How Do You Develop a Sense of Rhythm in Your Adult Students?
Michelle Conda is the Coordinator of Secondary Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She also teaches an adult piano class for the university’s Communiversity program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Adult learning is her focus, as she heads the Adult Learning Committee for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.
I just finished teaching a particularly challenging lesson to Jeff. Week after week we struggle with keeping a steady pulse. I know he is just as frustrated as I am, yet he has trouble breaking habits developed over years of self-learning. In the “old days,” I would simply allow the “pulse transgressions” to slide by. It seemed easier than fighting this unchangeable problem. Sometime in the last two years I’ve gotten stubborn. No! There is no reason anyone should fail at playing with a pulse! After all, life is built on pulse. I just need new tools to help me deal with that “pesky pulse.”
Guess what? I was able to find help from both of my featured authors. The videos below will provide meaningful examples In this web article, Susan has provided several tremendous videos of students and her own demonstrations. Leslie Sisterhen McAllister offers great advice as well as some popular video games that you might want to check out.
Feeling the pulse is the first step
by Susan Capestro
Susan Capestro, founder of WholeOctave.com, the interactive blog and wiki for keyboard enthusiasts, has taught keyboard, composition and electronic music for over 25 years. Also a composer and ASCAP awards winner, Capestro has penned a collection of art music as well as music for documentaries, corporate videos and educational software. She composed Tropism, the world’s first concert piece for piano and synthesizer duet, commissioned by MMTA. The author of several magazine articles on keyboard teaching, Capestro is a popular presenter at conferences for music teachers. A performer with symphony and jazz musicians, she refers to teaching jazz and classics synergistically as Integral Keyboard Teaching. She holds degrees from Ithaca College and Northwestern University.
Rhythm, one of the most entertaining things to practice, is a huge, vast topic. I’ve used many different approaches and techniques over the years; which are best to include here? I decided to ask my adult students to demonstrate on video what has really helped them. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be good for at least that many!
Everyone has a feel for tempo—the sense of whether music is speeding up or slowing down. After all, we’re surrounded by natural rhythms: day and night, the tides, even the seasons. Everything inside us is a rhythm: our heartbeats, pulses, digestion, brain waves, and breathing. Once rhythm is in a student’s awareness, it becomes a completely natural, innate ability, to be honored and respected.
Developing a “sense of rhythm” is another matter. This catch-all phrase encompasses a myriad of elements, including rhythm patterning, tempo, intellectual understanding of meters, and awareness of accents, fingering, and hand shifting. Most of all it involves “pulse.”
Rhythm is Physical
Rhythmic physical activity using large muscle groups is helpful; I encourage adult beginners to walk, dance, jog, bike, swim, skate, and ski—even walk a dog. The important thing is to pick something you can do to a pulse. Do this activity for one minute at a slow, steady tempo. Then speed up and sustain the activity for at least one minute at a fast, steady tempo. I encourage my students to walk with their iPod, choosing songs of various speeds. Building an awareness of pulse can be like a form of meditation— a disciplined, yet relaxing experience.
Playing “In the Pocket”
I teach traditional repertoire and jazz/pop. In both styles, one must sense the pulse before deviating from it. We cannot play rubato effectively or feel the “groove” of jazz until we’ve learned exactly where the steady pulses are in the musical texture.
Jazz and studio musicians talk of the importance of playing “in the pocket.” This term describes an intense musical groove—playing exactly within the rhythm without feeling mechanical. How can you play with a metronome without sounding metronomic? By sensing the finest subdivision of the pulse, even subdividing it further, you get the movement of the pulse. If you can play and count the piece with the finer subdivision steadily, the larger pulses will be placed more accurately.
Impulse Practice
Impulse Practice
For a piece with sixteenth-note subdivisions, like Bach’s Two-Part Invention in F Major, first play and count the piece at a slow, steady practice tempo. Let each finger have the weight of the arm behind it, producing a comfortable forte sound. Every note should sound important, as if you’re saying to your fingers, “Go here, now go there, now go there, etc.” Exaggerating and playing confidently helps the brain form a stronger impression of the passage (Kochevitsky, 1967, p. 24). Each and every note has an impulse behind it.
If there is not already a finger number on the first note of each group of four sixteenth notes, write them in. These are the notes with a slight metrical accent; it’s important to know which finger plays them. When it’s time to play “a tempo,” instead of each note being accented as before, now only the notes on strong pulses have a small accent; all the others are light and fast. Now there will only be an impulse behind the notes on strong pulses. You’ll be fitting more notes into one single impulse.
I use several specific techniques to help students with rhythm, which involve ensemble playing, the use of technology, working with derivative rhythms from pieces, and theatrical counting, but one of the most important practice techniques for students is impulse practice (See Impulse Practice sidebar).
Practice Steps for Rhythm
In the video Bernadine, Bernadine describes and demonstrates practice steps (see sidebar) for beginning and intermediate level students in Someone to Watch Over Me. We count out loud from the outset to prevent rhythm problems from developing. Notice we say “uh,” instead of “and.” I find it more musical, and it is easier to say at a quick tempo.
