Sightreading has made it clear that I really struggle with rhythm when the going gets tough. I can quite happily play a complicated rhythm on one or 2 notes, or clap it or say it, and when I know a piece, I can feel the pulse of it.

BUT put a piece of sightreading in front of me and the pulse just vanishes and I can't count for toffee. Triplets vs normal quavers vs dotted rhythms is what shows it up most of all, but under the stress of reading some (lots of???) notes my sense of rhythm deserts me completely. It feels like my brain is overloaded with information as it tends to fall to pieces quickest where the piece is less "logical" (not sure if that's the right word) melodically - I'm more likely to have an issue in one of the abrsm example pieces than a Mozart duet or a piece of real music (so long as it's not too atonal anyway). Last lesson I definitely felt myself lose the rhythm complete when the next note didn't go where I expected it to (even though it was the right note!!!). I coped more or less OK with a piece in 5/4 though - but the beats were mostly evenly divided, so I think it's the division of notes that is the biggest issue?

Not too sure how to work on this - I know the theory of how long the notes are supposed to be, and can even "sight read" complicated rhythms on a couple of notes. Would picking a complicated passage and just playing the notes of a well known scale in that rhythm help? As that's more complicated than just a couple of easy notes but not too easy. Are there any things on the internet as writing out the notes just as a rhythm would kind of be cheating...

I have this kind of problem too.

Now my suggestion won't help for sightreading but what i do is work with each set of rhythms say quavers, semiquavers or triplets against a metronome beat then take the next pattern etc and I slowly piece them together.

My teacher mentioned again tonight my tendancy to allow the tempo to wander at will. He described it as "my 1 bad habit" (In reality I'm sure I have more...)

As I explained to him when I'm learning a piece I find that when the going gets tough note wise (i.e. strewn with accidentals etc) I slow the beat to suit and when it gets easier I speed it up again. I'm not as bad when I get to know the piece or if there is someone/something providing an external beat.

Knowing one's faults in this incidence is not (I find) necessarily key to correcting them

I was taught the practice technique of slowing down to accommodate the trickier bits at Cheetham's Piano summer school last year. It can be a useful thing to do as long as you keep relative notes values correct and the pulse steady within the framework of changing tempo.

Thankyou. Interesting to know that it's a valid technique

You do it in a controlled way...... like a major rit approaching the bars you need to work on more slowly.
It's a way of seeing (and feeling) how things fit together while sections still need to be practised at different speeds.

When you hit triplets and the like, avoid counting "1 and 2 and"... count in 1s, it makes it much easier.

Is there a possibility that the problem isn't actually to do with your rhythm reading but more to do with the speed of which you can read and find the notes ?

I used to think I had a problem with rhythm in sight reading but I actually discovered that if I could clap and count the rhythms then my real problem was being able to read the notes quick enough in order to keep it in time...

I can happily read jumping around all over the place with a "nice" rhythm (in my case, where the beat divides only into 2s or 3s and doesn't switch between them). There's no problem reading complicated notes where the rhythm isn't something I find difficult (even if it's semi quavers at a decent pace).

It's not so much the rhythm reading as getting myself in a fluster and forgetting to keep the basic pulse in my head. As I get in a fluster over the rhythm, I can feel myself losing my sense of the basic pulse, but can't seem to get it back until the rhythm gets easier, even though I know it's gone.

I'm also OK at learning a complicated rhythm, provided I actually do it properly rather than just play through vaguely and hope for the best, I just can't do it in a sightreading for exams type context. Rhythm wasn't a massive issue in orchestras in the past as I could watch the conductor to keep the beat if I got stressed!