rythm

[mimosa60]

I heard a piano teacher saying that there are no methods to teach rythm to an adult beginner and he will never be able to play maintening correct tempo....He says that only with children this problem can be solved.
Do you have any experiences? Thanks

[eddie92099]

I sincerely doubt that is the case,
Ed

[Greg_Fodrea]

I teach adult beginners rhythm all the time, and I'm flabbergasted that someone (a piano teacher, no less!) would suggest that such a thing is not possible.

I use all of the fairly "standard" methods of explaining and demonstrating rhythm, and I also encourage my students to vocalize rhythm while practicing - hands seperately at first, then slowly together.  The added vocalization (counting, multi-syllabic words, whatever...) seems to really program the brain and get the hands working together.

But, I digress.  The bottom line:  This piano teacher was a quack!!!

[ilovebach]

This is so not true!
Maybe this teacher was getting confused about the co-ordination of the fingers vs rhythm? A lot of adult beginners find it very hard to control their fingers just because the "good" fingers are so much better than the "bad "ones - two-fingered typists and all that! So their rhythm appears bad when they play the piano but if you get them to clap or tap or say the rhythm they are fine. Rhythm is so easy to work on away from the piano so please don't listen to this other teacher!

[guven]

I heard a piano teacher saying that there are no methods to teach rythm to an adult beginner and he will never be able to play maintening correct tempo....He says that only with children this problem can be solved.
Do you have any experiences? Thanks

Imo, rythm is an abilty which is about brain, not fingers. After it's set in brain, it is not so hard to make fingers listen to the signals coming from brain .

Fontaine's book is perfect and it helps also on note reading . You must check it out sometime, you'll see what I mean .

[glamfolk]

The idea that adults can't be taught rhythm is, of course, hogwash.  I've found that they learn more slowly, as a rule, but also that their larger life experience allows me to use a wider array of analogies and explanations to get musical points across.  Their busier schedules don't allow enough practice time in many cases, which probably is the reason for their slow learning.  

[nvcc]

I am 27 now and I can tell you that it is total hogwash that adults cannot learn rhythm. How unfortunate. Anyways.....I learned rhythm through theory anyway. I had no clue how to read and understand simple rhythm and then I had to learn compound rhythm for grade 1 theory RCM. I must say it was a joy to learn it just took me a while to grasp.