practicing retarded rhythms

[Tash]

well they're not really retarded, they're just syncopated or not straight-forward. silly contemporary music, easy to sight-read the notes but the rhythm is an absolute b*tch. and i cannot count. i should really go scan an example but it's downstairs and i'm being lazy again.  but with recent music, do you just really slowly try to get the rhythm, use a metronome or tap your foot to find the beat- i'm really bad at doing this, i have a tendency to just make it up as i go along, but i don't think my teacher's going to be too impressed with that!

[quantum]

Depends on the context of the passage.  Some are inherently rhythmical, so you do have to stick close to the rhythm.  Some are rhythmically complex, to give a sense of complexity - in some cases rhythm is more relative than strict. 

Scan please? (don't hate me for trying to make you un-lazy  )

[ted]

I think perhaps there are two clearly different situations depending on whether or not you have actually heard how it should sound. Where rhythm is concerned, notation is at best an approximation and at times a very poor one. If you have heard how it should sound then just go by that. If you haven't, then form your own rhythm from the notation as best you can and, having done that, forget the notation altogether and just feel the rhythm. Metronomes and counting are only any good if they lead to a rhythm you can feel, at which stage you forget about them.

There is also that situation quantum is talking about where the "rhythms" of the notation are not real rhythms at all but just a convenient sort of "descriptive" notation showing the rough relative horizontal positions of notes.

[faulty_damper]

The best way to learn rhythms is to memorize the sound and then play from the sound in your mind.  This means taking the problem rhythm and mentalizing it and then physicalyzing it.

The worst way to do it is to count individual rhythms.  However, when learning how it sounds like, it is fine to count but once you get it, focus on the sound of the rhythm and memorize.  Then play from memory.

[lagin]

If you mean polyrhythms, like 3 against 4 or whatever, I tap them on my legs and speed it up slowly until I get a "feel" for it.  3 against 4 has the common denominator of 12, so I would count to 12 while tapping my legs at the appropriate times.  Then I transfer that to the playing.  But eventually it's really more of a "feel" than mathematics.  Or you can play one hand with the metronome say 20 times, then the other hand 20 times, and then try them together, and do it without counting at all then.  One can only count to 12 so fast anyway .  But if you mean just really crazy stuff and not necessarily polyrhythms, I personally either tap my foot to an 8th note or sometimes to whatever is the smallest notational value in the piece.   I agree, you should scan it for us.

[Tash]

ok here's the first page https://i2.tinypic.com/20f5els.jpg

the 1st 2 bars are ok and then the 3rd bar onwards is what. i guess i should just get each hand going separately and then try to mash them together...and do it by listening to the recording, and typing it into sibelius to see how it sounds slower...

[lagin]

1st beat can be counted in sixteenths, but tap your foot or set metronome to the quarter note while still counting outloud in 16ths though (you'll see why later).  If you can't slow the metronome down enough, put it on silent/blinking mode and tape yourself tapping a pencil with every other beat for a few minutes (tried this once and it worked quite well). 

2nd beat is really 3 against 4 if you imagine the left hand eighth as being 2 sixteenths together, which in fact it is.  That rhythm is dividable by 12 (see above post), but can also be learned as an isolated unit without worry about the rest of the bar for the time being (see above post again).  Play all within one foot tap or metronome tick anyway to keep the overall beats the same length.

3rd beat, same as 1st.

4th beat, divide into "beau - ti - ful" evenly within one metronome tick.

The other bars can be done similarly.  It's just the 2nd beat that will end up being a "feel" beat, but by having a tick on the quarter notes in each bar, the 16th note "one - e - an - d" beats and the triplet "beau - ti - ful" beats will be the same length. 

At least, that's how I would do it.

[faulty_damper]

Actually, it doesn't look that retarded.  The rhythmic patterns are really just being able to play 3 (triples) against 2 (the 8th notes) and be able to divide the 2 into 4 (16th notes.)

Much easier than what you made it out to be.  I was expecting much much worse.

Again, my advice is to memorize the sound of the rhythms first before compositing together.

[Bob]

I would just write out the combined rhythm -- all on one rhythm line.  Leave the 3 over 4 stuff separate in that line -- Practice the 3 over 4 by itself.  Get that down. 

Practice the rhythm by itself just tapping the hands then -- using the real music. 

I think ties to the beat can step up the difficulty level.  You can practice the rhythms without the ties and then put the ties back in when it gets more comfortable.

I would do something like that.  The only part I might be writing out is the composition rhythm, probably by hand to to make it simple, quick, and flexible.  Putting it into Sibelius sound like a lot of work, unless it's easy to scan in.  Even still, you have to have to set your mind up to be able to play it, not just copy a recording.  Once you get it down for one piece, all the others like it will be that much easier though.

You might also be able to get a recording and then slow it down with software.