Rhythm, cerebral or intuitive?

[venik]

So I've been playing the piano for 15 years, I'm 21, started when i was 6. Took lessons for 13 years, but tbh i was a bad student. Specifically he told me to count in my head and I never listened. But I could make him happy with my playing without counting. I focused more on feeling and touch than rhythm. To me these are two very different functions, one left brain, one right brain. Feeling being right brain (imagination) and rhythm being left brain (structured). Music sounds best when you can get both just right. Anyways on to my problem, I'd like to hear your guys' style of keeping rhythm. Do you count in your head? Or do you listen and feel for the rhythm?

My personal style is to listen and feel, but I think I may have hit a road block. I'm not sure if I need to train and work on this intuition of feeling for the rhythm, or that I need to stop being stubborn and start counting in my head. Feeling for it has brought me really far, I feel like not counting in my head has allowed me to focus on the emotion of the music. When I count in my head I feel like most of the emotion is lost in my autonomous and boring counting. Don't get the idea that I cannot keep rhythm, I can it's just that I struggle...once again losing emotion struggling to keep rhythm.

I hope this makes sense. Although I have a feeling many will simply tell me every pianist in the history of pianism (hehe) has counted in their head and I'm an idiot for ignoring my teacher for 13 years. haha.

I mean the hardest song I can keep rhythm in is Chopin's scherzo 1(?) op 20. But the rhythm in that is rather simple. Just to give you an idea of my playing level. It's more the awkward and dynamic tempos that I have trouble with, like Greig's piano concerto. And even a little bit on liszt's hungarian rhapsody no. 2.

Thanks, hope you can help.

[jesc]

I'm also interested in an experienced pianist's reply on this. I have the same problem. My problem is that I unwittingly apply rubato to every measure of every romantic piece I get my hands on. I'm wrestling with almost the same paradox. If I keep strict time, my performance becomes devoid of emotion.

[slow_concert_pianist]

This is a common problem and your teacher was correct. In effect music is a mathmatical transaction. For the score to be excuted as written, first all the detail must be comprehended, then performance must be inhanced by an internal counter. Without that performances taper or accelerate by their own volition. Another issue comes from taking on extravegant complex passages where detail might be sacrificed to make performance possible.

The common lesson/solution is very simple. 1st invest in a metronome and then slow problem passages down to an acceptable speed for performance even if that means you play "prestissimo" largo. Once all the elements come together mathmatically, you are rythmically correct and you can speed up the targeted sections. And for the commenter, "spontaneous rubato" sounds like the old addage "playing from the heart". Those who play from the heart amost invariably misrepresent it. Your problem is discipline - i.e. you lack it. Apply it and your music appreciation and output will eventually enthrawl. One of the positive messages I can give to those who play from the heart is it is you who have the passion to become fine interpreters. Fine technicians struggle with interpretation as a general rule. That is the real paradox.

[ted]

Notation is a very crude graphic approximation to rhythm at the best of times and counting and metronomes are even cruder. Western notation and its centuries of hidebound tradition have created the persistent illusion that rhythm is a simple property of notation, when in fact most felt rhythms of any interest are very complex and cannot be notated at all. Having said that, if all you are playing is classical music, which hangs on notation anyway, and counting and metronomes help, then use them, but only as a crutch, a learning tool, until the complete rhythm is firmly in your mind.

There is also a clear difference between feeling rhythm and being able to keep a regular beat; the latter is a very tiny subset of the former. I would be inclined not to worry about bending rhythms in traditional romantic music. Most of it would sound pretty trotty played metronomically wouldn't it ? Metronomic stride and swing, for example a Midi file, sounds okay, but even there, I get the feeling something is missing after a while, something which is vitally present in a solo by Waller, Morton and others.

Rhythm to me lies at the core of music and like music itself, is ineffable in the sense that just when I think I understand a lot, it surprises and delights and tells me I understand very little. I rather enjoy this ongoing process.  

[venik]

This is a common problem and your teacher was correct. In effect music is a mathmatical transaction. For the score to be excuted as written, first all the detail must be comprehended, then performance must be inhanced by an internal counter. Without that performances taper or accelerate by their own volition. Another issue comes from taking on extravegant complex passages where detail might be sacrificed to make performance possible.

The common lesson/solution is very simple. 1st invest in a metronome and then slow problem passages down to an acceptable speed for performance even if that means you play "prestissimo" largo. Once all the elements come together mathmatically, you are rythmically correct and you can speed up the targeted sections. And for the commenter, "spontaneous rubato" sounds like the old addage "playing from the heart". Those who play from the heart amost invariably misrepresent it. Your problem is discipline - i.e. you lack it. Apply it and your music appreciation and output will eventually enthrawl. One of the positive messages I can give to those who play from the heart is it is you who have the passion to become fine interpreters. Fine technicians struggle with interpretation as a general rule. That is the real paradox.

