My daughter's trombone teacher asked me if I would play the piano part of her latest piece with her at home this week with a view to accompanying her at the end of term concert in two weeks' time.

The piece is in 4/4 and the piano part is very easy but it starts with quavers in the right-hand and then moves to triplets. With both the quavers and the triplets there is a quaver in the left-hand on the first and third beats. The trombone part has the same rhythm the whole way through which is basically dotted crotchets and quavers (and no triplets anywhere).

When I played with her the first part was fine but as soon as I started playing the triplet part she became totally confused and her rhythm fell apart. I tried playing just the left-hand and that was O.K., added the right-hand and the same thing happened. I then tried setting the metronome but that didn't work either as she kept listening to the piano instead.

I suggested we just leave it until her lesson and get her teacher to sort it out (perhaps by playing with her?) but she is adament that we have another go tomorrow. Does anyone have any suggestions of how best to go about it?

Thanks

This is a shot in the dark, but it's not meant to be swung, is it?

Hmm, just realised I misread what you wrote about the rhythm of the trombone part, so that probably doesn't work...

Could you just alter the rhythm of the piano part so it fits with the trombone better?

Hi Keri,

My teacher would insist that any pupil had developed or worked on developing an internal musical pulse so whatever went on around them musically that this pulse would see them through...if she gently taps her toe in her shoe to establish the pulse and keep her playing even while you accompany her eventually she will play above the accompnament which will blend seemlessly with her playing...she needs surity of what she is doing so it is so ingrained in her mind that no matter what is going on around her she will remain constant...

Good luck

Andrew

It may help if you count out loud instead of using the metronome. I find that voice (but not metronome) can act like a listening point and distract from focusing on what the piano is playing.

Otherwise, try playing just the first notes of the triplets as they will be on the beat (or with the quaver) and easier to hear how they fit with the trombone part (so even if she keeps listening to the piano, there will be anchor points that she can focus on). Once she's familiar with this, then add the other two notes.

Just some ideas.

Andrew, you are of course right about developing an internal musical pulse but this is not going to happen overnight . She is only about grade 2 or 3 (I think, having no idea about any of the pieces in trombone exams and going on the scales she knows). The piece is not difficult but does have three changes of tempo in it (it is called "petite suite") and I think this might be partly what is throwing her. Also I have spent the last year telling her that she is "supposed" to be listening to what the piano is doing as when I first started accompanying her she took no notice whatsoever of what I was playing.

Panthera I'll try counting out loud tomorrow - this has certainly helped her in the past with other things.

That's what I'd do. That's what I've done.

Simplify the accompaniment for now by playing whatever fits on the 2 main beats of the bar. Once she is used to this, you can put in the straight quaver bits and finally add the triplets. Take it slowly, adding a bit at a time to build her confidence. Hopefully by the time you get to the triplets, she will be secure enough to sail on and not be derailed. Get her to listen for the beat of what you are playing, rather than individual notes. In any case, she should be setting the pulse and allowing you to follow her, not the other way round. She should be aware of what the piano is doing, but not have to actively listen to it. As long as she keeps a steady pule in her own playing, the accompanist should be following her. It sounds as though she is trying to follow the piano rather than the other way round.

I think we adults underestimate how difficult this can be for kids. I teach kids who have difficulty even tapping their foot in a steady beat, let alone playing something tricky against it.

I have been doing one of the Brahms Hungarian Dances with my duet partner and there is a section in there where she has 6's against my common time, and although it obviously does split into triplets, the stresses are not easy and it's taken an age to get it right and we are both piano teachers, so to expect a grade 2 kid to do something similar without worrying her even a little bit is a big ask. Having said that at least she's listening, and it's not an exam so you can adapt it to suit her!

I know as an accompanist I should be following her but there is a limit to what I can do when she starts playing her quavers (and even her crotchets) as triplets. Also (and I posted about this elsewhere) I think you do need to learn to play with an accompanist rather than just expect the accompanist to follow you.

