugh that day!
After that, then sit in your practice room with a metronome and your teacher and clap out the rhythms first before attempting to play them. Subdivide if you need to.
One sequence of rhythms that's particularly fun is to go from triplets to 16 notes. I like to torture students with that sequence. They go home thinking that they've learned something. It's hard to subdivide when it needs to go fast, but if you're used to managing a triplet over two beats anyway, then it's a piece of cake.
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Author: OmarHo
Date: 2009-11-20 20:03
I agree with marking down the subdivisions within the beat with a pencil, until you don't need to anymore.
It also helps to just really internalize the beat and say "1 and 2 and...." in your head so you're never guessing. Some people also try to produce the same effect by tapping their foot, but it only works to an extent. If you can count in your head, you're going to have a stronger sense of where the beat is and where to place the notes. My youth orchestra conductor who is one of the most premier conductors in the country always tells us that in your head should be like a beat box that never stops beating.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2009-11-20 21:35
Jimmy -
There are many rhythm problems. What specifically are you having trouble with?
Do you keep getting off when you play in band? If so, the problem may be technical. That is, you may be having trouble recognizing the notes and getting your fingers in the proper position fast enough, so you fall behind or forget about keeping with the beat. If that's what it is, read about my own experience at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=173650&t=173517. As other people have said, the solution is practicing scales with a metronome. This gets all possible sequences of finger movements programmed into your muscle memory, so you play them without having to think.
If you have trouble staying with someone else while singing or playing a simple song, like Three Blind Mice, you need to stabilize your internal metronome. Do this by singing or playing while walking at a steady pace.
For particular patterns, make up words that match. For example, for the opening of the Beethoven 5th, you could use the phrase "I go and SEE." (My wife made that one up.)
Many people lose concentration during rests. This is deadly. You actually have to count *harder* during rests than you do while playing, because you don't have the physical movements to keep you with the beat.
Or it may be comething else entirely. Let us know, and the collective wisdom can come up with something to help.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Rapidcif
Date: 2009-12-22 18:25
ok sorry for the month delay, but here we go, this is what im having trouble with.
1. internal metronome
2. basic rhythmic patterns: when sightreading a piece with the band i sometimes embarrasingly lose myself with as easy a pattern as in 4/4 time, a quarter note, 8th rest, quarter note, 8th rest, quarter.. Obviously this is a problem when songs we play usually include 8th-16ths, triplets, and 16th rests..
but i have the most problems when i try to play musically.
For example, the quarters in the pattern i mentioned above can have different markings(one with staccato, one with accent, etc..) and by trying to play musically i lose my place.. I'm bad at explaining but hopefully you know what i mean
3. time signatures other than standard ones
4. idk if this counts as a rhythmic problem, but when sight reading a piece with 32rd and 16th notes where there's alot of music on the page, i feel like i need a magnifying glass to tell what the notes are. Idk if there's any solution to this besides getting better eyesight?
Thx for all the help.
Post Edited (2009-12-22 18:28)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-12-22 20:08
Rapidcif wrote:
> 2. basic rhythmic patterns: when sightreading a piece with the
> band i sometimes embarrasingly lose myself with as easy a
> pattern as in 4/4 time, a quarter note, 8th rest, quarter
> note, 8th rest, quarter.. Obviously this is a problem when
> songs we play usually include 8th-16ths, triplets, and 16th
> rests..
It helps to subdivide the rhythm in your head. So instead of thinking 4 beats to the bar, think 8 to the bar (or two beats for each quarter note), like this:
1 2 rest 1 2 rest 1 2 | 1 2 rest 1 2 rest 1 2
This particular rhythm is very common in klezmer music as well as works of George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue [the "train" theme], Second Rhapsody [first theme], Prelude No. 1 [left hand part], and Cuban Overture, for example). It's called a "bulgar" rhythm. In a bulgar, you group 8 eighth notes into three groups, 2 groups of 3 and one group of 2. So it goes 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, with an implied accent on each of the 1's.
Listen to Hava Nagila enough times and you'll get the feel of it.
> 3. time signatures other than standard ones
Listening to music in different time signatures and counting along will help you get used to the feel of different time signatures. Here are some jazz examples from the Dave Brubeck Quartet (featuring my favorite sax player, Paul Desmond ). Most of these come off the same album, "Time Out."
5/4: Take Five
9/8 (2+2+2+3): Blue Rondo a la Turk (not a strange time signature, per se, but an unusual grouping of eighth notes, as with the bulgar rhythm)
7/4: Unsquare Dance (try dancing to this yourself--it's not easy)
alternating 3/4 and 4/4: Three to Get Ready (try to pick out the 3/4 and 4/4 bars)
6/4: Pick Up Sticks
11/4 (5+3+3): Eleven Four
You can find strange time signatures in pop/rock music, too:
mostly 7/4 (with a couple bars of 4/4 at the end of each verse): Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill
also mostly 7/4 (with a couple of 4/4 sections): Pink Floyd's Money
7/8: Cat Stevens' Rubylove
5/4: Theme to Mission Impossible (the old TV Show, not the movie--the movie theme by U2 is in 4/4)
5/4: Jethro Tull's Living in the Past
Of course, there are plenty of great examples to listen to from "legit" music, too, but I think these pop and jazz tunes are really good for assimilating these rhythms because they're so readily accessible.
