Count, Click and Canon: a Rhythm Masterclass - PHH 117

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Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started. Welcome to the show. While there are many notable quotes from Johann Sebastian Bach, one of my favorites is this one. There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Okay, the man was a musical genius, but obviously he also had a remarkable talent for understatement. On the other hand, that really is the major part of learning and playing a piece of music. At least it's where we start. Certainly the expression of the music is our ultimate aim, but communicating the music starts with the right notes at the right time. That's the focus of the podcast today. Not so much how to find the right notes, but how to play them at the right time. We all know it's not as simple as Bach made it sound. In fact, the difficulties of finding that right time are evident every day in our practice, even if we are expert players. See if any of these common rhythmic challenges sound familiar to you from your personal experience?

Starting a piece before you've looked at the time signature and getting it wrong or uneven subdivisions of the beat. Not making your 16th notes, for instance, exactly half the length of your eighth notes. Not remembering to count rests or ties, rushing through some passages and slowing down in others. Forgetting to count and losing your place. I'm guessing you've had at least one of those challenges. I know I have. Maybe you know how to fix the problem, but maybe you're not really sure of the best way to go about it. Maybe you've tried fixing it, but you seem to have to fix it again with every new piece you learn perhaps rhythm or counting or working with a metronome you is a constant frustration for you. Well, if any of those things sound familiar, you're in luck, my friend, because I'm going to give you some actual steps to take to become more rhythmically secure, not just fix the problems as they arise. Although these strategies will work for that too. But I want to show you how to practice your rhythm skills, whether you feel pretty confident already and you just want to get to that next level, or you have trouble with plain old counting or working with the metronome. I taught these methods for 19 years when I was teaching theory and ear training at the Curtis Institute of Music, and if they're good enough for the world class students there, they will almost certainly help you too. And by the way, just to make this podcast ultra relevant for us harpists, I will be using the Pachelbel Canon as as our teaching text. So get out whatever version you have of the Paco Bell. Any arrangement will work for this and follow along as we get rhythmic today. As always though, I have a couple of things that I want to make you aware of before we get down to the nitty gritty here. First of all, registration for our fall session of Heart Mastery Certified Coaching opens very soon and I want you to to right now take this opportunity to join our first to Know list. The thing is, we open our coaching registration first of all to the students who were enrolled in last session so they get their first dibs at things. Then we open it to the first to Know list and the people on the first to Know list have two or three days before we open to the rest of the the public to get in and reserve their spot to work with a coach. So we have five certified coaches teaching in our program. They only have so many slots and these slots, especially here in this fall session, will fill up quickly. They did last year. This time last year we were really pushing our registration and I'm guessing we will this time. So that's why I want to issue this invitation now to join that first to Know list. I have put the link to join that in the show notes or if you go to heartmastery.com and you look under our programs, you'll see coaching there. And the link to join the first to Know list is right on that page. The coaching session itself, the lessons, they don't start till the week of September 18th, so you have a little bit yet before the lessons start. But if you're new to our coaching program, the first thing that happens is when you register for coaching, we sign you up for a planning call that gives us a chance to talk with you one on one and decide, you know, sort of figure out what the goals for your coaching program are going to be. And we match you with a coach, and then the ball starts rolling, and you'll meet with your coach, settle on your goals, and get started on your coaching sessions. We have a choice. You can have either 10 sessions in the 12 weeks that we offer this particular trimester session, or you can have five sessions with your coach. So the 10 sessions or the five sessions, either way, some people find it that they, you know, that they really like the motivation of a session with their coach just about every week. Other people think that, you know, sort of that every other week time frame works a little bit better. Plus, I urge you to go to the coaching page over@heartmastery.com and take a look at everything that's included with the coaching program, because there is a lot, and we're tweaking the program a little bit all the time. But it's our system of setting goals and helping the harpists in our coaching program achieve those goals in a very short time frame that is the signature of our coaching program. It's what makes harp mastery certified coaching different, what makes it so powerful, and why our sessions fill up so quickly. So I urge you to check that out. Get in there, get on that first to know list so that you can save your spot. Let me begin our little rhythm masterclass by saying that this is not a metronome lesson. This is not about learning to play with the metronome, although that may be where you have to start. If you haven't done that before, that may be a terrific thing to start with. And this episode may help you find that connection that you haven't had before. But this is not what this is about. This lesson is a lesson in meter over matter. You've heard of mind over matter? Well, this is meter over matter. The meter, the rhythm, the pulse of a piece, the progression of beats, that steady progression where each beat is the same length of time so that the beats are steady and systematic. And actually, those beats are inevitable. They are woven into the fabric of the music. But so much of the time, we let ourselves ignore that most fundamental element of the music in order to try to fit the right notes in with the right fingers and try to do all the stuff that we have to do in order to play the piece. We make those things matter. We make those things the most important part of. Of what we're doing and forget that those things really only achieve their proper place when we put them at the right time. So we have to be responsible to the meter. Everything that we play needs to reflect that meter of the piece that's going on underneath it. So that if the piece has a steady 44 beat to it, our notes need to fit into that and need to convey that to a listener, right? It's the beat that's essential, right? That's what we respond to when we listen to music. And when our beat is steady, then our listeners have a way to relate to what we're playing too. If our beat isn't steady, then they're going to find it more difficult to listen. You've probably had this experience as a listener when you've heard a piece that maybe didn't have a steady beat to it. Maybe not because the performer wasn't doing a good job, but maybe because that's the way the piece was written. It was written to be a little bit more amorphous, a little bit more formless. And you found that it was very atmospheric, but you certainly couldn't tap your foot to it.

