Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum 22 And 17 Beamed Notes in 4/4

The piece is Chopin Prelude Op. 28 No. 18.

In the first picture do I have to play all of them in 1 beat?



In the other measure after 2 beats pass, third beat come along with la but there are 17 32nd notes so I can't divide it in 2 to play all of them in 2 beat, cause the last note remains outside.
Or am I think wrong?



Please explain, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Listening might help.

Is it this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcwMJH39O6Q

The first picture is the whole measure so I would say it takes 4 beats. You can play it like polyrythm 22 against 4 (you can tap those 4 beats with foot).




The second picture is 17 against 2 taps(beats).




I am beginner so take this as suggestion only.
Pavel

For tuplets you always take the note length into account and the fraction. So for the first one you have 16th notes so you would expect to see 4 (in a quarter note) but you have 22. So you have to play 5.5 notes for every 16th note.

The second has 32nd notes so we should have 8 in a quarter note; but you have 17. So you only have to play those 2.125 times as quickly as a normal 32nd note.


All of that is obviously impossible to do in your head and Malkin's suggestion is far and away the best idea! They aren't intended to be played in strict rhythm anyway.


Note that regular triplets have the same problem you mentioned of being able to sub-divide. If you really want to you have to get to the the smallest denominator that will work for both. Again, that's impractical for these kinds of runs.