My 4 against 3 exercise

[slobone]

I got this from Slonimsky but I modified it a bit. What you're going to do is play a C major scale with both hands. The left hand is going to play triplets and the right hand will play quadruplets. Start an octave apart, and the two hands will finish at the top after 4 octaves in the right hand and 3 octaves in the left hand. Then go back down again.

Start by playing each hand separately to get used to what you're going to do. Then figure out which notes will by played by both hands on the beat, like this:

Left: C d e F g a B c d E f g A b c D etc
Right: C d e f G a b c D e f g A b c d E etc

So the left hand F and the right hand G will be played together, as will the left hand B and the right hand D, and so forth (it's actually a lot easier to see on the keyboard than it is to explain).

First time through, don't try to get the rhythm exactly correct, just make sure that the notes that are supposed to be played together, are together. The notes in between can be out of rhythm.You can even pause on the "together" notes. Keep doing this until you get a feeling for what the together notes are. Then you can begin to focus more on playing the triplets and quadruplets in strict rhythm. I found to my surprise that this step was a lot easier than I expected it to be.

When you've made progress on this, go on to the reverse version -- 4 in the left and 3 in the right. For this one you have to start 2 octaves apart. You can also do this in any key.

Has anybody else done something like this to work on 3 against 4?

[ted]

I have done that sort of thing for decades, but for different and probably more complicated reasons. Where improvisation is concerned, sometimes I want rhythmic points of coincidence, i.e. coordination, and sometimes the ability to genuinely play two things at once but asynchronously. It is also very good for getting new sounds into the mind by doing it in different keys at once, in double notes or some other fingering sequence. If the objective is purely physical I do it with the Virgil Practice Clavier, if musical, at the instrument.

I rarely repeat anything in that line from one day to the next though, and improvise new ones every day. In recent years I have come to the conclusion that musical possibilities are so numerous that repeating anything borders on squandering my time.

[pytheamateur]

Are you doing exercises on Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu as well?

[slobone]

Haven't tackled that piece yet but it's on my bucket list.

[robert_henry]

I think that's a lot of overkill. Learn the notes in each hand, make sure you can play them HS, AT OR NEAR TEMPO, then put them together AT OR NEAR TEMPO, paying attention only to the place where the hands line up. Make sure each hand starts together and ends together, and make sure each hand simply plays their respective parts evenly throughout the beat. The cross-rhythm will take care of itself. The notes in the middle are like Vegas. We don't worry about what happens in Vegas. 

Agreed, tho: Concentrate on the moments when they play together. 

Robert Henry

[slobone]

That's what I do when I encounter 4 against 3, or any other weird combination such as you find in Chopin, in a piece I'm working on. I was taught a long time ago not to be too mathematical about it, because it will never come out sounding right. But I still think it's helpful to practice the 4 against 3 exercise, so that I can get the rhythms in my head, in the neutral context of a scale. I'm not going to claim I do that exercise every day, just once in a while.