Swing Notes in 6/8 meter
How musical does “One two three four five six…” sound? Yikes! “Takati takati” is so much better. The ta’s and ti’s from this pattern match the swung notes in this piece, notated as quarter and eighth notes in the compound meter of 6/8. In the video Dan, the rhythm is very secure because Dan is counting and feeling all the eighth-note subdivisions. He moved on to saying “doo-bah, doo-bah,” a jazzier way to count swung eighths. Dan finds it helpful and fun to combine syllables, which he demonstrates quite expertly.
The Virtue of Foot Tapping
When students perform traditional repertoire pieces, both feet are over both pedals where they’re needed. However, with very rhythmic pieces and jazz/pop styles, foot tapping is called for. Remember—rhythm is physical. If you’re not at least tapping a foot, the rhythm is not likely to be stable. In the video Tom, Tom makes foot-tapping look easy in this song by Randy Newman, but it actually takes practice. (See Practice Steps sidebar.) He wants the song to feel relaxed, so he performs it a little “behind the beat.”
Bach’s Syncopated Alto Line
In the video Steve, Steve describes the important task of sorting out all four voices in Bach’s work. This quodlibet is impossible to perform without first hearing each individual line. He sings each voice, often playing two in one hand while singing one, or playing all voices while singing one. This is fun and produces excellent results. One cannot understand syncopation (notes staggered on the upbeats) before sensing where the downbeats are. Steve chooses a smooth syllable, “da,” for downbeats while playing the most syncopated (and perhaps most interesting!) voice, the alto.
Ta-Ka-Di-Mi
In the video Rubi Part I, Rubi shows the way we subdivide beats—instead of using “one-ee-and-ah” for sixteenth notes, we use “ta-ka-di-mi.” I find my students are able to keep control of the pulse using this approach, as well as subdivide the music effectively. We abbreviate to “tkdm” for each of the subdivisions.
Ta-Ka-Di-Mi to show “In the Pocket”
In the video Rubi Part 2, Rubi writes “tkdm” under notes and sings a contemporary pop/rock piece with an intense groove. I demonstrate playing and counting slowly, at half the actual tempo. It’s then easier to “double time,” since you’ve already physically experienced the pulse. Spot practice may be needed for hand shifts at this stage, before achieving complete fluency.
Ta-Ka-Di-Mi to interpret Grieg’s Arietta
In the video Rubi Part 3, you’ll see walking and singing using ta-ka-di-mi while we decide how to find a “walking” tempo. This helps achieve an even, graceful rubato, easy for listeners to follow.
Ta-ka-di-mi-ti
In the video Elisha, Elisha plays a piece that is deceivingly difficult. Accents change within various meters. Elisha chooses syllables to appropriately match where melodies occur. She taps and counts the melody, then subdivisions, using ta-ka-di-mi-ti for quintuplets. With a metronome at 60 for quarter notes, we practiced even threes (ta-ka-ti), fours (ta-ka-di-mi), then fives (ta-ka-di-mi-ti), all while keeping quarter note pulses steady. Elisha mentions the kinesthetic aspect of rhythm and compares it to dancing, a wonderful analogy.
In conclusion, I’d like to say that rhythm is, by far, one of the funniest, most entertaining aspects of teaching and learning music. Regardless of ability, we are all klutzes before we have a chance to learn a rhythm for the first time. Once learned, though, we have no excuse! There is plenty of healthy laughter in my studio around this topic. I encourage you to be disciplined and have a logical procedure for teaching rhythm, from day one of learning any piece, but also be creative and inventive. Most of all, maintain a sense of fun, and your students will look forward to learning and practicing rhythm.
Making the Correct Diagnosis is Critical
By Lesley Sisterhen McAllister
Lesley Sisterhen McAllister, Assistant Professor of Piano and Director of Piano Pedagogy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Dr. McAllister holds degrees from the University of Houston, Florida State University, and the University of Oklahoma. She previously taught at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma. She is a frequent clinician and presented her research on imagery, mental practice, and relaxation techniques at the 2005 national convention of the Music Teachers National Association. Her articles have been published in American Music Teacher and Piano Pedagogy Forum.
Each adult beginner arrives at the first piano lesson with his or her own unique set of challenges, and in this initial meeting, teachers may not be able to assess every factor that will affect music study. Even seasoned teachers may be surprised to find that an adult who is so relaxed and conversational at the first meeting may become tense and stilted when sitting at the piano. One of the challenges of teaching these students is "putting yourself in the student's shoes." Piano teachers who have been playing the instrument all their life may find it difficult to relate to their student’s experience. When teachers take on a new hobby, such as dance lessons or a yoga class, they better understand the frustration and unease that adult students sometimes encounter in their first music lessons.
