How to achieve rhythmic precision

Developing a clear rhythmic notion is our main concern when teaching piano lessons in London.

Whether you are a beginner or have taken piano lessons before, the rhythmic layer of musical notation has always been a difficult topic to master for building a solid foundation upon which to construct.

Every piano teacher giving piano lessons in the studio has the responsibility of guiding the student to become a high-quality performer, and to achieve this goal, it is absolutely essential to have a deep understanding of the essential elements of musical scores to avoid superficial interpretations without any deeper insight into its core: rhythm.

First and foremost, the rhythmic layer (also called “surface rhythm”) of the piece must be considered separately from the tonal layer (melody). In this way, we can focus on the duration symbols without any “melodic distraction”; especially if we already know the piece you are studying. Most musicians pick up what they know about these things haphazardly, trying to listen to the pieces they want to perform from a recording, without realizing the liberties that each performer adds to the piece. This may be seen as the easiest way at first, but without any real fundamental knowledge, this faulty method can be obtained, allowing all kinds of individualistic distortions of the ideas expressed in a composer’s score.

All the piano teachers in the London studio will guide you meticulously through this process to help you create your own version, but on a solid and precise rhythmic basis.

As we mentioned before, the rhythmic layer must be prepared and read separately. Only the durational symbols should be considered at this learning stage; this can be achieved through solfeggio or “Solfege.”

Solfeggio is the art of accurately decoding the duration of rhythmic patterns presented in the score, so each of them must be trained in isolation but with the presentation through specific exercises that will give knowledge of all basic conventions and facts of music theory and its traditional representation in written form.

An excellent method used in our piano lessons in London is a book called “Elementary Training for Musicians”; the author is Paul Hindemith, a renowned German composer, violist, violinist, orchestra conductor, and teacher who designed a method from beginners to professional musicians.

Hindemith is one of the most important German composers of his time. His early works are in a late romantic language, and later he produced expressionist works, rather in the style of early Arnold Schoenberg, before developing a thinner, counterpointally complex style in the 1920s. This style has been described as neoclassical.

His method is not only intended for piano lessons but also for guitar and music theory lessons, making this book extremely useful for all teachers here at WKMT.