Varying detached note lengths

[1piano4joe]

Hi all,

Consider a piece in say 3/4 time and the left hand is practically all detached quarter notes. For purposes of this discussion, let's make beat 1 strongest, beat 2 less stronger and beat 3 least strongest.

(I very much needed to be taught about playing the stronger beats louder back in the day as my playing was rather flat, boring and probably made my teacher's ears bleed at first.

Even to this day, I am not happy with my musicality. I am less than thrilled with my Chopin but I digress.)

Would playing the detached left hand quarters as follows: beat 1 longest, beat 2 a little shorter and beat 3 shortest ever be interpreted/played that way in a piece?

Do organ players do this all the time?

Would a left hand detached note ever be lengthened to somewhat disguise a break in the legato of the right hand?

Are there pieces where "varying detached note lengths" is common?

I've been wondering about this for awhile now, Joe.

[lelle]

This sounds like something I'd encourage you to explore for yourself, to experiment and get creative with. Try out things that seem absolutely totally wrong and see how you like it. By trying a wide variety of things you can calibrate and enrich your musical toolbox.

[ranjit]

Would playing beat 1 longest, beat 2 a little shorter and beat 3 shortest ever be interpreted/played that way in a piece?

Viennese waltzes tend to have shortened second and third beats to the point where it almost feels like 2.5/4. You might want to listen to some Strauss waltzes. In general, for musicality, I tend to rely more on my ear than on the score, just as you would for speech. You wouldn't recite Shakespeare like a news anchor, would you? Yet, the words written on the page would be the same. I think the same goes for music. Try and listen to the musical influences of your favorite composers

[lostinidlewonder]

You can't simply generalize like this even with the conditions you mentioned, take a specific piece and you can then see how it should be done.

[j_tour]

I'm not sure I follow:  it almost seems to me that the OP is suggesting just truncating in varying degrees the amount of time each finger(s) spend time on each chord or note, without varying the overall tempo.

I'm not a legit organ player, just Hammond organ in jazz, but, yes, that's certainly the way basslines are played in the LH, and especially when "tapping" on the foot.

If it's about making a sort of technical exercise, then, yes, I've been rereading the Cortot edition of the Chopin Préludes and Waltzes, and, all of those variations come up, just as remembered from younger years of lessons.  Very useful, as one knows, but also gratifying to see it spelled out explicitly as in Cortot's little mini-exercises, even if one is familiar with the broad strokes.