Rhythm Training for Pianists!

tony_stride · 2025-05-25T01:44:43+00:00

Hey everyone, I’m new to these forums but am a long time contributor to r/piano and r/pianolearning over on Reddit. I believe in a synthesis of jazz and clas...

Sophia

Thanks iternabe 🙂 The notation that you showed is perfectly fine, and easy to follow. And you are right, concentrating on just the line with the odd pattern might work. But my point remains that it should not be needed to actively ignore something in order to tap it correctly.

I have many weaknesses, and if you added up all the skills that I lack they would easily reach beyond the planet Mars, but... <sandbagger mode firmly disabled> lack of rhythm is not one of them. And so I was puzzled why I struggled with such a basic pattern - it turned out it is definitely the notation that makes me stumble... not my rhythmic skills.

As long as one hand keeps this steady beat pattern you are correct, I could just try to ignore the lower line altogether (thank you for that tip!). But I would imagine (hope, even) that the course moves beyond that, and then I'll have no choice to but copy the score into the format I provided an example of 🙂

Edit: have you tried tapping this by reading (ignore the fact that you know the F is always a quarter note) in reverse:

By reverse I mean tap the F notes with your right hand, and the C notes / rests with your left hand. Do you feel a struggle there? That's what I was referring to....

iternabe

Sophia By reverse I mean tap the F notes with your right hand, and the C notes / rests with your left hand. Do you feel a struggle there? That's what I was referring to....

Yes. I am right handed. Left hand on beat and right hand play rhythm is definitely easier than the other way (left hand play rhythm, right hand play beat). Even simple things like tap two notes perfectly intervals within one beat is more difficult with my left hand than with right hand.

Sophia

I still don't think we're on the same page here. Which is okay, we're just talking through written word and my communication skills are on that list that reaches Mars 😃 So let me try again.

It's nothing to do with handedness... I can tap both versions just fine. But the way it’s written, it's like trying to play a piano where all the notes are reversed - starting with the highest on the left and the lowest on the right. No matter what our favourite hand is, it's simply impossible to play a tune mirrored because by now our brains are hardwired to accept that the lower note is on the left hand side, the higher note on the right.

Maybe try to play the pattern as written on your piano, reversing your hands but not by crossing over. Or better still, follow that video of his where you read one thing, but are asked to do the reverse.

Again, I'd be perfectly fine if it were written like this:

Or, simply by your example:

With the instructions to tap a steady beat with your other hand, your nose or your foot. I could do all those, easily.

Does that make it clearer what I’m trying to say?

iternabe

Sophia yes! I got what you are saying now.

Sophia

iternabe haha well that's a record for me… normally it takes me ten messages to actually say what I’m trying to say 🤣

Animisha

Sophia I understood immediately what you meant, but maybe that is because I also did the exercises. I fully agree with you. Why create unnecessary misunderstanding? Let RH and LH always play "their" lines!

Sophia

Animisha Let RH and LH always play "their" lines!

Omg, that’s another record… you conveyed in eight simple words what I couldn’t say in three ultra long posts 💕

That’s exactly it, thanks Animisha ❤️

keystring

Sophia We are asked to tap in three ways: first time LH taps the bottom note, RH the top note. Second time this is reversed - then the LH actually needs to tap the top note, the RH the bottom note. This goes for the rests as well. Third time both hands tap together.

I don't like those instructions. It trains a reflex we should not have as pianists, and if we have or acquire it, then it could mess up playing actual music.

What would be the purpose of this?

tony_stride

keystring hey there thank you so much for this feedback and the time that you spent checking out my curriculum!

I’d like to address two answers to your question (one empirical, one theoretical) while also acknowledging that personal preferences exist and if it’s not for you, that’s just fine 🙂

First, empirically have A LOT of anecdotal support for this method. A decade of working on it with students and seeing them excel in music. This includes myself and the feeling of rhythm mastery that I now have compared to when I didn’t have it as a child. So while we can discuss this theoretically I’d be willing to put the performance of my students up against the performance of anyone else’s students. Not in a competitive way, but as empirical results, which is what I’m mostly interested in.

Second, I’ll join you in theory and offer a counter theory to what you presented. This this method is done away from the piano, it’s training you at a deeper level. Therefor the independence and coordination that is developed reading the top line with the left hand is a boon. I just can’t see how creating more pathways of coordination could be a problem. There’s no way we can comprehend all the neuro muscular activity that goes into playing piano. So then the theory is do we only cultivate a narrowly defined pathway based on what we think we need, or do we benefit from casting a wider net? My intuition and empirical evidence suggests the latter.

