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Re: An observation about students and rhythm

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2015-08-29 02:58

Most musicians need very explicit instruction in rhythm with both correct demonstration and analytic explanation from the teacher. When I began to learn music in the 1950s, there were a few teachers known to have the knack of imparting precise rhythmic solfeggio to students in a way that would "stay taught." My instructor was an old Italian who used the book "Rhythmical Articulation" by Pasquale Bona, along with the Jimmy Dorsey sax method to cover both classical (mostly operatic) and syncopated jazz rhythms. The standard method and etude books (Klose, Rose, Baermann etc) just don't present enough rhythmic variety to give the practice needed.

Rhythm studies need to be updated to speak to each new generation and to cover changes in rhythmic complexity found in many different genres of music. Some decent attempts to do this are Ed Suetas Rhythm Spectrum (available from his website) and the college text "Studying Rhythm" by Ann C. Hall (now in its third edition). Joe Viola and Joe Allard have made good contributions to rhythmic study at the advanced level--Viola in the third volume of his Technique of the Saxophone (Rhythmic Studies) and Allard in his "Advanced Rhythm for Sax." (Fred Lipsius's Reading Key Jazz Rhythms" is another useful book). These are mostly jazz-based but the sense of rhythmic awareness developed in them transfers to any style of music--and of course they can be played on the clarinet. Paul Jeanjean delivers a rhythm workout in the third volume especially of his 20 Etudes Progressives et Melodiques, but the difficult key signatures limit the use of this work to players with lots of scale and arpeggio practice under their fingers.

For all you enterprising entrepreneurs out there, I believe there is a market niche for teaching beginners and intermediate players to handle progressively more difficult rhythmic challenges that has not yet been filled by existing study books for clarinet.

Post Edited (2015-08-30 22:22)

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