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When I improvise, I find I cannot play a regular four beats rythm on my left hand.

I get carried away by the melody at the right hand and play the chords according to the way the melody evolves.

Can you suggest ways by which I could give the main part to the left hand so that the right hand would play on a cyclic chord progression ?

Perhaps instead of trying to find a way around the problem of your left hand, why not try working through it? Use a metrenome, perhaps even write out little "exercizes" that gets your left hand used to playing a steady four-beat rhythm, or whatever you have to do to get it correct. Once you master doing this, and are able to apply it to improvisation, THEN you can go on to playing the main part in the left hand..

PianoMuse,
Do you mean the right hand ?

This is very good advice. I will restrict my improvisation to repeating simple chord progressions (one chord, two chords, three chords, four chords : I II VI V) till it is deeply rooted.

Once I have a rythm section, I will hire a singer.

What should the basic formula be for the left hand ?

I suppose with strides, I will have the first root) and third (dominant) beat emphasized.
I find it difficult to keep track of the beats when I play four identical chords in each bar.

What do you think ?

What sort of music do you improvise ? Are you trying to play a very regular stride, swing or something of that sort ? Why do you especially want to play four regular beats with your left hand ?

When I was young and learning these things I imagined harmony was omnipotent, and the whole process comprised shovelling ten tons of mentally assimilated chords into a comparatively arbitrary metrical space. Now I'm older the exact opposite seems to be true. Rhythm and phrasing are just about everything for me in music, especially in improvisation, and harmony to a greater extent variable.

That's interesting, Ted. I've read that Hans von Bülow said "The musician's bible begins with the words: 'In the beginning there was rhythm.'"

Ted,

Since I started again as an adult, my conscience has always been focused on the names of the pitches and the melodies.

Therefore, I have never counted beats and not developed that rhytmic stability that is the mother of (western) music.

Now, I am learning jazz and folk and French songs (Automn Leaves, Tum Balalaika,Le temps du tango) and I see that the chord progressions and regular rythm are what gives support to the melody.
Therefore, I want them to become independant from the melody and even to take the lead for a while.

I would like to improvise more and more from these songs and I intend to learn a lot of my life favourites (Jacques Brel, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Barbara, Beatles :nostalgia, nostalgia ).

I practiced what PianoMuse advised yesterday and I had the happiest surprise. From now on, I count beats and concentrating only on the succession of beats (and bars) has made the memorization process much easier.

I will work more on this, but I wouldn't not be surprised if "rythm memory" was the most powerful of all the different sorts of memories.

Maybe you find rythm easy is because your musical education allowed you to acquire the basic skills so that you could explore a free way.

Interesting topic!

Of all my beginner mistakes, I think the most aggregious is periodically loosing the pulse of the piece - especially with the baroque dances.

I've been looking for some place where I can actually learn to dance minuettes, bourees, gavottes, quadrilles, etc. If I had a better understanding of the dance movements, I might be able to play them with more rythmic precision. For now, I just experiment getting up, improvising some dance movements, and then sitting back down at the piano and trying again. It seems to help for the fleeting moment, but the results have not yet become permanent.

Hey Benedict- have you come across any Astor Piazolla tangos? If you're getting into jazz you'll love them. Try Milonga del Angel. It's Gorgeous.

You're right, Benedict. Since early childhood I have always had a very acute response to rhythm. Conventional harmony, on the other hand, wasn't natural at all; I had to work really hard at it, and even now I still operate more by intellect, mental arithmetic and keyboard geography than instinctive aural feeling in that department.

Some things about yourself you can alter, others you cannot, and if you create music you have to be yourself otherwise it's no good. So I'm stuck there.

Ted,

I do not feel you are stuck at all. You follow your path and it seems to fulfill you.
Of course, a perfect taoist might say that following your path is exactly what being stuck means.

Renauda,

I will follow your suggestion : Astor Piazzola is on my shopping list. I am currently learning "Le temps du tango" by Leo Ferre.

Here are the lyrics. For an old Savoyard like you, it should be a piece of cake.

le temps du tango


Linda,

I find that songs (folk, pop and jazz) are the best way to imprint rythm. The left hand plays chords in a regular way. If you practice like PianoMuse suggested and count One two three four or One two three, after a while, you will not be carried away by the melody.

Piano is a bit schizophrenic : you have usually to musicians playing together.One is a singer and sings like a bird. The other one is both a drummer and a bass player and just counts beats in a cyclical way.
The drummer/bass provides the regularity and the environment for the singer. He is like a mother to the child : his regularity will allow the child to express his emotions.
It is this marriage of stability and creativity that makes music so great.

Do I make sense ?

Regards to you all.

Yes, Benedict, it all makes sense to me intellectually. It is at the point of execution that I stumble. I find it rather amusing (at times, irritating) when some parts of my body absolutely refuse to comply with my wishes!

Thanks . . . Linda

I find rythm absolutely fascinating.

First, I had to relearn how to count.
It is like being a baby again.
One two three four
One two three.

I have to stop the flow of the music and just count till each note is at the right place and my mind only is with the counting.

This makes the memorizing process so much easier and does not use any memory space at all since the counting is almost physical.

The beats become impulsions. And this is when the magic begins.

Then, comes the really important thing :

The first beat is very accentuated. The third beat accentuated. The second and fourth, not at all.

And the music, whether it is Bach or Satie is always in this rythmic structure (archetype ?).

Then rythm becomes a flow and the counting disappears : you just have impulses in a movement.

You mean life ?