Last thing, and this is really really really going to upset you 😉 (hope to sense I’m trying to be funny here!) but when I was in college and was really trying to improve my sight reading ASAP I played a lot of dance dance revolution on my Wii. My theory was I wanted to improve my feet eye coordination so that some infinitely nuanced part of that would bleed into my hand eye coordination 😃 I’d say I’m pretty happy with my achievements as a pianist up to this point so I’m doing something right…

Sophia

I don't know keystring, but I'm sure @tony_stride who created the method and started this thread would be willing to elaborate 🙂

I do like the idea of teaching rhythm (I wasn't even aware that there are teachers who do not deem this important, as Tony said in his OP), and I don't have any other opinions about his course yet because I just followed two lessons.

But my observation was that we are asked (as Animisha so succinctly put it) to play the line that doesn't belong to the hand, which to me unnecessarily complicated an otherwise simple exercise 🙂

keystring

Sophia don't know keystring, but I'm sure @tony_stride who created the method and started this thread would be willing to elaborate 🙂

I actually put that out there for Tony. 🙂

I've studied with and also explored teaching ideas with a senior teacher for quite some time now. One element is the giving of reading skills. That can be easily fudged by giving students music in "C position", "G position", making sure that this is the music they read, so that weaknesses don't show up. But for real reading skills there are a number of things that you want to have happening. (Presently there's a thread where someone sees changing clef signs as problematic).

One thing we want to build is a reflex where you associate the top staff for the RH, bottom staff for the LH, or in other conventions, you have stem-up, stem-down for voices. The exercise in question sort of un-trains this.

We need both flexibility and rigidity. The dyslexic who mixes up p q b d is able to see that "ball and stick" shape numerous ways. "fat" and "taf" may be indistinguishable because s/he can read this both ways. I have a degree of this but didn't realize until I studied learning disabilities postgraduate after my teaching degree and hey, that's me and in my family! I can see "punos" as "sound" (upside-down it is - try it. 😃 ) It took me a long time to handle looking at the keyboard because the symmetry threw me. I had learned by sound and touch (I now realize).

Two other points of flexibility are movable Do solfege, and registers. Since my world was movable Do, I could play (sound out) music in any key and not be thrown if it was in the wrong key. This hampered my ability to read music that wasn't diatonic and predictable because you must see D below the treble lowest line as the key between the two black dots. Registers ---- I sang the music, and if it became too high or too low, I just switched down or up. That flexibility made me lose sensitivity to register and I could easily play something an octave too high or low and note notice.

You want to build some very concrete associations. And that is what bothers me about that exercise. We're in the teacher forum so I'm looking more deeply into this.

Sophia

My note reading skills are very weak, I’m ashamed to admit. I rely on my ears to tell me what I’m doing, and then my memory to get it mostly right.

But my sense of left and right is strong. I was able to do the exercise too, but as I said in an earlier post, it takes a lot of mental capacity to try and flip each note around. While this might be a useful mental exercise in itself, I’m not sure if it’s useful in this particular case 😄

keystring

tony_stride This this method is done away from the piano, it’s training you at a deeper level. Therefor the independence and coordination that is developed reading the top line with the left hand is a boon. I just can’t see how creating more pathways of coordination could be a problem.

I am very much for doing things away from the piano. Even unrelated things can weirdly create pathways for the piano. This particular thing, however ..... Well wait, I think your original is written all on a same staff and I can see that. I saw a later presentation where it was put on two staves and that's actually where I had a problem. It's not even what you presented.

Making a long story shorter (edited) - I think that my own background and where I find myself at was part of the reaction. There are things that I need to personally undo and rebuild.

Sophia

tony_stride My intuition and empirical evidence suggests the latter.

With the absolute utmost respect, but that’s basically like saying it’s so because I say it’s so 🤣

However I understand that your notation is the way it is to try and get true independence from what is left, right, up and down and I accept that as your preferred method. But I still don’t think it’s gospel truth 😄

Sophia

keystring I saw a later presentation where it was put on two staves

That was me, providing a visualization of what I was trying to convey. Musescore did not allow me to reproduce the original presentation, so I came up with another way to make my point 😄

keystring

Back to rhythm and timing. I probably have the basics down pretty well. One thing I seem to have a poor sense of is the basic downbeat that makes the measures of music sort of surge forward like waves rushing to the beach. In rubato and such, that first beat, or "the power of the One" (One two three) is a thing that is not as strong as I'd like.