Thanks, this was an extremely helpful post and I think it'll help my playing alot. I know there are alot of different styles of playing but I think we share the same opinion on which style sounds best, glad to have gotten a response from you.

Notation is a very crude graphic approximation to rhythm at the best of times and counting and metronomes are even cruder. Western notation and its centuries of hidebound tradition have created the persistent illusion that rhythm is a simple property of notation, when in fact most felt rhythms of any interest are very complex and cannot be notated at all. Having said that, if all you are playing is classical music, which hangs on notation anyway, and counting and metronomes help, then use them, but only as a crutch, a learning tool, until the complete rhythm is firmly in your mind.

There is also a clear difference between feeling rhythm and being able to keep a regular beat; the latter is a very tiny subset of the former. I would be inclined not to worry about bending rhythms in traditional romantic music. Most of it would sound pretty trotty played metronomically wouldn't it ? Metronomic stride and swing, for example a Midi file, sounds okay, but even there, I get the feeling something is missing after a while, something which is vitally present in a solo by Waller, Morton and others.

Rhythm to me lies at the core of music and like music itself, is ineffable in the sense that just when I think I understand a lot, it surprises and delights and tells me I understand very little. I rather enjoy this ongoing process. 

Thanks, but tbh you are the type of piano player that I hate listening to, and that make me struggle to keep a hold of what music is supposed to sound like. I think I have regressed in playing ability having listened to this.

Rhythm gives music it's backbone, without it you might as well be listening to LA rush hour traffic autotuned to 141541.

[Bob]

I don't count with numbers in my head while I'm playing -- for practicing maybe if I'm working out a spot, not for performing for sure. 

If I'm concentrating more on rhythm I'm probably paying more attention to the beat and the subdvision of the beat.  I just make sure the notes fall where they're supposed to.

If you can play it, I'm not sure it matters if you can count it while you're playing.  Yes, you can count it if you had too.  Maybe it's similar to spelling out words -- Yes, you could if you want to, but it's not always necessary.

I wonder if it's even wise to think in words (number words) while playing, using your brain for verbal information that way.

I remember thinking in the apst that when you put right and left hand rhythms together, it tended to results in the beat just subdivided anyway -- Which hand to do count?  Or just the melody?  Or both?  If it's just one line it's easy -- You can count that one line.  What if there are four lines going on? 

I would say I only count if I need to during practice.  I don't even the last time I do that.  The most I've been thinking for rhythm of beat is something like "mmph!" on a certain beat if I want to focus on the rhythm there along with thinking the rhythm with the melody.

[slow_concert_pianist]

Notation is a very crude graphic approximation to rhythm at the best of times and counting and metronomes are even cruder. Western notation and its centuries of hidebound tradition have created the persistent illusion that rhythm is a simple property of notation, when in fact most felt rhythms of any interest are very complex and cannot be notated at all. Having said that, if all you are playing is classical music, which hangs on notation anyway, and counting and metronomes help, then use them, but only as a crutch, a learning tool, until the complete rhythm is firmly in your mind.

There is also a clear difference between feeling rhythm and being able to keep a regular beat; the latter is a very tiny subset of the former. I would be inclined not to worry about bending rhythms in traditional romantic music. Most of it would sound pretty trotty played metronomically wouldn't it ? Metronomic stride and swing, for example a Midi file, sounds okay, but even there, I get the feeling something is missing after a while, something which is vitally present in a solo by Waller, Morton and others.

Rhythm to me lies at the core of music and like music itself, is ineffable in the sense that just when I think I understand a lot, it surprises and delights and tells me I understand very little. I rather enjoy this ongoing process.  

You have conjured an interesting supplementary debate. Cortot (to the annoyance of his critics) would sometimes play Chopin not as written. His justification was that Chopin “implied” an effect in his scoring, but the music “actually would not be played that way”. Mozart issued Masonic traditions with his idioms and you needed to be “in the club” to appreciate how they should be performed “properly”. In contrast Chopin was attributed to have asked Liszt “to play what I’ve written or not at all” after a particularly flamboyant embellishment of his presto con fuoco Prelude no 16 (although it is hard to imagine how that monstrous work could be embellished in any way).

Therefore ,in summary, those who undertake the journey towards concert piano quickly understand that progress can only be achieved through strict discipline and the written score as its rigorous benchmark is sacrosanct.

[timothy42b]

In my opinion only!

The right note at the wrong time is just as wrong as the wrong note.

And my definition of wrong time includes detectably early or late. 

So yes, you have to count.  And not only count, but subdivide.  (If you were measuring distance with a yardstick, you'll be precise to about half a yard.  Unless you look at the foot markings, then you'll be within half a foot.  It has inches, too, that gets you much closer.  Some yardsticks even have sixteenths or thirtysecond inch markings.) 

It is true that notation may not always specify precisely what is intended.  Again IMO, that intent still exists with precision and must be met with precision.  The result may not be quite what is notated, but it must not vary from what is intended.  Part of the process of learning to do that is to learn to reproduce very very precisely what is notated.