Music Video Lesson: How to Practice Tempo Changes With the Metronome

How could you possibly do a retard with the metronome ticking? And the secret is you allow yourself to get off from the metronome and then get back on in the next measure in as elegantly a way as you possibly can.

Hi and welcome to livingpianos.com. Robert Estrin here with another show for you. How to deal with practicing with a metronome when there are retards in your music. Sometimes you have tempo changes in your music, but you wanna practice with a metronome to make sure you're playing overall well, and you wonder how the heck can you do that? Do you program a metronome? Well, there are some metronomes that are very sophisticated, or you can work with a digital audio workstation and program in exactly the amount of speeding up and slowing down in the score. But boy, that would take a lot of time and trouble. So I have a much easier way to address this. And the first thing I'm gonna do is gonna play for you a piece, a student piece by Cuthbert Harris, Graceful Dance, that has a little bit of a retard just before the recapitulation, just before return of the first theme. So I want you to hear this first, and then I'm gonna discuss how to deal with this with a metronome.

You've probably heard a little bit of the retard just before the return of the beginning. It was over here.

So if you were practicing with a metronome, you could play it first without the retard at all, because one of the most important things of any tempo changes in your music is to know how much you're doing. If you never play it with the metronome, you won't know how much retard you're doing. So first thing is to play it with the metronome with no retard at all like this. Now, you might think, how could you possibly do a retard with a metronome ticking? And the secret is you allow yourself to get off from the metronome and then get back on in the next measure in as elegantly a way as you possibly can. Let me demonstrate for you. Now, it might not work out exactly the same each time. You may have to have a little concession as I just did there, but that's fine because you get the benefit of being able to play through a piece and with the metronome. Now, in some pieces that have a lot of little subtle changes of tempo, this can be invaluable because otherwise you can't practice with the metronome at all. Now, once again, the most important thing in preparation for working any piece that has tempo changes, whether it's a cello rondo's or retards, retardendos, anything of that nature, is to first play it with no tempo changes. I can't tell you how many times I've had students who come in and they're doing such huge retards because if you never check back with the metronome, you'll have no idea how much you're doing. So this gives you an idea of a subtlety of your retards or if you're becoming excessive. First play it once again, right with the metronome and then don't worry about getting off. Just get back on as soon as you can and you too can practice music that has tempo changes with the metronome in the manner I just described. I hope this is helpful for you again. I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. If you ring the bell and the thumbs up, it helps the algorithm and we'll see you next time here on livingpianos.com, your online piano resource.

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