The other is as a classical nerd, totally square, for non-classical music. I'm the kind that will "clap on the wrong beat".

There is an appoggiatura issue I'd like to ask about privately first, and if it's sensible maybe we can bring the idea over here. I sent a PM

keystring

Sophia That was me, providing a visualization of what I was trying to convey. Musescore did not allow me to reproduce the original presentation, so I came up with another way to make my point

Yes, thank you. I mistakenly thought it was Tony's original presentation.

tony_stride

Sophia not necessarily, if I had used this for 10 years (that’s a few hundred students in person and a few thousand on YouTube) and it had failed, this post wouldn’t exist. This is true because it’s my life’s work that I’ve spent thousands of hours carefully developing on a student by student basis to discover the best way to teach pianists rhythm. It’s the closest thing to science I’ve ever done. I’m actually toying with the idea of using open source brain mapping software/hardware to track a group of students over a year to see if I can gather even more data to help support conversations like this.

Hope I’m not coming across too patronizing, this is just a major focus of my nerd universe and I like to share 🙂

You and the other commenter who’s a part of this discussion remind me of students I’ve worked with, and what I’d tell you is, to focus on the work. Actually do it. Then tell me about your experience, whether positive or negative. But give it an honest effort, it is challenging, if only I had a dollar for every time someone sighed when we read that left hand on the top line! But there’s a reason they consistently stick to the program, because you will inevitably begin to feel improvement 🙂

Sophia

tony_stride Hope I’m not coming across too patronizing

Never 🙂 And in turn I hope that I don't come across as too direct. In my experience, if I don't ask, I don't get the answers I'm seeking. And I only kick the tires of stuff I'm interested in. I'm sure your method works. I mean, you don't need to have a scientific mind to know that training of any sort yields better results than not training at all. Therefore I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that following your course will improve students' rhythm skills. Axiom right there.

But... here's my but. Again, please don't think I'm being stubborn here... or going against the grain here. I still have no opinion about your method - that would be highly unfair after just following the two most basic lessons. I'm absolutely sure it works wonders.

But my question remains. WHY is it beneficial to tap the top line with the left hand and the bottom line with the right in the repeat? And along the same lines, why is it beneficial to (not) tap a rest with BOTH hands in the second repeat, when my eyes clearly see a "note" (tap) at the top?

You definitely don't have to answer if you don't want to - this is not a challenge and I'm not out to prove anything. I'm definitely genuinely interested, and I apologize in advance if I come across as a stubborn mule. Because I totally am 😃

keystring

tony_stride That being said… in a perfect world the book would be twice as long with each line written out twice in the RH & LH, but that’s just not economical.

This now makes sense to me. If you had your druthers you would not have written in that particular format, but expanded it.

I totally agree with training the LH at least as much as the RH, esp. since in a lot of student music it tends to be neglected. An in the format you have, I'm ok with it. It's the other format which I mistakenly thought you had written, that I'd not want to reverse what is seen in clefs because of training in reading.

tony_stride You and the other commenter who’s a part of this discussion remind me of students I’ve worked with, and what I’d tell you is, to focus on the work. Actually do it. Then tell me about your experience, whether positive or negative. But give it an honest effort, it is challenging, if only I had a dollar for every time someone sighed when we read that left hand on the top line!

I am one of those other commenters. The principle, when you are working with a teacher you chose to work with, of "try it, and try it long enough" is an important one. There are exercises which are counterintuitive and seem to make things harder before they become easier. When you are with that teacher, s/he will also be able to tell if something went off the rails.

I'd run this one exercise past my own teacher because of the reading aspect and history, and where I'm coming from. As a whole these exercises look sound. Thank you for sharing them.

tony_stride

Sophia great we’re on the same page here! I welcome the scrutiny, this is nothing compared to all the hours I spent with my editor when I was writing this book. She was always surprised how much ‘punishment’ I could take, and all I could say was that’s the life of a musician haha!

Any who, to answer your questions, the reason for reading the top line with the left hand is simply to cultivate better control with the left hand. The left hand is a magical creature that is the pianists greatest asset, mine doesn’t like to be left out of the fun so I let it have a turn on the top line.

That being said… in a perfect world the book would be twice as long with each line written out twice in the RH & LH, but that’s just not economical. It also says something to the scrappiness of our profession. We get thrown into all kinds of weird situations as musicians and are expected to function at a high level. You never know exactly what the music you get handed is going to be like, and here’s a chance to push those boundaries in a safe space.

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