I have trouble playing triplets against crochets (in either hands), especially in arabesque (prob. not right spelling) by debussy. It really annoys me, being of grade 8 standard.
Did/does anyone else have the same trouble? If so what is the best way to practise? Any excercises that u know of that will help? I love arabesque and i get so frustrated.

It is difficult to describe on here,but here goes.

Count 1 2 & 3.

So right and left played together on beat 1,then the left is played on the &. You can also then play them the other way round.

Try this on 2 notes to begin with.

Does this make sense?

A great piece to experiment is Chopin No 2 Trois Etudes. It's the one in Ab Major.

At the moment I am playing a boogie piece which has triplets in the right-hand over 2 quavers (per triplet) in the left. I have learnt to play this by counting:

1, 2, and 3

where the triplet is played on the 1, 2, 3

and the 2 left hand quavers are played on the 1 & 'and'

It may not sound correct at first but will after a while.

Hope this helps,

Shelton

Yes the overall rhythm played slowly should sound like crotchet, 2 quavers, crotchet (split between the hands - Both.....Right,Left,Right.....

I have another question about triplets. For my Grade 8 piece, Mozart's first mvmt from Sonata in C, there is a section that has semi-quaver triplets in the LH against 4 semi-quavers in RH, and whenever I play it, it just sounds messy. Any advice on playing it?

Triplets against quavers are not soo hard. I was taught Cold Cup-of Tea. Triplets on Cold Cup and Tea; Quavers on Cold and of. Something to do with my piano teacher never getting to finish her tea in my lessons as I always asked too many questions!


I'm playing this, the only way I can do it is very slowly, splitting the beat up into 12 - playing semiquavers on 1, 4. 7 and 10; triplets on 1, 5 and 9. Anyone with a more sensible (and speedy) suggestion much welcomed. Steve Hopwood? Come to our rescue!!!?!

Copy out a bar or two on one or two staves with everything in proper visual proportion and learn it like that. When you've got it it should stick.


1......2......3......1.....2......3......1

1..........2..........1.........2......... 1



I try to lay it out with numbers but substituting notes on music paper you see what is supposed to happen when. That was the idea anyway.
It should work for any reasonable combination.

Hi Trebor.

Please be a little bit more specific.We are talking about bars 26 - 29 in my AB Ed? In bar 27 the RH is F# and the LH is MC?

Just found a great link which will explain it ( and more) better than I can.

Great movement btw.

http://www.bobbrozman.com/tip_rhythm.html

I found 3 against 4 harder.

Good Luck.

PS Other links I found:

http://www.keyboardcompanion.com/GriegArticle/Blick2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyrhythm

(Suzy..see ref to Frank Zappa )

Since Frank Zappa was the best EVER, no discussion like this could be complete without mentioning him. So thanks for the link.

You know what I think of him.

And you. xxxxx

Yeah, sorry for lack of detail Semele, I didn't have music to hand. I was talking about bars 26-29. And thanks for the links, they helped me get a better idea in theory anyway. I'm getting the exam music tomorrow too, so hopefully I can get this section learnt (at the moment, I'm skipping it all together )

thanx for the advice. will try what uve all suggested. Practise makes perfect i spose

me too also can't play well for the 3 against 2. Until my teacher asked me to choose another piece. I also love this piece very much.

Hi!

You might want to take a look at this thread from a couple of months ago... This is always a very popular discussion!

http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopic=7249

I cant make proper links...sorry, you'll just have to copy it into your address bar!

hope it helps!!

Wow! I turns into a link... never realised that before!!"

Sorry SuzyMac, I have only just seen this; I will try to help.

First, I haven't forgotten my promise to email you my recording of this movement. I tried all the addresses you offered; all my tries were rejected - the file is too large. I will sort this out tomorrow. I will split the file up into smaller bits and send them to you individually. There is free software you can download to piece the sections together again.

So, back to the question, there are some approaches you can try:
1) At lower speeds, the first two notes come together. After that, the notes alternate between the hands with very little time in between them. It takes huge concentration to waggle the digits at the appropriate speed. Take the last quaver in bar 27; play this and finish on the very first notes in bar 28 to practise this.
2) Practise the whole of bar 27 and end on the first note of bar 28 separately. Make sure you can play each hand with total confidence. Put them together again. Relax completely on the last quaver of bar 27. Logically, if the rh is dead in time and the lh is also dead in time, then the combination will be dead in time.
3) Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu is the best study available in rh fours against lh triplets. Learn, say, the first page and the mixed rhythms in the Mozart will not be a problem.

This mixed rhythm is a horror. I hope all this helps.

