by Marvin Blickenstaff, Editor
s is true of most problems we address in our teaching, there
may be no single solution that works for all of our students when teaching
two-against-three. At an early stage in my teaching, I thought
I had the problem of teaching two-against-three solved for evermore when
I learned about the verbalization:
Almost immediately, the scales were torn from my eyes by a student who played with the best of intentions:
It became quite clear to me that, for some students, the issue is quite difficult, indeed.
I then resorted to a graphic illustration of the micro-subdivisions, finding the common denominator of two and three and showing where those tones fell on the continuum of the six micro-notes. Surely the logic of this mathematical illustration would make clear to the student the exact coordination of the subdivisions.
In a very slow tempo, the sudent could think through the logic of this graphic illustration, chanting the coordination of the hands.
Eureka! Real success . . . until the tempo had to increase to match the musical context and this verbalization became an impossible tongue-twister. Furthermore, the composer usually wrote the two-against-three only once or twice in an entire piece or section. Its appearance always seemed to catch the student by surprise. When the student reached the problem moment, the rhythmic brakes were applied, and the tempo suddenly became slower to accommodate the counting of together, left-right-left, or not dif-fi-cult or some other "solution" we had practiced.
Over the years in this department of Keyboard Companion, teachers have pointed out that the solution to almost every rhythmic issue lies in the student's feeling of pulse. This realization, coupled with the fact that the ear is our most powerful educational tool, has led me to a series of simple drills which focus on the pulse, training the ear to hear the subdivisions both separately and together in the context of a strong pulse.
Each measure represents an independent drill which can be tapped as well as played with multiple repetitions. The measures can be grouped to form a continuous exercise featuring duple and triple subdivisions.
When the subdivisions are even more complicated, e.g., 4x3, 5x3, 5x4, the issue of feeling the large pulse becomes our only answer. How many of us have despaired over the 4x3 in Chopin's Fantasy-Impromptu because the student could not think and say not ver-y dif-fi-cult fast enough to create the natural flow of the tempo? We often ask the student to focus on the internal relationships of the small subdivisions, rather than training the student to feel the beat and hear the independent flow of sixteenths in the RH and the triplets in the LH.
Our two respondents have excellent suggestions for the ways in which they help their younger students solve this rhythm subdivision. Taking their suggestions, our students will find, indeed, that two-against-three is truly not dif-fi-cult.
Click for Naomi Oliphant's 1997 article answering this same question