 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Garth Libre
Date: 2013-03-29 01:11
I just started the Rose Etudes #32 today. I really love the #1, so in I dug. I must admit that I am just barely at the level where such a venture is realistic but one must start sometime ... No? Parts of #1, I can sight read fairly well . certain very short passages that are low hanging fruit. What I noticed most of all is that the timing - the exact timing, is a definite difficulty. Dotted quarters into fast passages with sixeenths don't always or easily come out right on the beat. I must note that I use my foot as a metronome because I can slow or speed up timing according to the demands of the music and practice certain passages at varying tempos and gradually increasing tempos. When I was half way through the etude and ready to give up on a flowing rendition, I found that if I stopped trying to consciously get everything right on the beat and just felt my way through, I was able to put some feeling back into my practice. Tomorrow I'll go back to methodically counting out the time.
Do others find that they tend to abandon exact timing for a bit in order to feel it as music instead of mathmatics?
Garth, 305-981-4705. garthlibre@yahoo.com
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-03-29 01:29
Metronomes are important, especially when working on Etudes, Scales, Arpeggios and exercises. It seems like everyone hates them; I know I do! It saves you from the "Sunday Morning Organist" syndrome, where you race through the passages you can play easily and slow down for the difficult ones. Ricardo Morales of the Phila. Orchestra advises to start slow and then gradually increase the tempo by one or two beats. It allows you to practice accurately and even work on phrasing while learning the piece of music.
PS you can even get a Tuner/Metronome for your smart phone at really cheap prices.
Tristan
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-03-29 02:34
You bring up a very interesting point.
Even though we use etudes as "study," there is no reason why they cannot contain the same musical give and take that we find throughout the expanse of music from the Romantic period forward.
This also gets to the point of the question: What is good rhythm?
For me, it is the execution of SYMMETRY. That is to say (in a nutshell) as long as the relationship from one note to the other follows a smooth bending of time that could be graphed out as smooth curves, you have good rhythm.
A longer version of this idea is that a steady pulse of quarters at 60 beats per minute (in seconds) would look like this: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00, 1.00 etc.
Poor rhythm would look like this: 1.02, 0.97, 1.08, 1.00 etc. (meaning random and unrelated lengths of time defined by the beginnings and ends of notes).
For me, as long as that relationship is smoothly represented, THAT is the definition of good rhythm.
.............Paul Aviles
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Author: davyd
Date: 2013-03-29 03:49
Abandoning exact timing for a bit in order to feel it as music is all very well if you're a soloist, but not if you're an ensemble player.
Something that might help: Counting eighth notes, rather than quarter notes. It will feel faster. But you might get a better sense of how 8ths, 16ths, and 32nds relate to each other.
Definitely get a metronome, wether an actual object or a smartphone app. You might sing the rhythym with the metronome and get clear on that before you attempt to play the actual notes. My teacher suggested a tempo of quarter note = 56 (or eighth note = 112). Others may well feel differently.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2013-03-29 04:38
Quote:
For me, it is the execution of SYMMETRY. That is to say (in a nutshell) as long as the relationship from one note to the other follows a smooth bending of time that could be graphed out as smooth curves, you have good rhythm.
Sweet! I consistently accelerate whenever I play- who knew I had good rhythm?
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-03-29 12:51
Quote:
Do others find that they tend to abandon exact timing for a bit in order to feel it as music instead of mathmatics?
First and foremost I think it's important to realize that everyone's path to the final conception is not the same. And within and individual's life it doesn't necessarily remain the same.
Now that caveat out of the way: I think some people have a loosey-goosey relationship with rhythm. If it's in the ballpark, it's ok. It isn't they way I conceive of rhythm -- rhythms are very concrete and exact. Mind you, they can be played with great flexibility -- but (in my experience) only by those who can actually playing them correctly.
Subdivision allows one to sustain notes for their exact length and anticipate the length of the shorter notes that will follow. Subdividing is also an excellent method for planning/pacing crescendi/diminuendi/ritardandi/accelarandi, etc...
To sort out rhythms and/or expression verbalizing or singing the rhythm/phrase is very useful. You've been using your voice since the day you were born, it's an instrument with which you're very accomplished!
In the beginning, when developing accurate rhythm/subdivision, it can appear to you that the mathematical nature of it robs the music of expression. This is surely an indicator of how much mental energy is being placed in developing the discipline. In the end, rhythmic accuracy is something the flows easily -- once you've made the values concrete.