Steve

Steve do you think that a more fruitful approach to 3/2 etc. is to try and get the student to imagine the beat and just 'get to it'? I almost always find that unless a piece is very slow trying to play da da-a da da da-a da etc can lead to an ever so imperceptible lumpiness in usually the 3rd beat of the triplet. Just a thought. Re. Chopin's fantasie-impromptu once the RH is learnt well becomes very easy to play when you just head to each of the beats and your muscle memory ensures each hand is at the correct speed.

sorry if this is totally incoherent...

That's how my piano teacher taught me how to play 3 against 4 - however this only seemed to work when the tempo was fairly fast - alternate the 2 hands separately several times while feeling a very strong pulse then go for it! However at much slower speeds, e.g. the slow movement of Beethoven's 5th piano concerto, it didn't work as the pulse was much slower and I couldn't fit the 2 together properly, so I then wrote it out on paper to find where exactly the notes coincided/ which came closer together etc, and that's how I now teach my pupils. Jeffrey Whitton uses 2 phrases in his book 'The Art of Practising the Piano'

Bang rattle shake and roll (dotted crotchet, quaver crotchet, crotchet quaver, dotted crotchet.)
OR
Singing makes me happy (but that's in 3 time and harder to write out, and I find the first easier!)
The way the hands fall is:

Both, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right.
OR
Both, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left.

Not 3\2 as there is such a simple method of working it out.

"get the student to imagine the beat and just 'get to it'?" is my preferred method. I have to look for alternative solutions when this does not work.

I learned the Chopin the same way. Separately first, actually until I could play both hands from memory (didn't take long, as I am blessed with a good memory for piano music). I put them together thumping the first note of each beat. From all this, 4\3 have never been a difficulty since.

Great bloke, Chopin

Thanks a lot!
It is really useful, hope I can master this piece.

Czaire

I'm intent on learning that 1st page up to speed! I can do it slowly where I'm actually thinking about where all the beats fit in, but up to speed? A nightmare! The percussion peri at school told me to think "Roast Chicken Pasta Bake" for that rhythm - all of his rhythmic catchphrases seem to relate back to food!

The thing is, I have a 7-year-old pupil who has challenged me to learn it so I will play it to her... at the moment she has just been very impressed by the demo on my Clavinova. My response was "I can't play it...YET." I find that I need a very positive mental attitude when faced by that kind of situation!

That's why I used to clonk out the first note of each beat. Unmusical, but it helped me keep in time.

It is worth persevering. This rhythm is is a knack like any other; once you can do it in the Chopin, you will be able to do it in any piece.

Steve

in my personal opinion, for List B, do the Op.79 Beethoven Sonata and do the Liszt Chopin or Mendelssohn for List C, i've tried both the Mozart and Debussy and find them pretty awkward

the Chopin doesnt have rhythmic difficulties like that, the Mendelssohn doesnt either, Liszt i do believe does have very small ones and the Beethoven is a godsend!

...but I like the Mozart piece...

Actually, for the List C piece I listened to them on the CD and really really liked Intermezzo by Schumann, so I'm (attempting to) learn that. It's frighteningly fast, though.

the way i managed it for Arabesque 1 is a tip from my piano teacher: using your hands on the table or your knees, do this tapping sequence

together, right,left, right
together, right,left, right
together, right,left, right

and so on...you'll notice that right hand is playing 3 whereas left is playing two...once you get the hand thing try it on the piano...it works!

i love this piece, although it is quite hard to do the 3 against 2. at first i couldn't do it at all, but within a week i could do it much more easily. i dont really have a method for working it out, i just know what it should sound like and i concentrate on that

The guitarist Steve Vai has a pretty interesting article on polyrhythms on his web site.

http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html

aaaaaah! Despite all my advice to myself, i still cant do arabesque, i thought id gotten it right only to have my first piano lesson after summer hols to be told that its still 'not quite in time'... And if i cant get the first bit of arabesque right, its really hard to keep learning the rest of the piece...

I wasn't getting on so well with that either (though i don't have trouble with 2s against 3s) so a couplw of weeks ago we decided to change.

Are 2 against 3's where the 3 is in the left hand? Never tried those...My piano teacher still wants me to do my exam this year so i dont think i can change again, or even if i want to as i've already changed once...

I would say it simply depends on the way in which you're counting: if you've been counting the rest of the piece in twos (or it splits into twos) then I would say it's three against two (the two being the underlying usual structure) but if the whole piece is split into threes then I would say it's two against three (think of a duplet in 6/8 time).

Whichever way you say it the coordination is the same.

Perhaps, but from experience (sorry AP ) one can, at first, do it one way but not the other due to being able, or not, to line the triplets/duplets up with the other notes in 2-4 / 6-8.

I just tried this exercise i found...i CAN more or less do it if the triplet is in the left hand .....grrrrrr shame its not like that for Arabesque!