The music school has an official accompanist who teachers can book (free of charge). My daughter's trombone teacher thought it would be nicer for my daughter to have her mother accompany her, partly because she is very shy and partly because it meant she could practise with the piano at home. When I started accompanying her last year I asked the offical accompanist whether she systematically followed what pupils were doing and she said during an actual performance she does but in lessons with inexperienced players she doesn't. She said it is important for them to learn to recognise the pulse in what the piano is playing and that it is doing them a disservice to let them play with an unstable pulse and rhythmic errors (which are often different every time they play the piece).

Having lots of lessons with an accompanist is obviously very different from what most people in the UK seem to do when they have just one run though with the accompanist before an exam. As I have posted elsewhere, I have learnt a lot this year in my own oboe lessons about how to play with an accompanist rather than just expecting her to follow me.


My daughter is one of these children. When sitting down, without the trombone, she can tap her foot for the pulse and say the notes in rhythm but is incapable of tapping her foot at all when standing up (it throws her off balance) and even if she sits down to play, after a few bars she ends up tapping her foot on every note she plays instead of the pulse.

Not just difficult for kids but for adults too. We put so much emphasis on getting the pitch of notes right that I sometimes think we forget that rhythm and pulse is equally important, equally difficult and just as likely to respond to hard work and effort. It's often that sense of pulse that puts the life and energy into a piece of music and takes it from being something quite nice to something really worth listening to. I also think the earlier you start working on it the better.

Rhythm/pulse has been one of my weaker areas (not good for an aspiring jazzer) but over the last 6 months or so I've been putting a lot of effort into it and it has got a lot better. Exercises I've been using are:

- One that my jazz teacher has us do from time to time is to step the beat with our feet (alternating R/L, luckily we don't play much that isn't 4/4!), count out 1,2,3,4 out loud and clap the rhythm of the piece we're playing simultaneously. Getting everything co-ordinated at once is surprisingly tricky, but his point is that if we can't do it without an instrument it won't get any easier with one.

- Spend odd 10 minutes or so during the day tapping my feet under the desk and gently tapping out rhythms on the desktop, or use my steps as a pulse while I'm walking along and think through rhythms in my head.

- One from my previous sax teacher of having me play along with a recording, then turn the volume down and back up again after a few bars and see if I was still locked in to it. This could work equally well singing along

- lots of metronome work, but not just with the metronome set to click every beat. I tend to have it on 2 and 4 because that works best for swing (and is surprisingly difficult to begin with). It could be on 1 and 3, or just 1. I found that when I was struggling with 2 and 4 I became hyper-aware of exactly were I was placing every note in the bar - a really good thing.

- Counting the beat / clapping the pulse to recordings - something that horrified me was recording myself playing without accompaniment, reasonably well I thought, then trying to clap the beat in it and finding I was all over the place.

- Using the taka, taketa, takadimi etc system to subdivide beats and help with cross-rhythms

- Playing along to backing tracks if I find my timing comes adrift something I've found to help is to play just the first note in every bar, or just the first of a pair of quavers (holding for a bar or a beat), then gradually adding in more detail until I'm playing the whole thing. This sort of approach could help your daughter playing to the accompaniment.

The upshot of all the hard work is that my rhythm and timing is a [u]lot[\] better than it was. The unexpected benefit is that my sight-reading is also much better because I'm no longer thrown by complicated rhythms.

My current theory is that mastery of rhythm and pulse is what separates amateurs from professionals
As you say amateurs (myself included) are too worried about playing the "right" notes and have a tendancy to stop counting when they play the wrong note.

In France there is a lot of emphasis on tapping the pulse and singing the note names in rhythm before playing. Despite the fact that I loath singing, I have on occasion found this to be helpful (it doesn't actually matter whether you sing in tune or not).

I had to laugh at my younger daughter when her piano teacher told her to tap her foot while she was playing. Her feet don't actually reach the floor (her teacher tends to ignore "minor" details like this), so tapping her foot involved leaning on the piano stool instead of sitting on it and for some reason she had decided she was supposed to stamp her foot (her teacher had said to "tap audibly") so she was stamping very vigorously and invariably ended up losing her balance and falling over in a fit of giggles. Needless to say it did little to improve the rhythm of the piece