It's great that you're attempting to get to the soul of the music as quickly as you can -- that is something that will speed your learning of the pieces significantly!
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-03-29 14:38
Walk before you run. You must lay the foundation, so that you will have something to depart from for your nuances. It's like the human body. Without support from bones, your muscles would just flop around randomly.
So, set your metronome at a speed low enough that you can keep with it even in the most difficult passages. Then work out the entire etude in absolutely strict time.
However, this doesn't mean being mechanical. Play as if you were singing, connecting the notes of each phrase together and then making phrases connect with what precedes and follows. That means that you must understand the harmony, so that you know the shape of each phrase and play it so it makes harmonic sense.
Then gradually increase the metronome to setting to performance speed.
Once you can play it straight, you have something to depart FROM when you make it music instead of just notes.
This isn't easy. It's taken me 55 years to have a good idea of how to do it. If there's anything you're not clear on, the whole board is here to help you.
Ken Shaw
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-03-29 16:44
Garth Libre wrote:
>
> Do others find that they tend to abandon exact timing for a bit
> in order to feel it as music instead of mathmatics?
>
Only during a first sight-reading of a difficult piece, just to get the "lay of the land.".
I'm assuming from the rest of your post that you're talking about a good deal more variation in tempo than the subtle changes a musical espressivo would allow for. If you aren't using some standard other than your own foot, you have no way to evaluate whether or not the notes *are,* as Paul suggests, in correct relationship from one note to the other (if you were secure enough musically and technically to judge this on your own, you wouldn't be asking the question).
Work specifically on harder passages once you're gotten an overview of the whole etude. Focus on a measure or, at most, two. Set your metronome for a slow enough tempo that you can manage the technique - even setting it to the eighth-note (subdivide) to give yourself a better shot at playing accurate 32nd notes (e.g. after Tempo I). Gradually move the metronome tempo up by single notches until you are near to the tempo you want for the easier passages surrounding the one you're working on. Once there, begin adding surrounding bars one or two at a time so you learn what the relationship should be between the problem passage and the rest. Once you have that relationship in your ear and memory, you can practice longer stretches at a steady tempo and, if necessary, gradually add speed. Only when you can play at a steady tempo, in my opinion, should you begin to consider deliberate tempo fluctuations, because only at that point will those adjustments serve purposeful musical/expressive purposes.
To be sure, there's a lot of Romantic expression in the etude as well, so approaching it lyrically is important. But to get all that you can out of it and to play it as accurately as possible, even the relatively easy passages need to be in the right relationships - it needs a reliable pulse. Accuracy and expressiveness aren't mutually exclusive (it isn't just a matter of mathematics). So, triplets and dotted 8th-16th patterns should be accurate within the overall tempo just as much as 32nd notes and 16th notes. A metronome isn't the only way to facilitate this, but if you aren't sure of what you're doing, it's the most reliable way.
Karl
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-03-29 19:26
I did also want to address those in the audience (here on the Board) who believe that subdivision alone will solve rhythm problems.
If you are completely honest about it all, it doesn't matter how small the little bits get if they are still incongruous to each other. Ergo, you can subdivide all day long and still have lousy rhythm.
Though I admit it will allow you to more quickly see relationships amongst different length notes within the same pulse, I still am only referring to good rhythm as that which moves you along from one spot to another (differentiating between the length of a single triplet note and that of a sixteenth note in a steady passage is further along the concept path then that to which I refer).
............Paul Aviles
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-03-29 19:39
Quote:
If you are completely honest about it all, it doesn't matter how small the little bits get if they are still incongruous to each other. Ergo, you can subdivide all day long and still have lousy rhythm.
I'm willing to think about it further, but at first glance I disagree. I have never met anyone who can subdivide who has lousy rhythm -- but I'd be interested in hearing it! Perhaps I'm taking for granted that in the process of studying rhythm and developing the ability to subdivide you will "memorize" rhythms and further improve your sense of pulse.
Subdividing (as I see it) absolutely "moves you along from one spot to another". I do recognize the area you're talking about (movement of triplet eighths to sixteenths), but I haven't had any issues in teaching it (and don't experience any issues in executing).
Respectfully --
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-03-29 22:47
Yes Gnothi,
It IS memory.
I had a teacher once who broke it down like this: He played a note, then said, "If you ask me to play that note length again I could do it five minutes from now or after going to lunch and having a sandwich." The point being that we hold the memory of the previous length note, impose it on the present and extend that to the next. This is rhythm. Rhythm is not your foot moving up and down (ancillary artifact) or a beat (again the beat is defining time in the same way). So that length no matter how long or short is the rhythmic pulse.
