Rhythm Difficulties vs Counting, Metronome, or Movement

navindra · 2026-02-28T23:14:18+00:00

rsl12 BTW, Laura is a great movie, and I recommend you see it, if you haven't already! The theme you play features prominently. Good dynamics, and it sounds...

Sophia

rsl12 Haha I did! You actually can’t change a video after the fact, but you can upload a new cover image (click the edit video button). I think it beats the default 🙌 (video snapshot of my hands) 😊

ShiroKuro

Sophia oh cool! I want to do that!! (Title cards)

candela

I have only skimmed the thread. Like many have already said, I agree the key part is to be able to perceive the overall pulse and feel the downbeat of each measure. I've been dancing on and off during my life. My parents put me in dance and eurythmics classes at a young age so it's been present for almost as long as I can remember and I have no idea what it would have been like to not have had those experiences from an early age I've also taken beginners' classes for new-to-me dances as an adult . Not everybody in those had experience with dancing overall. Typically you would rotate partners during the lessons so when I was dancing the follower part I would dance with everybody in the group who was doing the leader part. That made it obvious to me that it's not at all uncommon to struggle with pulse as a beginner dancer. There were always a couple of guys in each group who felt uncertain enough to ask me to count aloud while dancing. They could normally hear the beats just fine, but couldn't distinguish the overall pulse and tell when the measures began. Usually they would develop this ability with some practice. This seems very similar to your claim that you might as well count in 1/1 as in 4/4.

So the good news is that this is a skill that can be developed. We probably all have different potentials for this but everybody appears to be able to improve significantly. The dance classes helped the above mentioned guys, so that would be one way. If you are fortunate enough to have eurythmics classes (search for Dalcroze) for adults in your area I imagine that could be an excellent choice as well. Either way, I think the core of the problem is to focus on the way you perceive the rhythm of music while listening and taking some kind of class like dancing would give you helpful realtime feedback.

In short my bottom line is that it's possible to be good at keeping a steady beat but still be fairly unaware of the overall rhythmic structure. So while being able to follow a metronome is also an important skill, it doesn't sound like that is where you need to focus the most right now. When I listen to your playing your beats usually sound regular enough to me, so that's not the problem, but not holding the measures to their full value makes the music a bit jumpy to my ear as I have to "reset" the pulse in my mind to get back into the groove. My suggestion would be to really hone in on the pulse while listening and moving to music of different genres, and to do this away from the piano in order to pay the listening and embodiment your full attention. Also look at the conductor when watching an orchestra live or recorded and pay attention how they mark the downbeats and try to feel it yourself. Maybe mimic conducting yourself. (Standard baton movements for 4/4 is down-side-side-up, for 3/4 it's down-side-up and for 2/2 down-up.)

Learning to play an instrument involves so many other different aspects and difficulties that we often don't listen as acutely as we think while playing and only notice some things when listening back to recordings. So if you'd opt to practice this skill while playing with others you probably need to choose much easier repertoire than your normal level to spare "bandwidth" to really listening to the other(s). Likewise if playing with a metronome I'd suggest choosing easy pieces and fully focus on the downbeat and try to feel it in the music. Set the metronome to distinguish and emphasize the downbeat: "boom - tic - tic- tic" or such.

ShiroKuro

Sophia feeling the beat".

This is what I was getting at with the use of the word “pulse,” but I also really like the word “weight” that was described in the video @rsl12 linked. Especially in terms of how the downbeat will have more weight…

I actually have been thinking about this (weight) ever since I watched the video, and how it is similar to, but the same as, the “hang” you can sometimes feel when there’s a rest or something is syncopated.

Is the hang what we feel in the Whitney Houston drum challenge?

Or maybe when there’s rest (or held note) in the LH/bass/accompaniment that’s just “off” (syncopated?) of the melody line….

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is rushing, and the connection between that and the rhythm things we’re talk about in this thread.

There’s speeding up, where someone gradually gets faster during the piece, such that at any given point their rhythm isn’t off, but if you just listened to a snippet at the beginning of the piece, and a snippet at the end, you could tell the end is faster.

And then there’s rushing, where in the moment, maybe something comes in too early or it feels rushed in the middle of the passage…

So another is the different between speeding up and rushing, whether they are actually different or not, and the connection between that and this larger discussion of rhythm.

