Timing for HT - Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu

[Drillyourtechnique]

Practicing HA with the Fan Imp is not too difficult with the metronome.  But when I put both hands together, everything pretty much goes in flames and I can’t get past the first 10 bars.  Btw speaking of Flames, GO FLAMES GO! hockey fans.
Back to the issue.  I’ve tried everything from putting on the metronome to count the RH beats while trying to slap the LH on a single note to get the feel of the RH doing 16ths and the LH doing triplet eights.  It’s obvious when the two hands hit their notes at the same time is at each beat, 1 2 3 4. But after that I can’t seem to nail the rhythm.
I tried to slow down the piece by copying it to Finale notepad and playing at a tempo of say 20.  
But what I’ve noticed is that there’s five 16th notes (assume the 16th rest is a 16th note for simplicity sake) to be squished with 4 triplet eights.  
So beat 1 should normally* have both hands playing, then 3 16ths with 2 eights in between, then on the 5th 16th note, which is beat 2, both hands play together.  
My basic problem is letting my left side of the brain not mix up with the rhythm of the right side of the brain, so my LH doesn’t start to copy the RH’s 16th Rhythm.
Any suggestions to cure this? (Bernhard help!)

[amanfang]

I tend to think of it in 4 beats when starting out, rather than 2.  So for each beat, you have 4 sixteenths in the RH and 3 in the LH.  So you're basically doing a lot of 3 against 4 cross rhythm.  I use a word device...  "Will Willie come today"....  If you're slapping the rhythm, slap both together on "will" and then RH slaps "Wil", LH slaps "lie", RH "come", LH slaps "to" and RH "day."  This sounds confusing.  The "today" should be RH almost right after the LH.  Speak it as you would normally say it... t'day.  It's much easier to deomnstrate than to type.  Overall, thing of it as a bunch of 3 against 4.  

[Tash]

i'm playing the fantasie at the moment and  had issues with getting hands together so this is what my teacher suggested to me and it worked cos i can play the rhythms fine now no problems:

when playing HS put an accent on the notes on the beats so when you do it HT then they should come together

rather than trying to play the rhythms in the accurate this note goes just before that one in the left hand blah cos that's insane, start by having the left hand play playing not the normal rhythm

eg. in the first bar (i know you've mastered this but this is just to explain the rhythm)

LH: plays the first C#, then RH A by itself, then play the RH A and B at the same time as the G# and higher C# in the LH, then LH E and RH F## together, RH G# by itself and the next two notes of RH and LH together

haha that sounds so confusing. basically the left hand notes are playing at the same time as the right notes except the 2nd semi-quaver of each quadlet of them in the RH plays by itself... is that understandable?

anyway when you get it all up to speed you won't be able to play that rhythm properly and it'll mish into what it's meant to be and for me it just suddenly hit me how it was meant to go together and the whole change of LH rhythm doesn't affect it anymore.

hope that was of some help

tash

[amanfang]

It may help to figure out the cross-rhythms and then play them in scales first just to get the feel of it.

[Chopins_Fantaisie]

the 3-against-4 rhythm was (and is, if I'm not misunderstood by the comments of the others who've learned it!) is a tough one to get down when first learning Fantaisie.

when i first began learning this piece, my teacher took the first HT measure and broke it down into 12 counts. That's all I'm able to tell you now... I have to go the piano to actually play and recall what we did to get that rhythm, but my brother's playing saxophone at the moment... since I can't concentrate over that, I'll get back with you soon.

[Spatula]

Hey guys. This is actually Drillyourtechnique and my old account doesn't work...says that it the user name doesn't exsist, but anyways I think I'm somewhat getting the hang of it.  Thanks for your input
What I do is I set my metronome at about 120 and each tick is equal to a 16th note, so the right hand is pretty good, then I add my LH and it still seems a bit off but I'm starting to get the fell of it.

[macman1288]

i dont know if this will nessessarily help...i dont read music but i learn by ear...when my teacher taught me, i learned both hands seperately. when i got each one down, i played them slowly together...really, really slow...then increasing speed after each time i played. for me atleast, the beginning is the hardest part when you go up with the right hand and back down..if you can get that down, everything else just comes naturally...i hope that helps...

[Spatula]

already then!  Chopin FI here I come