Music Video Lesson: How to Play With Rubato

One of the secrets is thinking the larger pulse. Instead of thinking each eighth, think the quarter note.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin here with how to play with Rubato. You hear great pianists and other instrumentalists and they bring you on an emotional journey with their music in no small part by the use of Rubato. Rubato is an expressive playing technique in primarily romantic era, 19th century music of speeding up and slowing down, never gaining or losing time but having a little bit of motion in the tempo. And I'm going to demonstrate it for you with the B minor Prelude of Chopin. First I'm going to play it absolutely straight with no Rubato whatsoever.

You know, it's pretty, it's a beautiful melody but it doesn't really grab you and pull you in. I'm going to play it now with Rubato and if you tap along you'll notice the last time you could just...

One of the secrets is thinking the larger pulse. Instead of thinking each eighth, think the quarter note. And listen what happens.

I don't know if you could sense the beat speeding up and slowing down. Just think about it. Do you hear that? The ebb and flow, never gaining or losing time but just floating around the beat and it pulls you in, doesn't it? It's very emotional inducing music when you play it with Rubato. Experiment and remember try to think the longer note value.

You can't play Rubato very effectively if you're thinking every single eighth or worse yet think every sixteenth. That quarter note, it gives you a lot of room to play around with the beat. Never gaining or losing time. That's the secret to Rubato. Try it on your music. Let me know how it works for you in the comments here on livingpianos.com and YouTube. This is livingpianos.com. Your online piano resource. Thanks for subscribing. The bell, the thumbs up. Really appreciate it to help with the YouTube algorithms so more people find these videos. Look forward to the next one.

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