Early on in practicing one of the pieces I played for the concert last week, my teacher pointed out that my right hand was pushing my left hand (her way of putting it) with the net result that I was speeding up. I also had trouble with my arrangement of the canon because I was tending to speed up over the course of the piece and then by the end, where there was a fast section with endless 16th notes, I had a hard time keeping up with myself. That might be a different issue because the very beginning is half notes and very slow and solemn, but the end is 16th notes in both hands and it’s big and climactic… and now I’m truly talking about tempo.

So, much earlier in this thread, I think I wrote that tempo and rhythm were not the same. But obviously they are connected …

Maybe the “speeding up” that I’m talking about isn’t a rhythm problem, but the rushing is a rhythm problem.

Maybe.

iternabe

ShiroKuro There’s speeding up, where someone gradually gets faster during the piece, such that at any given point their rhythm isn’t off, but if you just listened to a snippet at the beginning of the piece, and a snippet at the end, you could tell the end is faster.

I noticed this exact problem during my own practice, by clapping to my recording. The real issue is that this speeding up is not by any conscious/artistic choice, which leads to another tell tale sign that there won't be a slowing down after that, either. My fix to that is to play the whole piece with metronome, which would help suppress any subconscious tendencies to speed up the "easier" portion of the piece.

Sophia

ShiroKuro There’s speeding up

That’s probably related to enthusiasm, or nerves, or both 😊

I struggle with that as well, especially when I try to play a piece slower than my “internal feel” tells me it should sound.

I’m slowly getting better at it, but it’s definitely an ongoing battle!

Animisha

navindra

I haven't read everything everyone else has answered, but this afternoon, suddenly the thought struck me: try to find a class in ballroom dancing! It will greatly improve your feeling of rhythm. It might be rather challenging as well...

candela

Animisha

Animisha try to find a class in ballroom dancing

I totally agree! Any kind of dancing, really. You were just so much more succinct than my winding post 😁 I've seen huge improvements in people taking dance classes and who originally struggled with clearly perceiving the separate measures of music.

MRC

iternabe To add a bit of fun to this discussion, google "Whitney Houston Drum Challenge" if you haven't heard of it already 😉

That's fun: I hadn't heard of it before.

The challenge is interesting, because if you keep counting with a completely steady beat (approximately 67 to the minute), the crash will come between two beats, and the song will no longer be aligned to the beat. As I see it, there are two ways to get the timing right:

Keep counting at a steady rate, and hit the drum at approximately half way between beat 4 and the next beat.
Make a slight rallentando in your head and hit the drum on the 4th beat.

Both methods work, but for me, it's the second way that gets the feel of the music. During the silence I imagine a drummer who plays more and more heavily, dragging out the last couple of beats so that the crash is a real upbeat and the song goes on with added power.

There's an online game where you can try the challenge:

Whitney Houston Drum Challenge Game

Using the second method, my best score was just 1 millisecond too early 😀

Maybe if I kept playing all day I'd get a perfect score, but being off by a millisecond is good enough for me!

Animisha

candela Any kind of dancing, really.

You are probably right. But there are two major dances in ballroom dancing, foxtrot/quickstep and waltz, and if you feel that

navindra 4/4 is a meaningless concept in of itself.

it won't be after you have learned to dance foxtrot. And in waltzes, you'll understand down on one and light on two and three, and then again, down on one, light - light.

thepianoplayer416

My counting is not very precise. When playing with other people I assume their counting is more accurate and try to stay in sync.

Short beats often not short enough, long beats too short.

navindra

Sophia LOL!!! You win! You win!

I hear you, but I meant it slightly more basic than that... if you play Minuet in G, then you wouldn't play the F# as F - it would sound... erm, definitely ultra modern 🤣 Likewise with rhythm, you wouldn't want to play a half note as a quarter note, because that sounds equally exotic to most ears 😃

Maybe you agree with me that Minuet in G in G# might actually be all ok?

Slippery slope! Actually, this is interesting to me, because the parallels are becoming a little more obvious.

I sometimes find myself playing something with an incorrect note and my teacher will point it out. However, often my reaction would be... hmm ok, but that sounded good anyway. We're sliding down that slope now.

Ok, don't believe me, how about these folks:

I seem to recall there was a famous historical composer who said something along the lines of "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable."

