This post is to go with my YouTube video https://youtu.be/0Nz8ibdQUOI.
Ever struggled to decide how fast (or slow) to play something – especially when there’s no metronome marking on the score? This is the case with most classical music and, in fact, you’d have to think about how useful they might really be in reality
Aside the most simple pieces we first learn, the majority of music has:
- Different Sections
- Repeats
- Rubato
Quite often, different sections will be both in different keys and also have a different feel to the other sections. It might well be appropriate to play them at a different tempo altogether.
When something is repeated, many pianists will opt to vary something in the repeat to add interest – tempo is something they might change
Rubato – or Stolen Time – is also often added which can make the steady click, click of a metronome unhelpful
Those of you who have been following my series on ‘Digital Audio’ on this blog will know I have been working on recording the Orchestral part of Rachmaninof’s 18th Variation on a Theme of Paganini. So, to demonstrate this technique, let’s use that beautiful piece of music.
It’s also a very interesting example as, not only are there are possibly as many different interpretations of this piece as there are recordings of it, there are also recordings of Rachmaninof himself playing this piece.
This variation basically has a small intro, a main theme which repeats 3 times and then an ending.
The first thing we’re going to do is actually time the piece – not from end to end, but split down into smaller sections. Deciding on these sections is probably the only tricky part to this technique. You can quickly identify a few main sections, however, I advise splitting it into more, rather than less, as you can always add pieces back together whereas if you want to split them later, you’d need to re-time it – which would be annoying.
For the 18th Variation, I finally decided to split it down into five sections. For each split, I actually count from the last beat of the preceding bar.
I also ignored the intro as really this just makes the link between the 17th and 18th Variations so pianists use this to make the transition whereas playing it alone, there is no transition to make.
Next, choose a set of pianists to record. For added interest, try to include one or two interpretations you don’t particularly like (you find them either too slow or too fast …. or whatever), YouTube has a very wide selection.
When I did this exercise, the pianists I chose were:
- Rachmaninof himself
- Arthur Rubinstein
- Stephen Hough
- Daniel Trifonov
- Yuja Wang
Timing it is, of course, no problem at all … I’m sure everybody has a smart phone or tablet.
Using the Clock App, you have a readily available stop watch right there with you. Whilst listening to the version you want to time, click ‘Start’ at the beginning …. when it gets to the start of the next section, click ‘Lap’ …. when the next section starts, again, click ‘Lap’ again. Repeat this process until the end and then just click ‘Stop’. I show you how to do this in the video if you’re not sure.
Then, simply record these values into a table (I use a Spreadsheet, but you could use anything – including a notebook).
Here are the results I got:
Let’s just take a few moments to look at what this tells us:
First, the entire variation isn’t even 4 minutes long.
Rubenstein plays this the slowest (3 minutes 56 seconds), with Yuja Wang being quickest at 2 minutes 26 seconds) – only just faster then Rachmaninov
I’ll declare my hand, Rubinstein is definitely my preferred recording – perhaps mainly because I used to own to a recording of his in my teens that I almost wore out in the good old cassette tape days.
I find some pianists (including – dare I even say it – Rachmaninof himself) seem to ‘rush’ this a little for my taste
The first section, for example, is a total of 33 beats – translating this into BPM means that Rubinsteain plays at around 43 BPM yet Yuja Wang more like 49.
However, if you then look at how the variances grow between fastest and slowest throughout the piece, you can see that most interpreters tend to crank up the tempo as they go forwards
You could, of course, just use simple mathematics to work out a set of BPM values as I did for the first section earlier – you know how many bars, how many beats, how many seconds … it’s just numbers after all.
But … and here’s the real power of this technique … we’re going to do something entirely different. Quite simply, we’re actually going to record ourselves playing that very same piece and then use the lap timing technique on our own version. To do this, you don’t need to have it perfect … once you have a basic grasp of the notes and feel that you can play through it reasonably – wrong notes and all – then this is a good right stage.
Once you’ve recorded and then timed it, plug your results into the table.
Start to compare section by section … of particular interest is to see how you compare to your ‘favourite’ interpretation. You might be very surprised to find that perhaps you’re blasting through the piece far faster than your preferred pianist … or playing it as in that slow interpretation you don’t like!!
What makes this an interesting exercise, is that by comparing the timings you have for the very same sections, you start to see where you are rushing, where you are labouring it – and you get a view of how big the problem might be (i.e. how much you need to speed up or slow down). You can see here that I was rushing this by my own definition whereas I had expected to be on the slower side.
Equally, when you come to perform something, you need your ‘instinctive’ feeling for the tempo – you can’t pull out the metronome to get you started.
For faster music, you might think you’re playing slower than the recording because you find it technically difficult to play fast – yet you might surprise yourself by actually being faster then necessary. Also, the emotional intensity of the music can push you forwards faster than you might want – or conversely cause you to over-do a general slowing down.
I think it’s important to triangulate your perceptions of how fast or slow you’re playing or you’ll end up ‘practicing’ something in a way that if you heard it in isolation, you probably wouldn’t like.
Try it for yourself with some of your current pieces and let me know how you get on.
