Piano Forum
Piano Board => Student's Corner => Topic started by: theholygideons on March 30, 2014, 04:03:13 AM
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Hey everyone!
I've reached a technical roadblock regarding the polyrhythms within the second half of the first movement of Carl Vine's Piano sonata no.1. The smallest i can subdivide the beats into so that the hands come together on every bead is a minim, but that leaves a lot of room for uncertainty, and i feel like i'm fudging the rhythms of the notes between the beats. I need some advice on how to deal with polyrthmic pieces like this.
Thanks
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Looks like fun (?). I haven't tried it -- but I think, if I were to give it a shot, I would make sure that I have the left hand very very very solid first -- not even try to get the right hand filigree in. Then, once the left hand was that solid -- so solid that I really didn't have to think about it -- I would fill in the right hand, which is basically ornamentation.
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That does look annoying to try to get under your fingers. I mostly run as far away as I can by default if I come by a score that's bloated with the dreaded numbers 22-23 or 5/7 under pages long stretches of sixteenths :)
Best advice like said above is to get the left hand's rhythm solidly under control before attempting anything else.
Have the page notated as midi to see and hear how that page and its polyrhythms play when played 100% according to written rhythms....
Not that that should be your goal, to play it like a machine, but to make sure you have no misconceptions about how those polyrhythms naturally sound against one another.
It's also to hear those sweet, sweet easily overlooked spots where your hands can effortlessly come in-sync as you play which you might have overlooked if you're basing your knowledge of how this piece should sound on a likely more freely interpreted human performance. After having the left under control you can probably break the longer challenging parts down to manageable blocks for easier practice.
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Break it down methodically. If you're having trouble understanding what the rhythms sound like, you can do what I did, which I'll get to in a bit. All you really need to understand is what it sounds like, then you can play it. Count, evenly, to a metronome, the following...
quarter - flan
eighths - taco
triplets - burrito
sixteenths - quesadilla
quintiplets - carne asada
septuplets - quesadilla burrito
I have no idea why but that has helped me play some of the weirdest polyrhythms