Welcome to this day to day sharing of insights into music. My thoughts and my playing reflect my lifelong drive to integrate primary reactions to sounds with a sense of playfulness open to lyricism as to intellectual game-playing - the level of musical response endangered if not already extinct due to the endemic compilations of sameness that make up our soundworld.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
My suggestion to anyone struggling with rhythm is to work on Bartok's For Children, of which there are two volumes. In these pieces he indicates all types of rhythmic order, some metric, some not. Learning the meaning of the various signs can do a lot to make the student aware of the difference between metronomic regularity and other ways of getting from one bar to the next, or from one beat to the next. Becoming aware of one's power to control this element is the key to fixing the problem.