Now, sometimes composers use that, that meterless Beatless sort of idea as a way to create a particular mood or atmosphere for their piece. But in a piece that has a steady beat, we want to be sure that that's what people hear. And if we want people to hear that, then that's what we have to do. So that's why I'm calling this a lesson in meter over matter. We're going to be talking about meter. And when we're talking about the meter, we're talking about the beat, sometimes also called the pulse. And we're specifically today going to be talking about the subdivisions of the beat. So you know what those are, whether or not you've ever called them that before. Think about a whole note that has four beats, right? Well, its next smallest subdivision would be into half notes. 2/2 notes = a whole note, a half note. Their next smallest subdivision would be a quarter note. Quarter notes. Next smallest subdivision would be eighth notes, eighth notes. Their next smallest subdivision would be 16th notes. So those subdivisions are what we're talking about today, by the way. The British system, of course, uses a whole different series of names for those notes, right? You've got quavers and you've got crotchets and you've got semiquavers and all this wonderful stuff, and it sounds so terrific. And minims and breves and all that good stuff. The American system that Uses Those numbers, those 16th notes. They're called 16th notes because 16 of them equal a whole note, and 8 8th notes equal a whole note. Four quarter notes equal a whole note. Get it? I mean, it's simple basic math, simple basic division, as in subdivisions. So there's a real logic there. So you should never have to get lost in your note values. And that's why I chose the Pachelbel Canon to use as our teaching text for this topic. No matter what version you have of the Pachelbel, you will have noticed the changing note values in the melody, right? It starts with slower note values. Maybe they're half notes in your version. And then the melody goes into quarter notes, and then it goes into 8th notes, and then it goes into 16th notes, and then sort of back again, back toward longer note values as it gets toward the end. Pachelbel did something very interesting here. He built up tension in the piece, built up energy and interest by using successively faster note values, shorter note values, to create the energy and the interest and the musical energy of the piece. So that's how he layered this piece. And when you hear it done in its original form with three violins doing the parts in canon, you know, like in a round, right? That's what a canon is. So when you hear those violin parts working that way, you can hear that, okay, the first violin part has now gone to this next faster note value. And then the second violin comes in, and so you've got a little bit more of that faster note value. Then the third violin participates, and everybody's at that faster note value. And then what do you know, that first violin moves to the next faster one. So you can see that it sort of accelerates in its motion, but the beat stays the same. That quarter note beat or that half note beat or whatever it is, that is the pulse for your piece. And different versions of the Pachelbel use different note values. So, you know, you might have 32nds in your part, you might have sixteenths, you might only have eighth notes as those fastest note values. So it's just, you know, that's just different versions. And of course, it wasn't originally written for harp. So we have all kinds of different, different looks at it, but the ideas are the same that whatever note value you're playing in the beat that you start with, the tempo you start with stays constant throughout the entire piece.