As adults, we have learned to maneuver through complex situations with an appreciable degree of talent and skill. Unlike children, our success depends not on our ability to learn quickly, but rather on our past experiences and habitual patterns. Therefore, learning a new skill, particularly one that requires the development of motor skills, can cause us to feel awkward and slow—especially when we are learning it from an expert who is our equal in many other areas. Even with a high level of cognitive understanding, physical coordination and rhythmic skills may be difficult to acquire.
The Foundation: Keeping a Steady Beat
A common complaint among teachers who work with "rhythmically challenged" students is that "they just aren't counting." In fact, students may actually be counting, in the sense that they are keeping track of the number of beats in a measure. But saying "1, 2, 3, 4" in a measure with four beats does not guarantee the presence of a steady beat. Adult students who have not had formal training may not immediately understand the relationship between the number of beats in a measure and steady counting.
The concept of keeping a steady beat may be taught from the very first lessons by clapping or tapping to recorded music. Most adults already have particular tastes with regard to their favorite musical styles and genres, so teachers might listen first to the student’s favorite music. They may work next on hearing the downbeat, and can then progress to counting and discovering the meter of the music. These types of discoveries, based on the student's previous experiences, grant students ownership over the knowledge they are discovering.
Movement Activities
Émile Jacques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) used the term "eurhythmics" to describe rhythmic development through whole-body movement. Rather than try to analyze the rhythm of a piece, it is much easier to "feel" the rhythm with the body's natural movements—this leads to a greater degree of rhythmic accuracy. For this reason, activities like dancing or marching to a steady beat can be extraordinarily effective. However, since adult students tend to be more self-conscious than young beginners, they may be less likely to participate in such activities.
These students may, however, be willing to move the arms or torso in response to music, especially if the teacher clarifies the purpose of the activity. For example, while listening to music, a teacher might have a student keep one hand on his knee, then gently lift it (lifting the wrist first) so that it is completely raised after four beats. This activity helps students correlate a steady physical movement with a steady beat, and it also introduces a natural gesture that can help with phrasing and legato.
A Correct Diagnosis
Teachers should keep in mind that what is immediately apparent on the surface may be the symptom of a deeper underlying problem. In fact, some rhythmic issues may be the result of technical problems. If a student is having trouble coordinating hands-together passagework, for example, he may add an extra beat when pausing to find the correct hand position.
Reading problems can also cause rhythmic difficulties. Beginning students in particular should be given regular sight reading assignments in addition to their performance repertoire. These assignments should be at an appropriate level of difficulty so that students are able to keep their eyes on the score and play with a steady beat.
Adult students may need to concentrate on one issue at a time in order to master each musical element. When working on articulation, dynamics, or technical gestures, students should not change the rhythmic patterns in order to play with accuracy; instead, they should take a tempo slow enough to master small segments, one at a time. Although these students may be able to intellectually process a number of concepts simultaneously, physical modifications may not be made as quickly. A teacher must therefore resist the temptation to ask adult students to change too many things at once.
Make it Fun with Video Games
Another idea that teachers might consider is to utilize music video games which appeal to a student’s desire to have “fun” while still developing their listening skills. Young and old students alike will eagerly anticipate this additional type of music practice, although its immediate appeal is for adults between the ages of 20 and 40. Harmonix Music Systems ( http://harmonixmusic.com) has developed a set of video games for Nintendo and Xbox that are interactive—you play the game by “performing” along with existing commercial recordings and using a steady beat. The video games Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, and especially Rock Band are extraordinarily popular (due in large part to their use of authentic recordings of well-known popular music), but they have not been extensively utilized among music teachers.
Guitar Hero is a series that employs a guitar-shaped peripheral. While music plays, the guitar part is represented on-screen by colored notes that correspond to fret buttons on the controller. The player must be able to follow the scrolling “notes” as they move across the screen.
In Karaoke Revolution, the player sings a popular song and is awarded points based on how well he matches the pitches heard in the vocal track.
Rock Band combines features of both Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero by utilizing three different peripherals modeled after music instruments: a guitar peripheral for lead guitar and bass guitar, a drumperipheral, and a microphone.
Songs are included on the game disk and are also available for download. Players receive points for their accuracy, and they can choose their own level of difficulty: easy, medium, hard, or expert. A "Tutorial Mode" helps players learn how to play each instrument, and a "Practice Mode" allows them to practice songs at slower tempos and in isolated sections.
The drum controller features a kick pedal and four rubber drum pads with colored rings around the edges that correspond to the notes on the screen. The drum kit is especially beneficial for developing rhythmic understanding and coordination. Players receive immediate feedback on their rhythmic accuracy and are “feeling” the rhythm through the movement of large muscle groups.
In general, working with this segment of the population requires a more relaxed and accepting approach because adults may be much harder on themselves than younger students. When they feel successful and enjoy the music that they are playing, these students will often put forth a great deal of effort. The teacher’s role is to correctly diagnose problem areas, choose activities and music that the student will enjoy playing, and set appropriate challenges that the student can reach successfully. If these responsibilities are met, teaching adult students can be a marvelously rewarding experience that enriches the lives of both student and teacher.
In the next issue: How do you help adults get over stage fright?