And trust me, I've heard more than my fair share of rag-tag sixteenth notes and wondered just what exactly is going through the mind of the executor.
...............Paul Aviles
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-03-30 02:36
Maybe I'm missing something here, not working on the Rose Etudes, but I am working other etudes/studies/exercises. Working these studies, I find not only are they music in themselves, requiring phrasing and understanding the relationships of pitch and time values...each note at a time but in the context of its predecessor and successor as well as the whole piece...but also they form the basis of other actual compositions of which I am learning. I think using a metronome is essential in capturing the fundamental essence of the etude...once mastered precisely and memorized, then my "artistic" license can be unleashed. And in turn, the other compostions benefit from application of these etudes.
Tristan
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-03-30 17:34
Jason --
I'm the student...I'm just learning the clarinet at age 57. Since I live in Montana, I am using the Classical Clarinet School (Ricardo Morales) and Clarinet Is Easy on line for teaching.
However, clarinet is not my first instrument. I studied the Pipe Organ in Jr High, High School and college. I remember when working on exercises and learning the Pachelbel Toccata in d minor for my Senior High School Recital, my teacher had me play d minor exercises and studies, ad nauseam. One day, the light bulb went on (in my mind) ... I heard some of the passages from my recital piece in those studies. I began looking for studies which were similar to those I had trouble with in my recital pieces, and then practicing them. I, now look in Langemus, Albert, etc., and try to hear passages from familiar orchestral, jazz, common song pieces and phrase those exercises accordingly. It was funny to hear Ricardo talk about using this method of study when practicing those boring exercises -- a method I "discovered" over 40 years ago!
(PS: the reverse is true -- think of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" as one of the most beautiful etudes.)
Tristan
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-03-30 18:46
Jason,
Well actually you can be fine with remembering the length of a measure if the pulse is Andante or faster (try it, it's fun). The funny thing is it takes the guess work out of playing evenly when you are actually listening to what you are doing. However, for the most part I'm specifically speaking of the pulse note (usu. a quarter). From there, the eighth is half as long, the half note is twice as long ..... etc.
Oh and as for students, they tend to not tap their feet......no need really.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-03-30 20:17
Paul Aviles wrote:
> The funny thing is it takes the guess work out of playing
> evenly when you are actually listening to what you are doing.
> However, for the most part I'm specifically speaking of the
> pulse note (usu. a quarter). From there, the eighth is half as
> long, the half note is twice as long ..... etc.
>
>
Maybe someone should have asked Garth to clarify where specifically he thought he was having trouble in the etude - I read that he is concerned about how to approach the passages with faster notes (16ths and 32nds) so that he can get them more accurate without sacrificing musical flow. His frustration isn't, then, with note values adjacent to the value of of the pulse note (those may be among the "low-hanging fruit he mentions). The ability to make triplets fit into the same beat length as duplet 8ths and 16ths is, IMO, also one of the target skills of this etude, something that's hard to self-evaluate until you've developed a secure feel for a steady pulse - an inexperienced player may not even realize it's a problem. Fitting 32nds into a prevailing tempo is obviously a 3rd step removed from the basic pulse and may cause a real loss of a sense of pulse for an inexperienced player. Even with a metronome you still have to listen to what you're doing - in fact the metronome is by itself useless if you aren't listening to yourself. All the metronome does is validate the player's own sense of pulse or indicate where he may be leaving it.
None of this, I realize, may cause any kind of problem to a mature player who has the skill to apply "the execution of SYMMETRY" as a standard for "good rhythm." But that sense of symmetry needs to come from somewhere, and, again IMO, must somehow be learned after the relationships get beyond one or at most two simple subdivisions of the basic pulse - they aren't necessarily intuitive.
> Oh and as for students, they tend to not tap their feet......no
> need really.
>
Perhaps, but those among my students who do tap their toes (and think they're helping their accuracy by it) tend to follow what they're playing - the tapping doesn't turn out to be a very useful guide for when the beat pulses should actually happen. More often they end up tapping something more closely resembling the note rhythm (accurate or not), or something not even remotely related to what they're playing. Hence my recommendation of a metronome.
