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Sal, that's a great idea! I am going to try that for sure. Thanks!

I have tried playing duets with these same students in order to help our rhythm problem, but they always end up 5 measures ahead of me LOL. Duets haven't seemed to help either of them, as much as I try and try to get them to feel the beat. They always want to speed up in certain areas of the pieces. We will just keep working on it!

I do another step with my beginners before doing the duet with them. After they play their piece once for me, and it's acceptable, we play it again with me playing exactly what the student is playing but an octave lower. This seems to verify for them that they are playing it as well as the teacher is playing it.

And, if their playing has been "off", this second playing with the teacher, helps them identify where there mistakes are happening. It also helps them identify how they are off compared to the teachers model.

So I think that is a helpful step for the younger beginning students in their first year of lessons. As soon as the student shows you good examples of his practicing the assignment, you can drop this step unless he objects and wants for you to do the melody together before playing the duet.

One of my criteria for finishing a book is that we spend time going through the entire book playing our duets together well before signing off on the book.

Betty

Ah, but in what sense? Chopin often spoke of how the left hand largely stays in time while the right hand deliberately comes slightly early or late for rubato. So was he using the metronome to teach people to restrict both hands to a square, uninteresting beat- as modern teachers use it? Or was he using to show people how to free up their right hand, while mainting a form of stability underneath it? The two situations would be enormously different.

Why do you assume that "modern teachers" are using the metronome is to use an uninteresting beat? Beats are supposed to be steady. Can you imagine a marching band without a metronome, er, I mean a snare cadence to lead it?
The beat is steady, that does not mean that there is not an interesting rhythm going on within.

For whatever reasons, some people have a strong, steady, internalized beat.

Others do not. Their "internalized beat" is sloppy, erratic, and usually speeds up, until a difficult passage is encountered, where it slows.

I have often wondered why this is, both regarding myself, and my students.

My unscientific anecdotal observations have yielded that a steady tempo or beat arises from two areas:

First, it is a part of the "ability package" that one brings to the piano. That is comprised of part talent, and part prior learning experience, such as from listening to music, participating in rhythmic activities such as dancing, skiing, etc.

Therefore, I believe that, to some degree, rhythm is learned, and can continue to be learned / improved.

Thus, working with a metronome (or drum machine, for certain kinds of music) provides a perfect beat standard. (Counting is an integral part of this, as is thigh-slapping, clapping hands, etc)

When people practice with a metronome, their playing typically will improve.
The exactness of the metronome instills an exactness in their internal rhythm and muscle memory.

But, like most of what we learn, our humanness will not keep us in that perfection. Instead, we fall away from that standard, either just a bit here and there (rubato-ish) or more = more work is needed.

Regarding the fear that this will result in robot-like playing, I have not found that to be the case.

The folks who play "mechanically" after metronome training are usually the same folks whose playing was unmusical and dull to begin with. Only now it has a more steady beat.

The folks who are musical will still be musical; their playing will inspire, and the ebb and flow of the music will be enhanced because it ebbs and flows from where it should, like a brook or stream, rather than over-running its banks with tempo changes.

I find myself in agreement with rocket.

I came to piano late in life, after 50, but with 40 years or so playing other instruments in ensembles.

What passes for rubato on piano would likely just be considered sloppy erratic time in a band or orchestra.

It is common for keyboardists to speed up on the easy parts and slow on the hard parts. It is common for sopranos to fall far, far behind the beat as they admire the beauty of the sound they are producing.

The common factor is that they don't notice. The metronome is a harsh and unforgiving spotlight on where the real beat is. I think everybody needs to do enough metronome work to keep their internal pulse calibrated.

Did I say that marching bands should not be played in time? On the other hand, can I imagine Chopin being played with both hands landing squarely together on every beat. Yes, I can. Sadly it is usually played this way- instead of with the freedoms he advised.

The point is that there's a difference between using a metronome to synchronise ever note and using it to anchor freedoms. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of many teachers who use a metronome to teach the freedoms required for good Chopin, instead of how to teach people to play squarely. People often use the metronome issue to restrict Chopin players, but I strongly suspect he used it to teach freedoms- not to make his students play more squarely. Are there any documented accounts of how he used the metronome in teaching?

Incidentally, Chopin was described by various people as having frequently employed four beats in bars of his mazurkas. Beats are not always "supposed to be steady" unless you have a very limited view of musical expression.

How do you view the rubato used by Stokowski? There's barely a pianist alive who would use a fraction of that rubato. The kind of freedom he employs in the lyrical 2nd subject from the first movement of the Pathetique really is not something that is learned by practising with a metronome.

That is precisely the point...the metronome instills a tempo center from which one plays music.

But it does not necessarily produce mechanical players.

As I said earlier:

"Regarding the fear that this (metronome training) will result in robot-like playing, I have not found that to be the case.

The folks who play "mechanically" after metronome training are usually the same folks whose playing was unmusical to begin with. Only now it has a more steady but mechanical beat, their unmusicality now also affecting the rhythm in a mechanical way. (edited for clarity)

The folks who are musical will still be musical; their playing will inspire, and the ebb and flow of the music will be enhanced because it ebbs and flows from where it should, like a brook or stream, rather than over-running its banks with tempo changes."

"Regarding the fear that this (metronome training) will result in robot-like playing, I have not found that to be the case.

The folks who play "mechanically" after metronome training are usually the same folks whose playing was unmusical and dull to begin with. Only now it has a more steady beat.

The folks who are musical will still be musical; their playing will inspire, and the ebb and flow of the music will be enhanced because it ebbs and flows from where it should, like a brook or stream, rather than over-running its banks with tempo changes." [/quote]

It depends how much you use it though. Every pianist needs the capability to go back and forth of a beat in slight fractions. However, have a listen to Stokowski's recording of the Tchaikovsky Pathetique, if you get a chance. The way he eases the tempo so massively has literally zero to do with this style of short-term give and take rubato. It's by far and away the most remarkable rendition of the 2nd subject you could ever hope to hear. Compare also the way Rachmaninoff does enormous rallentandos at the end of a phrase, before returning abruptly to tempo. This has nothing to do with the give and take style of rubato. To attempt to average these things out over a consistent metronome beat would be a ludicrous exercise.

It's important that the idea of adapting to a metronome is not the beginning and end of all. It's simply one way of doing rubato among many that ought to be mastered. Not everything should be related to a metronome.

I am enjoying this thread! So timely, as I am about to ask one of my students to get a metronome. I just can't imagine being a musician without using one. It keeps you honest, in my opinion.

BevP

And there was me, thinking it was a person of diminutive stature, on the French Underground Railway.

??????

hahaha

you mean, metro - gnome?

Like this one

you guys crack me up LOL

Yes, that's a good point.

You would not learn to do that by practicing with a metronome. (If you wanted to do that! I like Starker's Bach cello suites and can't stand Yo-Yo's, for precisely that reason.)

Stokowski does not vary back and forth around a steady pulse, he moves the pulse itself. Of course he does so in a more extreme fashion than many would, but all good conductors do some of this.

In contrast, various traditions of jazz band keep more of a steady beat but lay behind it or push ahead of it. In some genre's one section may play ahead while others play behind.

One common factor is that the individual musician must conform to an external time standard. Whether you play for Stokowski or Buddy Rich, you don't do your own rubato. You follow somebody else's.

Personally I think the skill to follow another person is a refinement of the skill to follow a metronome. Being able to follow a metronome would then be a necessary but not sufficient condition. Certainly musicians do learn to follow without large amounts of metronome practice, but I think it helps.