On tempo and rushing

ShiroKuro · 2024-11-20T11:57:48+00:00

Working with my teacher this week (it was our last lesson before the concert, gulp)… We were discussing tempos (tempi if you prefer), since he’s been trying...

MRC

ShiroKuro BTW when playing the entire piece w metronome, what do you do when you have a fermata, rit, or other tempo variations? How do you get back in sync the metronome without unnatural pauses?

You can try different strategies, depending on the piece and what aspects you are aiming to practice.

Straight through with no rubato. This can be an interesting experience, especially with a piece that normally has a lot of rubato. A while ago I tried playing through the whole of Chopin's 4th Ballade like this. It was very strange and certainly not recommended for a performance, but it taught me a lot about how much liberty I was taking at different points, and did in fact inspire me to rethink certain tempo variations.
As Anmisha suggested, ignore the metronome during a rubato passage and fit in again when you get back to a strict tempo passage.
Stop the metronome for a ritenuto and start it up again when the piece goes back to tempo. This does chop the piece up somewhat, but is ok if there aren't too many stops.
For those with the necessary programming skills, create a click track with all the rubato programmed in. I've never actually done this (too much hard work!) but I've often conducted or played to click tracks: this can be a very interesting experience.

In all cases, I don't just ignore my own internal pulse. I'm constantly comparing it with the clicks of the metronome, learning which passages feel faster or slower, even though they stay the same speed. Once I've played the piece a few times with the metronome, I'm much more aware of when I change tempo for musical, expressive reasons and where I change tempo without good reason.

ShiroKuro

iternabe especially when I purposely start slower for practice.

Yes. I find that if I have a general tempo that I usually play the piece, with a piece that I'm well past the learning stage and into the polishing or performing stage, that becomes my "set tempo," in my body, for that piece. So say I want to slow down for some particular purpose, and play it much slower than I normally do, I find that very challenging because my body wants to play it at its usual tempo. This is a kind of muscle memory, IMO.

When I think more about this problem, I wonder if this is similar to relative pitch vs absolute pitch.

Oh yeah, that's super interesting, I've never thought of it that way!

ShiroKuro

Player1 I wasn't trying to point a finger at anyone.

Thank you. I can sometimes be a little touchy. I still take a lessons, and I always appreciate the ideas I get from online discussions like this one. Which is to say, I still have a lot to learn and lots of room for improvement. But I've been playing piano for 25 years now, so I bristled at the suggestion that I don't have an internal sense of timing... 😅

Re your comment about clocks, interesting comparison.

I don't disagree with your point that timing, tempo, is an internal skill. It has to be felt in order for the pianist to play in a way that's convincing.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the tools available to use. A metronome is just that, a tool, and as such, it has a place in the toolbox of practice strategies.

Sophia

I think those two are related, but not necessarily the same thing (timing and tempo). One can have a fantastic sense of tempo and keep the same speed throughout, while their timing is all over the place. Or it is possible to have great timing (all individual notes played completely correctly in length) while speeding up throughout the tune like a wind up toy in reverse.

Especially the latter is very common in amateur bands - they start at (say) 80 bpm and get so enthusiastic in their playing, that they finish the song at 130. Often it doesn't even get noticed by anyone, unless there is a recording and one listens to it again from scratch.

Neither are super easy to correct so I can't offer any advice except to stay alert and try to be aware of it before it happens... yeah. Easier said than done 😃 Especially when nerves play nasty tricks on you. The good news is that it's a live performance and there is a huge chance that people won't notice it because they're not there to nitpick, they're there to listen to you perform and root for you all the way 😃

ShiroKuro

Sophia Neither are super easy to correct

One thing I've been doing is making sure to breathe at the transitions and ease into them... It's hard to explain without reference to a score, but there are natural phrasing points and "breath" points. I find that acting like I'm a singer who needs to take a breath helps with the "nerves induced speed ups" and offers a chance to recalibrate, like if I was speeding up through the last section (say to cover a mistake, as was the original topic here), then making sure to take a breath at the transition helps ... we'll see if that works during the concert, but it worked pretty good in my most recent practice recording.

Sophia

Nice, I really like that suggestion. I forgot whoever mentioned the holding-breath-as-survival-impulse that we somehow need to overcome, but I agree that this would seem like a great way to go about it. I'm sure you will do fine 🥰

rogerch

Player1 I wasn't trying to point a finger at anyone. All I was saying is that, in general, if you have to rely on an external device to keep time, you need to work on your internal time sense.

I use the metronome to train my internal time sense. It does a great job of identifying the areas where my internal time sense is off. In other words, if I need to work on my internal time sense, which I frequently do, I use a metronome. 🙂

iternabe

Recently, instead of trying to play to a metronome, I am trying a different method to check my rhythm and beat. I play back my play through, and clap my hands loudly to the beat and keep the clapping steady. It's quite easy to find where I speed up, or rush a certain note this way. Granted I am only playing very short pieces. But being able to detect what's the cause of rush and what to fix seem quite effective for me.

Sophia

iternabe Thanks to the link WieWaldi provided a while ago, I find it very helpful to "tap" along instead of just clap. It it is not 100% accurate, but will at least tell you if you finish at the same tempo as you started 🙂

Another very efficient way (for me) is by playing simple duets. Record one part and play along with your recording (without metronome). It's harder than it seems and is guaranteed to expose any "shortcomings" you may have in that regard 😃 It was quite a humbling experience to me... though I'm getting slightly better at it.

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