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Re: Tempo

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-10-25 21:27

In general that's part of what you learn from experience as you play in ensembles over time.

One reason it's easier when you play alone is that you can set a tempo for yourself that you can keep up with easily. In a group, someone else is setting the tempo.

Another reason is that when you practice with a metronome there is really no consequence if you get off beat or ahead or behind, so you may not be as aware when you and the metronome separate for short periods. The consequence when you lose the group pulse is much more obvious.

> I don't come in until 60 beats later.

(What follows assumes you meant 60 beats, literally. If you already do actually count measures, this may not be helpful.) If you're really counting *beats* in long rests, you should train yourself instead to count measures instead. It's easy enough to feel groups of beats (in each measure) without consciously counting each one, and the conductor's beat is a visual cue (the stick should go downward on the first beat of each measure and upward on the last). So count the rest by measures. Most of us learned at some point to mentally replace "1" of each bar with its number in the rest - e.g. "1-2-3-4, 2-2-3-4, 3-2-3-4, 4-2-3-4, etc. until you've reached the number of bars in the multiple rest. It may help to keep a count on your fingers as well - for long rests, I put my free hand (that isn't holding the clarinet) on my knee and put up one more finger for each measure. That way, my fingers are counting in fives, and I know something is wrong in my mental count if my fifth finger goes up and my count isn't divisible by five.

As you rehearse, you should make mental notes (and if you're allowed to mark your music, you should make a pencil marking) of when in a long rest other major instruments enter or any other events that you can use as "landmarks" to help you know where the band is. If your rest spans a couple of rehearsal marks (letters or numbers), there might be a major entrance or change of sound at one of the points marked by a letter or number. Mark a quick note in your part (e.g. "trumpets" or "PP" if until then has been loud) so you can confirm your count when you get there. If there are meter changes in your part, you will see them printed and you (hopefully) will see the changes in the conductor's beat pattern.

I'm wondering how at your stage of development you got involved in an ensemble that specializes in atonal music. But, the principles are similar. There is added difficulty in the fact that the harmonic cadences you can usually count on to help learn where you are are missing in truly atonal music. You have to find other "landmarks" to help keep your place.

Don't be discouraged. The only way to learn to play ensemble music is to do it.

Karl

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