Rhythm
Bruce Berr, Editor
This article also
has supplementary
multimedia on this website
The question this
issue straddles two departments in the magazine, Rhythm and Technique.
It was therefore a natural for the editors of these two departments
- Scott McBride Smith and myself - to answer the question. The
interplay between these two elements is a practical and fascinating
subject. Interestingly, the question could have been worded the
other way around: "How is technique enhanced by solid rhythmic
skills?" and indeed may be in a future issue. We hope you
too find this topic worthy of further examination.
from Scott McBride Smith's article
In piano . . . timing is everything
"Time is never reasonable. Time is our enemy, Caesar," said Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the 20th Century-Fox movie of the same name in 1963. I wistfully thought of Liz as I listened to one of my adult students describe, at length, the performance of one of her own beginning pupils. A lovely middle-aged lady, she (the student, not Elizabeth Taylor) returned to playing and teaching after a protracted time-out to raise a happy, successful family consisting of one moderately bemused husband and three college-age kids, none of whom had the slightest interest in piano. Not that it bothered her.
"This time is for me," she told me. "I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. And if they don't like it, too bad for them!" This lofty let-them-eat-cake attitude worked fine in her own playing, where her boldness and fine early training carried her to some heights. Teaching, though was a challenge. "His tone is bad and every piece is full of mistakes," she said, of her lagging apprentice. "And that's not all. He has unreliable technique. Stops and starts, loud when it should be soft" The list went on. What would Elizabeth Taylor do?, I asked myself. Probably have the student exiled or delegated to some peon. I looked around. The only peon in sight was me! It was time to get started.
"You know," I told my pupil, "in piano, as in life, timing is everything." That which we describe as a technical problem can sometimes be a simple problem of timing. The student may indeed be making the correct finger motion or arm gesture, but placing the motion in the wrong moment, so that the note sounds too early or too lateor at an incorrect location on the keyboard, resulting in a wrong note. Or he/she may be playing the note correctly, but releasing it too lateor may be using a gesture that is too fast, or too heavy, for the appropriate sound and dynamic. Sensing something is wrong in one or more of these areas, students speed, trying to catch up to where they think they should be or they pause, before circling back to give it another try. . .
Scott McBride Smith is Editor of KEYBOARD COMPANION'S
Technique department
from Bruce Berr's article
Rhythm is not "enhanced" by solid technique skills - it is dependent upon them!
There are specific rhythm skills that I want my students to acquire in the all-important first few years of study. The most basic and important are feeling a beat, and being able to play with a steady pulse throughout an entire piece. I also want elementary students to be able to play in several different tempos on demand to make sure they have truly mastered the rhythms in the music as relational patterns.
When certain aspects of technique are in place, there are fewer obstacles to prevent basic rhythm skills from being developed. Although technique doesn't create good rhythm, it does allow for a student's natural sense of rhythm to come to the surface and be a part of the playing.
Good posture as the source of balance and mobility at the keyboard
The starting point of all technique at the piano is good posture. Students who consistently demonstrate effective posture feel secure balance, alertness, and mobility. I teach students to keep their feet flat on the floor spread apart somewhat (balance point #1), and to sit tall on the inner third of the bench (balance point #2) so that they are leaning slightly toward the keyboard as they play. That sets up the third contact point for balance: the hands on the keyboard, acting as a conduit for arm and body weight. . .
Bruce Berr is Editor of KEYBOARD COMPANION'S Rhythm department
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