I realize that that may not be the experience that you have had either listening to the Baco Bell or playing it. It can be very difficult for any player to discipline themselves to start slowly enough so that they're not caught trying to play too quickly when they get to the fastest note values. Right. If your fastest note values are the sixteenths that you have to play, then that's where you're going to set your tempo and you're going to work backward to the half notes to find out what that half note tempo is. Let me demonstrate a little bit so you know what I mean. So here's a really reasonable metronome speed. It's 60.

And that's 60 to the quarter note. And I'm going to start at the beginning of my Pachel Bell version, which has half notes. So here's just the right hand part. But listen to the way those half notes work.

Okay, that's pretty leisurely. That's a pretty relaxed tempo. But the question is, will that tempo work for the other note values? That's the slowest one I have to play. So what is 60 like when I get to the quarter notes?

Okay.

Not so bad. I can do that. It feels a little slow. Now, that's the trap, though, because if this tempo gets too fast, if we let it run away with us, then the next note values are going to feel really fast. But let's suppose for a moment that we're keeping 60 nice and steady. And so, having played the half notes and the quarter notes, Here are the 8th notes.

Satil.

Not bad.

Now, what happens if I go to the sixteenths? This is the ultimate test. Will that tempo still work for my 16th notes?

Yeah. Okay. It works pretty well. So I've found a good tempo. But that's what I mean. You can see that if I'd picked a tempo that felt a little peppier for the half notes in the beginning, I might be playing my sixteenths way faster than I want to. Or if I'd started at a tempo where my 16th notes would be, were going to be very leisurely. Yum, ba da da da dum. That might have felt in the half notes like just the half notes were way too slow. So you can see that that's where choosing the right tempo is important. Now we're going to get into the nitty gritty, into the real meat of today's episode. I'm going to show you three different strategies. One, one that you can use if you're the sort of person who still hasn't made your metronome your friend. And maybe that's because you just aren't comfortable. Nobody showed you exactly how to use it. So we're Going to show you with the Pachel Bell Canon how you can train yourself to work better with your metronome. But maybe the metronome's already your friend. But perhaps you struggle with those subdivisions, making sure that as you switch between quarter notes and eighth notes and 16th notes in whatever piece you play, you're keeping those beats steady and you're not always confident about making those switches accurately. So I'm going to show you how you can use your metronome and the Pachel Bell canon and some counting to train yourself to, to help you make those switches more accurate and more precise. Or if those aren't your issues and you're more of a rhythm master here and you're ready to get those rhythm skills to the next level. I have something you too. So that's what we're working on now. So get that. Copy whatever your Paco Bell Canon looks like. Get ready to take notes, because here we go. I believe that for most people who don't enjoy working with a metronome or who claim that the metronome is not their friend or will do anything to get out of working with the metronome, I think for those people, mostly it's because nobody's trained them to work with a metronome and that's what this exercise is going to do. So I'm going back to the Pachelbel canon. I'm going to work with that 16th note passage. So that's the spot where you want to look in your pachelbel. Then I'm setting my metronome to a speed where I can play the 16th notes and I've chosen 50 to the quarter note and I've actually set my metronome. Many metronomes will do this now, you know, if you don't have one of those clicky, clicky back and forth, you know, old fashioned kind of metronomes that only keep the beat. But you have one of the fancier quartz ones or one on your phone, it probably will do the subdivisions of the beat for you. And you might have found this helpful to work with before. But so what I've done was I have set my metronome to 50, which is a nice quarter note tempo. It's slower than I was going before, but I've also set it so that it's going to click that 16th note subdivision. So it granted sounds a little bit frantic. Sounds like this 1e and 2e and 3e and 4e and. Well, what this is going to do is allow me to match every single note so it's going to be a little bit funny. And you can do this if this is uncomfortable. You can start this with just plain old quarter notes. The idea is that when you're working with a metronome, you're doing two things. You are predicting where the next click will come, and then you are matching that click. So the slower the clicks, the more difficult it can be to predict and to match. So, for instance, and I'm going to take my subdivisions off here for a second, I'm going to go back to just plain old quarter note clicks. If I have to play quarter notes to this click.