> 4. idk if this counts as a rhythmic problem, but when sight
> reading a piece with 32rd and 16th notes where there's alot of
> music on the page, i feel like i need a magnifying glass to
> tell what the notes are. Idk if there's any solution to this
> besides getting better eyesight?
Practice. With practice, you won't necessarily have to read all the notes, you can just recognize a particular scale or arpeggio at a glance. It's just like learning to read--first you start with letters, then you sound them out, then you can read individual words, and finally you start to be able to read whole phrases and sentences at a glance.
Post Edited (2009-12-22 20:14)
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2009-12-23 14:36
Besides dancing to internalize the rhythms, here are a couple of ideas.
for #2: When sightreading with the group - are you absolutely sure of where beat one is? Even if you have to bow out for a minute or so, try to see where everyone else is and with your eyes follow each measure as they're played. Mentally count the ONE two three four ONE. You may find that you can drop back into the playing because you know where everyone is.
for #4: It seems like you're attempting to do way too much at once when sightreading. Until you get lots of experience, it's enough to get the quarter notes as they go by. When my students would struggle with a new piece of music I'd have them play only the first note of each beat. A lot of times by doing that you can see a pattern in the writing, you see where the music is going by paring it down to bare bones. Then add back more of the details.
As mrn said, 16ths and 32nds often are only scales or arpeggios in disguise. Do your scales every day and learn them well! One run in the Saint Saëns Sonata (top of page 2, 1st movement) looked really hard with all those accidentals. But it's a simple Db scale, starting part way through the scale on an F instead of starting on the tonic. By running through the Db scale a time or two before playing made this piece become a piece of cake. (When playing the piece for someone he noted that most students have difficulty playing that run. It WOULD be hard if you attempted to learn it note by note without recognizing the pattern.) There are other examples from the repertoire that I'd show my students when they'd groan about learning scales.
Lots of practice at home in reading new music will help as the months and years go by. You'll begin to wonder why sightreading ever seemed a problem.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2009-12-24 08:21
Losing your place...... in 4/4 time try this, alternate tapping left then right foot. 1. left 2. right 3 right 4. left. Sight read something complicated and try to keep your place. Even try approximating a rhythm and just make sure you end up on one in the next bar or just keep your place. Practice away from the clarinet by humming the approx tune/rythym while tapping. Do the same thing making sure you always know where 4 is. Same with 3. Same with 2.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2009-12-24 12:25
At risk of being redundant, I would ask, "what's wrong with just remembering the length of the pulse?"
In 4/4 your pulse is one beat....... OR that one, simple length of time in space. It is easy enough to recall how long that "space" was the last pulse just before quarter note you are ON. Then the next one is just as long......and so forth.
The beauty of this "idea" is that now, the eighth note is only half as long (no need to worry about were your foot is....in fact, put your foot away).
AND, as you only need to recall the PULSE, you now don't even need to COUNT !!!!!
Of course it is helpful to work out complicated patterns so you don't feel that you've just been thrown into the deep end of the pool, but 9 times out of ten I NEVER count...........just simply remember the length of sound I just played..............too easy.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: salzo
Date: 2009-12-24 12:26
The metronome is imperative.
I like to view how "simple" a rhythm is. Think about all of the things that you know or are a given, and work from there to figure out what you do not know. Example: Generally, notes are beamed in beats. Take a look at the passage, notice how the notes are beamed together, remember that they are a beat, and whatever happens, make sure that all of those notes beamed together are played in a beat on the metronome, practicing to the first note of the next beat. Somewhere in the difficult passage, you are going to be able to find something that you know how to play when isolated. Lets say you are working on a 4/4 measure. The first two beats are hairy, but the last 2 are simple quarter notes. Play the quarter notes with the metronome. Notice how easy it is. N0w, back up to the second beat of the measure. Look at it, recognize the simple part- lets say it is a beat involving lots of black lines and dots, but the last two notes are 16th notes. Start on the "easy" part(16th notes) and play the easy quarter notes, to the first note of the next measure.- Now you have worked out the "easy" part of the measure. This is very general, but make sure you are doing what you know (the easy stuff) correct, and the hard stuff often just falls into place(very often).
You mentioned you get off when "rests" are involved. I personally hate using the word rest with students, because the word implies relaxation, or shutting down. It is interesting when working with students for the first time, that rests are often treated in a lazy manner- a quarter rest is kind of one beat, but not really-or a whole rest is held for "a long time", but not for four beats. I stress to my students that "rests" are just as important as notes. They must get the same attention as a note, and I refer to rests as "silent"' notes.
So often, when sight reading, or working on a piece that has been practiced, the student gets off not because of all the notes with black lines and dots, but because a rest was not given the full value.
Or they will get off because they did not play an "easy" note for its proper value (16th notes all lined up, but the half note was only held for a beat).
Focus on the easy stuff, the hard stuff will often fall into place is the easy stuff is executed correctly.
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