How to Keep Tempo on Piano
You know the notes, you can play the piece through without stopping, and still it doesn't sound steady. To keep tempo on piano, I first look for the places where the tempo changes without anybody choosing it.
"I know it now" usually means the notes are right. The tempo may say something different.
In my video on learning a piece fast I talk about programming the notes into the fingers, and then I add: "And with the notes I mean the notes and the rhythm."
Why Your Tempo Isn't Steady
In a live lesson a student played me a piece. It started to be quite good. But in one place the tempo slowed down a lot, and in another it suddenly sped up a lot.
I asked them to be a little bit more consistent in the tempo. The answer was that they play it the way they feel it.
Then they found the reason themselves. Where they felt unsure, they got hesitant and slowed down. Where they felt confident again, they picked it up.
That was exactly what I heard. I pointed to the places: here, "You slow down a lot." And then, "When you start to be here, you suddenly speed up a lot."
Often the tempo adjusts to how secure you feel. This can be either slowing down or rushing. It slows where you feel unsure, and it speeds up where you feel safe again.
Rubato or Unsteady Tempo?
From the inside it can feel like your own rubato. I understand that. However the listener hears unsteady playing.
Always is rubato a musical decision. In this case the place doesn't sit in the fingers well enough.
Slowing down, speeding up, taking extra time: you can do all of that because of musical intention. Or it happens because you are unsure. There's a difference there, and you can hear it.
What I don't want to hear is "Ah, but I'm taking freedom here", while you even don't know how to count the rhythm decently.
How you prepare a tempo change you choose, so the listener hears it coming, I wrote out in how to play rubato on piano. Here it's about the other kind, the one nobody chose.
Keeping Time Where You Feel Unsure
So take the place out and work on it. Places which are difficult, you do more, until it goes in tempo. Only then do you connect it to the bars around it.
When I show this on Beethoven's Für Elise, I say: "I'm not starting from the start all the time over and over. So I now go to where it overlaps a little bit."
Starting again each time, you play the easy bars again and again, and the difficult place only once. So the tempo keeps giving way there. I wrote a whole post on working a difficult spot by itself, instead of starting from the top every time.
For me a piece is ready to play for others when it is secure in every place, so the tempo is your choice again.
Working slowly on what is difficult is not only for students. Horowitz, for example, said that he advises every pianist to play the first étude of Chopin very slowly and strong: Chopin Étude Op. 10 No. 1. Every day!
Counting Out Loud
With a lot of experience, there is also another way to find the weak places. "Sometimes I play pieces even faster than they have to be and I let mistakes happen on purpose to see where the weak points, weak spots, and then I going to work and polish them and eliminate those mistakes in a very conscious organised manner."
But when you are a beginner it's very risky to do and I don't recommend it. Start with counting instead, out loud if it helps. Feel the smallest note value "like an inner vibration", and place all the notes on the right time.
Try this
Take a piece you can play through without stopping.
- Record it once, and listen back.
- Mark where you feel unsure, and where you speed up.
- Take out the difficult spot: the group of notes where the tempo gives way.
- Do it more, a little slower first, until it goes in tempo.
- When it goes well, repeat it several times so it stays.
- Connect it to the bars around it, from where it overlaps, in the same tempo.
In that same lesson I reminded the student of my reply to their video: "You should record yourself more often. It's a good way of practice. It feels different than just playing without a record."
After the work, record it again and listen to two phrases: the one with the difficult place, and one where you feel safe. Does the first one still slow down? Does the second one still speed up? When both come out in the same tempo, the place starts to sit in the fingers.
Should You Always Practise With a Metronome?
Turn the metronome on to check whether the difficult place now stays in tempo with the bars around it, and then turn it off again.
In a lesson I put it like this: "The metronome is actually to check… It's not something we practice all the time with. Like you're seeing in the movies that they always have the metronome on." It's just a checking device, "but not something to make yourself mad with."
Freedom in the Tempo
In principle you should be able to play everything in tempo. From there you make musical decisions where to take more freedom. You always start from being able to play in tempo.
I also take some freedom in the tempo, but never so much that it falls out of the whole form. And this is what I listen for:
- How much. In Thompson No. 12 a student took too much time where the piece is not finished yet: "Yes, you can make a little bit, a fraction, maybe take time. But not like this. That's too much, I think. Because then the structure also falls."
- The line. With another student: "Can take a little bit time here and there. But try not to make it to overdo it. Otherwise it's loses a little bit line."
- The counting. Even in a Largo, like Chopin's Prelude in C minor, Op. 28 No. 20: "You need to count exact before you're going to interpret."
- The first note. I find the tempo from the music, and "when you choose a tempo you start from note number one in tempo."
In short
Treat every tempo change you didn't choose as a place to practise. Make that place secure by itself, then let it back into the piece. Add the freedom afterwards, on purpose, and in fractions.
Where It Shows Up
Left alone, the difficult places keep choosing your tempo.
In the live lessons you play me your piece, and I show you where the tempo gives way.
I'd like to hear the piece you say you know now.