Anyway, let's say you don't buy the wrong note argument... what about notes that are slightly wrong? How about many notes that are slightly wrong? You wouldn't call that correct or good music, would you?

Yet, I've just described a piano to you... it's an instrument which is out of tune with itself... with many wrong notes. An acoustic piano is even worse, because nobody can control such a beast. It's plain impossible for a piano to be in tune, you can’t play correct notes with it even if you wanted to.

Yet, that doesn't seem to phase anyone, playing with wrong notes is simply a fact of life.

Bottom line, wrong notes are an inescapable reality, so don't judge them too harshly. 😂

Sophia

navindra Slippery slope!

Absolutely! 😃

pianoloverus

navindra Hancock and Collier were talking about jazz where it's a lot different from classical. In classical music it's possible that a wrong note would sound OK or even good, but it's still a wrong note if it's not what the composer wrote. And most of the time my first thought would be "Do you really think you have a better understanding of music and what sounds good then Bach or Beethoven or Chopin etc.?" Imagine taking a lesson from Chopin and changing something less significant than a note(a dynamic, adding a big ritard, etc.) If Chopin pointed this out would you say "I really like it better that way." ?

When Beethoven said what you quoted he was comparing two things and saying that playing without feeling was terrible while making a few mistakes, which almost everyone does, is insignificant by comparison.

navindra

pianoloverus In classical music it's possible that a wrong note would sound OK or even good, but it's still a wrong note if it's not what the composer wrote. And most of the time my first thought would be "Do you really think you have a better understanding of music and what sounds good then Bach or Beethoven or Chopin etc.?" Imagine taking a lesson from Chopin and changing something less significant than a note(a dynamic, adding a big ritard, etc.) If Chopin pointed this out would you say "I really like it better that way." ?

I know nothing about classical music (or indeed jazz), but it's surprising to me that classical music would be so rigid. I would not be too surprised about Bach, as his music is basically mathematical perfection (although even then, it might be fun to insert a trill or two), but by the time we get to Chopin, I would imagine that there is room for creativity and flexibility in the interpretation.

pianoloverus

navindra I know nothing about classical music (or indeed jazz), but it's surprising to me that classical music would be so rigid. I would not be too surprised about Bach, as his music is basically mathematical perfection (although even then, it might be fun to insert a trill or two), but by the time we get to Chopin, I would imagine that there is room for creativity and flexibility in the interpretation.

In Bach and Scarlatti it's considered acceptable to add ornaments especially when a section repeats. This is because that was standard practice in the Baroque, and it was assumed that knowledgeable musicians of the day would do this. To add these ornaments in an appropriate way requires knowledge and taste so the ability to add ornaments doesn't mean any random ornaments are good. For composers from later musical periods, changing the notes is not considered appropriate with rare exceptions. That in no way means there's not an incredible room for creativity and flexibility in the interpretation. One can follow everything in the score and still sound very different from someone else following everything in the score.

In the video below 10 different pianists play the around 10 second opening of Beethoven Piano Concerto #4 and they all follow the score. Yet they each sound somewhat different. The differences aren't as dramatic as covers of popular songs would be, but that's the nature of classical music.

navindra

iternabe I should mention that my hand clapping is certainly not aim to be as accurate as a metronome. But it's also far from erratic. As Heinrich Neuhaus writes, “the pulse of a healthy person is regular, but accelerates and decelerates ... in performing a musical composition, rhythm should, in general, be nearer to meter than arrhythmia.”

Indeed, I think the key thing I'm understanding here is that clapping at least involves motion and that already makes it superior to counting alone. Unfortunately, you can't clap while playing the piano, so it might make sense to do it with a foot tap or swaying as rsl12 mentioned earlier.

I'm definitely looking at this from a vestibular perspective now.

Sophia

navindra do it with a foot tap

Yes, it's very common. This pianist can't stop tapping 🙂

Besides I think the dancing is just fabulous 😃

navindra

Sophia Heck yeah! That rhythm is totally infectious. I wish I could do anything as remotely as cool as this! 🕺

Sophia

Same here! I would love to say "this is how I play/dance"... but... yeah... no. Back to my kiddie corner 😃

navindra

pianoloverus Very cool video. I enjoyed that a lot!

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