Karl
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Author: Garth Libre
Date: 2013-03-30 21:02
Since many board members have access and experience with the Rose Etudes, let me point out two bars which I find rhythmically difficult and not just technically (fingers, embouchure, tongue) difficult. Take measure 15 which has a dotted 8th into a 16th into triplets. My foot divides the beat into (foot down and half way up for the dotted 8th and finishing at the top of up sweep of the foot with the single sixteenth. Now we have two series of triplets which each take up a single beat or a single down and upsweep of the foot. In measure 17 we must distinguish between a dotted 8th, a pair of 32nd notes and a the triplets. Of the two bars I find the measure 15 way more confusing because it contains a quarter note which must be held an additional triplet length before executing the two following notes of the triplet. Of the people on youtube I've heard no-one makes these distinctions clear enough. Either they go by so fast that the best notion is just to be expressive and interesting and play with the intent of starting each downbeat on the appropriate note, or they have a very different notion of how I feel the math actually works out. Maybe I shouldn't even be attempting this etude with the degree of imprecision I feel I display on fast and irregular passages. I love the piece and feel that I'll do a reasonably good rendition for someone of my experience in about a year. In the mean time I need to devote myself as much to proper intent as I can, and that means making it music and not just a technical challenge.
Garth, 305-981-4705. garthlibre@yahoo.com
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-03-30 22:12
Garth, thank you for the clarification. In the specific measures (15 and 17) I would have different advice, although I'd stand by my original suggestions in the 4th and 7th bars after Tempo I.
It's important that the triplet 8ths each take up an honest beat. Maybe the easiest way to do that is to begin mentally subdividing into triplets on beat 2 (the tied F quarter-note). Then you can sense the first 8th of the triplet on beat 3 and play the others in tempo (it's only a 5-note chromatic scale - I assume this isn't in itself a technical problem). If you have trouble feeling the beginning of the first triplet, articulate it a few times. You might still check yourself against a metronome to be sure you aren't rushing (which if anything would detract, not add to the expressive quality of the passage).
As to the dotted 8ths in 15 and 17, it's possible to get too fussy with them and I wouldn't make absolute metronomic (mathematical) accuracy a first consideration, at least not in this style. If you listen to professional performances, you hear a lot of different versions of dotted rhythms. What shouldn't vary is when the next beat falls. Although there is certainly an absolutely correct execution, the important thing here, I think, is to make some distinction between the 16th (or pair of 32nds) and what a triplet 8th would have sounded like if that had been written. So, whether the note(s) following the dotted 8th are exactly in the place of the fourth 16th note is less important than just playing it later than a last triplet 8th note would be, while still playing the next beat (the triplet in bar 17) on time. In this case, concentrate on the pulse and less on the subdivision.
There are many instances in ensemble music where more accuracy is needed so that notes that are meant to sound together do, but that isn't the case here (especially since we don't even have an accompaniment to relate the melody to).
If you're playing in an ensemble, the conductor will let you know (as a section) if he wants a particular execution of those figures. Often, conductors want dotted figures to be played with the last note even later than mathematical precision would dictate.
Karl
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-03-30 22:38
Garth Libre wrote:
> ...I love the piece and feel that I'll do a reasonably
> good rendition for someone of my experience in about a year. In
> the mean time I need to devote myself as much to proper intent
> as I can, and that means making it music and not just a
> technical challenge.
>
Garth, IMHO you are not too inexperienced. I can easily understand your desire to play this lovely piece. Just slow down, get a metronome and enjoy each note, its relationship to the others and the complexity that they produce when accurately put together.
Tristan
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Author: annev
Date: 2013-04-01 18:04
Hi Garth,
Working with a metronome and feeling the pulse of the piece is essential, especially when you are first "decoding" what's there. Having said that, there is nothing like playing it for some one who is experienced (a teacher) and having him/her evaluate what you are doing. They can hear things that you may not realize are happening. I come to the clarinet with a background in advanced piano and am used to doing things like playing eighths with one hand and triplet quarters with the other, but I still found I needed some tweaking with the rhythms in #1 when I was learning it. Once I could hear and feel all the rhythms in my mind (carried along with an underlying pulse) they were able to gel into a reproducible performance. From there I had pegs to hang all the other things on that I wanted to do with the etude - dynamics, phrasing, tempo variations, etc. But those initial rhythms are really essential and a key learning to the piece (that's true for most of the odd numbered etudes of the Rose 32 and it does get easier with time). By the way, I agree that it really is a beautiful piece of music - I had a fellow student who used it as an audition piece. So enjoy, and if you can have some one hear and evaluate what you do, I think that will be really helpful.
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