It requires a bit of thought and attention to really match, to predict where that next click is going to come and match it when it gets there. But if I'm. If I set that same speed and I set that to click on the eighth note, Let me get this here.

And I'm going to do my same basic scale.

Having that click in the middle makes it much easier to match.

And just playing and matching every click.

Is also easier because the clicks are closer together, so there's less room for error. So when I turn this to Click on the 16th note, granted it's a lot of clicks, but they're pretty easy to match. And because they're all there. So.

Now, granted, it's not very pretty. And you have to remember that there are some eighth notes in there that I've accounted for. Right? Those eighth notes that took up two clicks. But in general, that's a pretty easy thing to do. So I would advise you to start this way. Find a tempo that you can, where you can set your metronome to that 16th note. Maybe using the subdivision feature, which is so helpful, and play matching every click. And realize that's your only job, to match one note to one click. Unless it's an eighth note, then you have to wait for that extra click. Right? But just matching that one click. Then what I want you to do is keep playing those sixteenths, but we're going to have the metronome only click eights. So essentially we're halving the metronome tempo. So if we were doing sixteenths, that was actually like 200 for every single note. Beep, beep, beep, beep. That was 200 clicks per minute, right? So we're going to go down from 200 beats per minute per minute to essentially 100 clicks per minute, and we're going to click the eighth notes, but I'm going to not change the number. I'm going to change the subdivision I'm going to go back to eighth notes.

There. So now my metronome is only giving me two clicks, but I'm still playing the 16th notes, 1 and 2 and.

3 and 4 and 1.

So it gives you a good way to absolutely match, but to just, you know, not feel like you need to match every single note. Then you can go for the ultimate test and take off all the subdivisions.

So that your metronome is only clicking the quarter notes. And now you can see if you can still fit those 16th notes in evenly.

One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and 1 and 2 and 1. Three and four and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1.

So this is a different kind of matching and predicting, isn't it? And you notice that I counted out loud and I counted the eighth notes because that is so helpful at helping me keep my. Keep my place, metrically speaking, metronomically speaking, so that I can match up well. So once you've done that kind of a drill, then I suggest, if you like, you can reverse it and so that you can actually have your metronome go faster and faster while you're playing slower. But this is a great way to play with your metronome and think about the matching and predicting that you do. You have to predict when that next click is going to come and match it, when it gets there, whether it's clicking the same speed that you're playing or not. This is a great way to help you learn your subdivisions and make the metronome your friend. But maybe the metronome's already your friend and you say, okay, that's not so hard. But I still struggle sometimes playing the subdivisions that come up and making sure that my, you know, my eighth notes and my 16th notes, when they come up, are still at the same speed as my quarter notes. The same kind of. This is the same kind of thing I showed you right in the very beginning when we worked on the Pachelbel with the metronome at first. So what I suggest is that you find that one speed. I'm going to go back to. Well, I'm going to stay at 50 here. Why not? We're going to keep the metronome that speed and then just randomly pick different sections of the canon and play those different note values where that quarter note stays the same. So here's my half note passage.

I'll play a couple measure of half notes, and then I'll switch to quarter notes. Just jump around, find a quarter note passage.

And then I'll jump down and look for some eighth notes and switch to eighth notes.

And then maybe I'll go back to quarter notes when I see them.

Just jumping around on the page. How about maybe some 16th notes?

Maybe go back to some half notes.

You get the idea. So this is a terrific way to practice switching back and forth. Now, you can do this. After you've done it at one speed, I would advise you to change the speed of your metronome. So this was 50, but maybe move it up to, oh, 69 or 72. Something very different. Or maybe as slow as 40. See if you can still switch back and forth between those subdivisions and keep matching that metronome quarter note as it comes up. And then, of course, you can play the mix and match game, which I just love. So here's my quarter note speed again.

Well, with this quarter note speed, I'm going to play the sixteenths. I'm clicking the quarters, I'm going to count the eighths. This is actually what I just did a minute ago. But we'll do it again. So play the sixteenths, count the eighths, click the quarters. So 1 and 2 and 3 and.

