How to Play Polyrhythms on Piano
Hands separately, both rhythms go well. Together, they keep bumping into each other. To play polyrhythms on piano, the two hands need a beat they share, and a note they both aim for.
In a live lesson a student was working on a nocturne by John Field. "That's a nice little nocturne," I said. "Two pages, I believe." It had four against three in it. Each rhythm alone is simple enough; it is the combination that feels awkward. So the question came: how do you practise polyrhythm?
My first answer: "First just tapping."
Coordinating Both Hands
Many students try to ignore the other hand. This results in uneven rhythm: where the hands should land together, you hear them land a fraction apart.
Each hand does its own job unwavered, and stays aware of the other. That is how I describe independence between the hands. With two rhythms, that awareness needs something to hold on to: one shared beat.
How awareness is built when each hand has a different texture, a melody in one hand and an accompaniment in the other, I go through in my post on preparing each hand for its own job.
How to Count Polyrhythms
"First, you need to have the tempo you're going to take." Then: "You can close the piano." You tap on the lid and count the beat out loud.
While one hand taps its pattern, the counted beat goes on in the other, undisturbed. The ones to start with:
- Two against three: one hand two, the other three. "That's three in the same beat."
- Four against three: "It is four in the right hand. Three in the left hand."
- Eight against six, as in that Field nocturne: it looks worse on the page, but it is "actually just four against three".
Hands Together on the Meeting Note
"And they come together there." That is the meeting note, the note both hands listen for. Between two of those, each hand plays its own rhythm, and on the meeting note they arrive together.
In the Field nocturne I said: "So make sure that you play this together, and then, and together again. And together again." Knowing where the next one is gives both hands somewhere to go.
Check the note values before you count, too. Earlier in that lesson the student had found that one note in the score, printed as an eighth, had to be a sixteenth. "Yes, correct," I said. "So, then it's actually not polyrhythm." That was one polyrhythm fewer to practise.
Synchronising the Arm Movements
Before the polyrhythm question, we worked on the arm movements in that nocturne. The left hand moves in circles. When you play together, the right hand follows the left with the movement, going up and down: "Down together, up together, see."
"Doesn't have to be exactly the same amount. But it's not like when one goes down, the other goes up." We synchronise them, because "otherwise you don't get it nicely together."
So the rhythms are different, and the arms still move together. In Super Fingers I say it in the first module: "Synchronizing arm movements helps everything align, even in complex polyrhythms like 3 against 2."
A month later a student brought an exercise for four against three. "Important with polyrhythms is that you synchronize the movement," I said. And then: "But try to make it fluent. It's not yet fluent."
My musical example for this is Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66, with its four against three. The left hand makes circular movements, the right hand does the passagework and follows the left, and micro-movements keep the passages smooth.
Try this
Take one passage with a polyrhythm in your piece.
- Find the note where both hands play together.
- Set the metronome at a comfortable speed.
- Tap the rhythm hands separate on the lid first, counting out loud.
- Play steadily, from one meeting note to the next.
- Listen: do both land exactly together? If not, go a little slower.
- Build the tempo, each hand still listening to the other.
- Now turn off the metronome and make sure the rhythm doesn't break.
Why hands separate first? In Super Fingers I say it about the exercises: "It's not to become like the school child has to follow the rules. But it has the reason that you feel much better when you do the hands separate."
When to switch the metronome on and when to switch it off again, I explain in my post on how to use a metronome for piano practice.
Two Against Three and Four Against Three
Two against three and four against three must be in your system. Counting gets you there. "These are the most basic that every pianist should try to get in the system."
In your system means without thinking. "Yes, it must be automatic." Until then you count, out loud, the way you did on the lid.
If you work through Czerny's Op. 599, the hands stay rhythmically "quite equal" for a long time. Two against three comes in somewhere around Nos. 46 to 50, where "it starts to be maybe more difficult slowly."
Playing Complex Polyrhythms
In Chopin or Scriabin, eleven against thirteen, counting will not help you so much.
For the more complicated ones, "the clue is what comes together and what doesn't. And does this note come before this note. Or just after that note." That gives you a picture of the passage, and then you work on the movement.
I played quite some Scriabin, my favourite composer. In the late works you find "very complex layering of different rhythms in the left and in the right. And sometimes even in one hand."
"You really have to feel the pianistic movements." One hand plays eleven notes, the other thirteen, "or 15 notes or whatever". "And in the end of the passage. The hands must come together again. That's all you need to make sure."
In short
Settle on the tempo first, and tap the two rhythms into one counted beat on the closed lid. Then play from one shared note to the next with both arms moving together, and let the metronome go once the rhythm holds. Where counting can't carry it, feel the movement until the hands meet again.
Where It Shows Up
Without a shared beat, the melody wavers over its accompaniment. A nocturne is mostly built on that texture.
The four against three in that Field nocturne was "still very simple".
Super Fingers Essential Exercise 10, Eights Against Quarters, is the one exercise where the hands play different rhythms in parallel, with the arm movements of both hands synchronised. It is not a polyrhythm yet: eighths against quarters divide evenly. Very basic, and still many students find it quite hard, to my own surprise.
Decide which passage must come together first. I'll show you where the hands meet.
