musicianship

neoflyte · Post by **neoflyte** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:12 am

Anyone got any tips/ideas for improving musicisanship skills: particularly rhythm.

What activities do you use for improving your musicianship?

I do transcriptions from CDs occaisionally, but mostly focus on melody/harmony. I'm trying to find some ways to hone in on rhythm (esp. sight reading).

Any tips?

Meredith · Post by **Meredith** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:34 pm

By rhythm, do you mean different beats, or playing with a metronome? I have suggestions for both, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.

As far as sight reading goes, the best way to work on it is just to practice. As your general facilities improve, so will your sight reading skills.

flutepicc06 · Post by **flutepicc06** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 5:12 pm

One of the best things you can do to improve musicianship is to listen to some of the greats in the field. They don't even have to be on the same instrument as you to do a world of good. Hearing great vocalists or trumpeters, or clarinetists all will help your concept of style, and make it easier for you to figure out how to play a piece more musically. Meredith's right about sightreading. If you get an etude book, and just sight read an etude or two a day, your skills in that area will increase rapidly. The more you sightread, the easier it becomes, and the more music that passes in front of you, the more deeply ingrained various rhythms will become.

fluteguy18 · Post by **fluteguy18** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 6:12 pm

Absolutely flutepicc06. I can testify by almost everything Chris said. Particularly the sightreading bit. Until these past few months I wasnt very good at sight reading. I was actually (in my opinion) quite bad at it. But, now that I am in college, getting a music degree, I am reading new music everyday. Not by choice mind you, but rather that our symphonic band reads new music all of the time (I honestly think it is the directors goal to play every piece ever written). We get almost a whole new folder of music every week. Then, we might regularly rehearse one or two of them.

However, from this, I have become MUCH better at sightreading. I am sightreading things that before, would have scared me just to look at, but it really isnt that bad. Just keep at it.

neoflyte · Post by **neoflyte** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:20 am

Meredith wrote:By rhythm, do you mean different beats, or playing with a metronome? I have suggestions for both, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.

As far as sight reading goes, the best way to work on it is just to practice. As your general facilities improve, so will your sight reading skills.

I guess mostly I mean getting an inner sense of time so that I can improve my tendency to over-do the rubato. As well some particular rhythmic elelments I find difficult: getting slow triplets even, five-tuplets (forget what they're called), seven tuplets, etc., there are probably others I've forgotten as well. Do you have any thoughts on how to improve on those areas?

neoflyte · Post by **neoflyte** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:44 am

flutepicc and fluteguy, thanks for the thoughts. I have been doing a fair bit of sight reading lately, but I probably focus on pitch more than rhythm (e.g. by avoiding anyting with difficult rhythms

)
So I think I need to do something where I take out pitch and focus completely on rhythm.

When you were starting out, did you use the one-e-and-a two-e-and-a etc. system for speaking rhythms? I'd like to learn how to use this.

flutepicc06 · Post by **flutepicc06** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:24 am

neoflyte wrote:
Meredith wrote:By rhythm, do you mean different beats, or playing with a metronome? I have suggestions for both, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.

As far as sight reading goes, the best way to work on it is just to practice. As your general facilities improve, so will your sight reading skills.
I guess mostly I mean getting an inner sense of time so that I can improve my tendency to over-do the rubato. As well some particular rhythmic elelments I find difficult: getting slow triplets even, five-tuplets (forget what they're called), seven tuplets, etc., there are probably others I've forgotten as well. Do you have any thoughts on how to improve on those areas?

Work with a metronome as you play. The improvement should be obvious.

flutepicc06 · Post by **flutepicc06** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:32 am

It's good to focus on rhythm, but you can't entirely eliminate pitch or any other facet of playing while you work rhythmic stuff. You will never encounter a piece where pitch doesn't matter, no matter how difficult it is technically, and you need to get used to controlling both at once. I did learn the one-e-and-uh system, and still use it today. Basically each syllable aligns with part of the beat. One, or two, or whatever number always falls at the beginning of the beat, exactly when you see the conductor's baton give one, or exactly when you hear the metronome click. If you had straight quarter notes in 4/4 time, it would be counted "one, two, three, four." If you subdivide into eighth notes, the "and" falls on the second eighth of each beat. So, with straight eighths, it would be counted "one and two and three and four and." Then you can also subdivide the sixteenth, using the "e's" and "uh's." The e's fall on the second 16th, and the uh's on the fourth 16th within each beat. Straight sixteenths are counted thusly: "one e and uh two e and uh three e and uh four e and uh." The placement of these syllables/parts of the beat remains constant even when the rhythms become more complex. For example, a dotted eighth 16th, followed by 3 eighths, 2 16ths and a quarter (it might help to write that out to make sense of it) would be counted "one..uh two and three and uh 4."

mikeh · Post by **mikeh** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:16 pm

METRONOME DUMMY LOL