4 and 1 and 2 and 3.

Now, that's not so hard. But what if you did it the other way? What if you played the sixteenths and you clicked the eighths? I'm going to find my subdivision thing again here. And you clicked the eighths, and you counted the quarters. So I'm going to play the sixteenths, click the eights and count the quarters.

1, 3, 4. Forgot to say that. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four.

Great. Okay, now let's do it differently. Let's play the eighth notes, let's click the quarters.

And count the sixteenths. Ooh. Okay, so my quarters are clicking. I'm going to play eighth notes, and I'm going to count sixteenths.

So one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a.

Two E and A three, a four.

E and a one E & a two E & a three E and a four, etc. Or we could have the metronome click the sixteenths, and we could count the quarters. We could do any of those combinations. Play the quarters, click the eighths, count the sixteenths. Whatever you like. But that mix and match game is going to really help strengthen your understanding of subdivisions. Not just your intellectual understanding, but your physical understanding of how those pieces work together and how they fit. But if you're ready to take your rhythm Skills to the next level. Here's a fun exercise for you. So take your metronome and set it to the slowest beat it has, which might be something around 40. That's pretty typical for metronomes. So mine's here at 40, and that is what I'm going to use as my half note speed. So I may not play the 16th note variation, but it's going to work really well for the half notes and the quarter notes and the eighth notes. But here's what we're going to do to test your rhythm skills and think about those subdivisions. The metronome is clicking the half note, but we're going to have it click the second and fourth beats of every measure. In essence, we're having it click the backbeat. So instead of counting this way, 1, 2.

3, 4. 1, 2.

3, 4. We're now going to count this way. 1, 2, 3, four. 1, 2, 3, Four. And that's how we're gonna play. And we're gonna start, and I'll play through some of those different variations using the metronome on the backbeat. You ready? So it's gonna be 1, 2.

3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 2.

4, 2.

You see how it is? It's a very interesting way to work with your.

Metronome.

Three.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One.

Two, four.

So there it is with the quarter notes.

Now listen to what happens with the.

Eighth notes.

1, 2.

3, 4.

Interesting, right? So when you're working with your metronome on the backbeat, what that's doing for you is it's helping you feel the subdivisions of the beat without lining up the click exactly where you think. It's a great rhythm exercise and one that's extremely helpful when you start working with subdivisions. So if you are at that I'm ready to work at the expert level kind of place, this is a great exercise to try. You can use it with any piece of music to help you sort out what you're doing rhythmically as well. So those are our three ways to work with the metronome and the Pachel Bell canon to help you first work on that. Matching and predicting that helps you line up with the metronome. And then to mess around with the different subdivisions where you can set your metronome to one speed and practice playing those different subdivisions to fit with that metronome. And you can mix and match as that goes. And then, of course, our super expert rhythm skills backbeat exercise. So much fun with the Pachel Bell canon. Before we wrap up. I just wanted to mention again that it would be smart if you're considering working with a Heart Mastery Certified coach. This would be your best opportunity to get in on the first to Know list because they will be the ones that will be first to know before we open registration to the rest of the list. So you can jump in and just sign up and we'll let you know as soon as well a couple days before registration opens so that you can get in there and save your spot. Um, as I said before, we have limited spots. This is a program, we have only five coaches and their time fills up. So do get in there. And if you want to work with a coach, we want to work with you too so you can get in there. We'll get you signed up at least on the first to Know list for right now. Next week on the podcast we'll be talking about Tension Tamers. If you have trouble getting your body to relax while you play, getting your hands or arms to stay relaxed, that's what we're going to be talking about. Identified five everyday tension traps that we're going to talk about. The things that make you tense. Perhaps you didn't even know that these were things to watch out for, but these are things that make you tense. We're going to talk about how to fix those, how to get out of those traps, how to keep being more relaxed while you play, how to calm your body, to calm your mind, calm your hands, or all of those things, and how to release the tension sometimes even while you're playing. How does that sound? So tension tamer on next week's podcast. In the meantime, please remember every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.