Seeking some advice please.

I have a piano pupil who is about Grade 3 standard and who has a very variable rhythm on a couple of her pieces. These are for an exam. this term. We work on the piece during the lesson and correct any wrong rhythms, and generally improve things. I send her away, and by the next week she comes back with something different - even different to the previous wrong rhythm.

I have tried lots of things - clapping, demonstrating, playing along with her but an octave higher (don't have 2 pianos), I've given her a tape of me playing the pieces at practice tempo, and then a more ambitious tempo so that she can listen to it during the week. It seems to me that she has a poor sense of rhythm. I inherited her after she had passed grade 2.

[I had a pupil like this a couple of years ago, but she was Grade 1 and left me to go to another school - phew]

Does anyone have any ideas for further action? All suggestions gratefully received.

Singing, making up silly words?

Does she know the theory of rhythm/how note values break down, and is she counting a pulse?

I had a similar pupil, oddly enough, who had just passed grade 2 with another teacher, and came back for a few weeks making the same rhythmic errors we had looked at the week before. It turned out she didn't have any idea what a time signature was for, so wasn't actually reading the rhythms for herself. She couldn't tell me what either of the two numbers indicated She said something like "four over four" (?) and when I said, "which tells us what?", she just shrugged.... Basically it all meant nothing to her.

She had maybe been used to just copying the teacher's rhythm, but once she got home, that was forgotten, and then she couldn't work it out for herself from the music.

It may be worth just checking the basics are there to make sure there aren't any gaps in knowledge in that respect.

If that isn't the case, it could be she's not practising much? If she can copy your rhythm in a lesson, and you've given her a tape, then she should be able to do the same at home...if she's played it at home that is

Completely with Sbhoa on this one - the sillier the better, but carefully thought out so they are not "rhythmically ambiguous" !

I've been using cuisenaire rods recently (if that's how you spell it) - they're small wooden sticks in different lengths used for teaching maths etc - I had them when I was young so I'm not sure where you'd get them now........but I use them to show the relationships between different note values and the pupils work out what the rhythm would look like in lengths rather than just going from the symbols all the time. There are still errors from time to time and it's not fool-proof, but since I started using them a few weeks ago, there have been a lot of rhythmic errors cleared up and understood - including the need to keep going across the barline rather than stopping and showing how the 6/8 crotchet/quaver rhythm looks "written" out...etc.

Thanks all for your replies. I should have said that I have tried making up silly words, or using phrases to help and even written them in, all without success.

She does know the values of notes (just passed G1 theory with distinction - put her in for that to boost confidence and give her something to achieve) so it may be a matter of translating what she sees to her fingers. It's interesting that she can play a simplified version of the Entertainer which is on the exam list (this is not AB exam) reasonably well, but not the other 2 pieces.

I do agree with ad_libitum that there may not be enough practising going on, although she declares fervently that she does practise.

I may try the tape recorder next week - see if that spurs her into more action.