Chinese Proverb

"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I'll understand." - Chinese Proverb.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Lesson #43 (Jazz #7 1/29/12): Bowing, Rhythm/Timing & Repertoire (March The First & Question and Answer)

Wow, jazz is hard… *sigh*  I think I bit off more than I can chew!
We’re still focusing and working on rhythm, something I don’t want to work on, but its definitely a weak point of mine, which is the reason I asked Clayton if we could focus on rhythm more.

March The First 
  • Rhythm 
    • I practiced stomping and clapping this at home, so I was much more coordinated and on beat during this lesson! Yaay! But during the lesson, I started focusing on trying to have a good solid beat and my fingering went awry, which is really sad because the notes are SUPER simple – Twinkle easy! 
    • It’s so weird, as long as I play something and don't worry about rhythm, I can play it just fine, but I think thinking I know how to play a piece without actually knowing the note's time value or its relationship to the meter is the real underlying issue. If don’t know/understand how long the note should be, than how am I supposed to play on time right? ...darn...no avoiding learning this... 
  • “Play it convincingly”
    • Clayton mentioned that having good rhythm is something the audience senses, whether or not they understand what is going on. If someone plays a piece with really good rhythm (even with bad intonation) they will come across as being confident in what they're playing. So for me, to play a piece "convincingly," even though I might not feel confident inside, I have to play something on time and with a good beat - easier said than done! 
  • Bowing
    • With the Up-Up bowing with the chords, I need to make sure that I release the strings to avoid the harsh sounding sound.  I have a tendency to really put a lot of weight when playing two strings at the same time
  • The recording of the piece I'm working, which was included with the method book:

Question And Answer
  • We started on this piece which also looks really easy, but there are a lot of different notes in this piece - quarter, eight, sixteenth and half notes.
  • I've put 'March The First' and 'Question and Answer' in a loop at work so I'm listening to them one after another for eight hours because I'm not familiar with these rhythms.   
  • The recording of this piece:

Reading Notes
  • We went through and looked at the notes to make sure I knew what each note meant...ummmm...and I have to say I didn't know! ...kind of embarrassing.. Its been awhile since I reviewed reading notes, so I only recognized quarter notes, half notes and whole notes. I didn't know eighth, sixteenth or thirty-second notes. Oops! 
  • To read the timing / rhythm of the piece, Clayton said to first look through the entire piece to determine what is the fastest note. If that note can be found throughout the piece, than I should count at that tempo, but if the fastest note is in a small measure only, than its okay to count only a few measures ahead of where that note is located instead of the whole piece
    • I have to admit, I still don't quite understand how to count it out! I'll have to work on my assignment a bit more and see if it clicks. 
  • Meter 
    • We went over the meters that showed up in our method book: 4/4, 2/4, 6/8 and how that's affected by what notes are played, i.e. how the notes are grouped together. 


This is still a mystery to me, so I'll have to revisit this again during my next lesson. 

1 comment:

  1. When you solved the mystery, please do share! I've been lost on this rhythm desert for like, forever :P

    I am kinda ok with counting 4/4 songs (e.g Haydn Suprise Symphony, perpetual motion etc) but somehow i just couldnt get 3/4 (or, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 for that matter) songs like many waltz (the latest being The Merry Widow)..Very much like you, I am ok when not counting or playing w/o metronome, but I do one/both of these (especially the latter) expect total rhythm mess!

    They said when playing with metronome, the goal is to play until you cant hear the beat..got it ok, but it doesnt work for me with 3/4 songs that have slurs here and there :P

    btw like the ' Play it convincingly' note. Guess i should really try to keep playing with time :) nvm the small errors i guess

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