Perhaps the most fundamental thing that we need to master before we progress too far down on our musical adventure is that of pulse.
Pulse is the thing that keeps a piece of music together and keeps it moving through thick and thin. It is the driving force behind it whether or not the tempo (the speed) stays the same, increases or decreases throughout.
Keeping your pulse together, however, is one of the challenges that many beginners can face. This isn't to say that they don't have rhythm to begin with of course, but just that initially bringing it out onto a new instrument can be so daunting that it can make the whole process seem a lot harder than normal. Remember that as a beginner - especially if piano is your first instrument - you have to learn fingerings, melody, notation, rhythm and be expected to keep it all together with a strong, steady pulse.
Luckily, there are exercises to help you improve your pulse on piano!
And these ones are entirely tailor-made by me, so read and play on and get working on strengthening your rhythm now...
Question - How Is Your Sense of Pulse Already?
Before we move on, let's identify how well you already understand pulse with a couple of listening exercises.
Have a listen to my two performances of a couple of pieces below and, as soon as you can, clap along:
Try and listen for the first beat of each measure and emphasise these with a stronger clap.
Try counting along as you clap along. For example; 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 etc. if you feel there are 4 beats in a bar.
How many beats do you think were in a bar? 2, 3 or 4? Answers at the very end of this blog to deter wandering eyes!
If you are correct with your answers, you actually have a good understanding of pulse and can move on. If not, I recommend you actively listen to a lot more music. It doesn't have to be piano music. It doesn't even have to be what you'd consider 'music' in the conventional sense. Clap along evenly with the ticking of a clock. A car indicator. A metronome. I even find myself finding rhythms and counting pulses during MRI scans (although, regrettably, I am not allowed to move during such times so this is an entirely mental exercise).
Speaking of metronomes, dig yours out for the following exercises and set it to 60 BPM. If you don't have a metronome, you can download apps onto your phone for free! Otherwise, note I've set the BPM to 60 so you can use a ticking clock. Just make sure you can hear it well over your piano!
First Exercises - Clap Along
Before you even sit down at the piano (or, at least, touch the keys), you can develop your sense of pulse by clapping along to your newly set metronome.
Let's assume a common time signature - 4/4 - as our standard and simply clap out the following rhythms.
However, the trick is that your clapping needs to be bang on the beats.
60 BPM is a nice, steady tempo for getting used to this. You can take it a little faster if it feels detrimentally slow as it is fair to say that going slow is surprisingly harder than fast a lot of the time, but if you feel you need a little more thinking time, just slow it down a touch (not too much - as I say, too slow and you'd be surprised at how hard it gets!):
Exercise One:
For this exercise, we are clapping on every tick of the metronome. Treat the repeat mark on bar two as ongoing until you are ready to stop, finishing with the single clap on beat 1, bar 3 when you are ready to do so.
When you feel that you are clapping along fairly steadily, strengthen your inner metronome by applying the following ideas:
Count the beats out loud: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 etc.
Emphasise in turn the individual beats. For example, start by clapping beat 1 louder than the rest, then beat 2 louder than the rest. If you need to keep counting out loud to assist then that's fine, but if you can do it without then so much the better!
Exercise Two:
For this exercise, we are clapping on and between every tick of the metronome. Treat the repeat mark on bar two as ongoing until you are ready to stop, finishing with the single clap on beat 1, bar 3 when you are ready to do so.
When you feel that you are clapping along fairly steadily, strengthen your inner metronome by applying the following ideas:
Count only the main beats out loud: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 etc.
Emphasise in turn the individual main beats. For example, start by clapping beat 1 louder than the rest, then beat 2 louder than the rest. If you need to keep counting out loud to assist then that's fine, but if you can do it without then so much the better!
Experiment by emphasising the beats between the main beats. For example, clap the second quaver (the clap between beats 1 and 2) louder than the rest. If you need to keep counting out loud to assist then that's fine, but if you can do it without then so much the better!
Exercise Three:
For this exercise, we are clapping on every tick of the metronome as well as between beats 2 and 3, and also 4 and 1 of the following bar.. Treat the repeat mark on bar two as ongoing until you are ready to stop, finishing with the single clap on beat 1, bar 3 when you are ready to do so.
When you feel that you are clapping along fairly steadily, strengthen your inner metronome by applying the following ideas:
Count the beats out loud: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 etc.
Emphasise in turn the individual beats. For example, start by clapping beat 1 louder than the rest, then beat 2 louder than the rest. If you need to keep counting out loud to assist then that's fine, but if you can do it without then so much the better!
How do you feel that went?
Go over these ideas a few times and when you feel a bit more confident, try speeding up the metronome to develop even more strength in your overall pulse before moving on.
Second Exercises - Play Along
Congratulations - you've overcome a major obstacle in music: getting a good pulse!
Now what we need to do is to apply it to the very instrument that we are playing - the piano.
There is no hard and fast rule as to what each hand should play for the sake of these exercises as we are focussing purely on strengthening your pulse, but I've chosen a standard C major triad from Middle C in the right hand and one octave lower in the left.
(Re)set your metronome to 60 BPM and using this C major triad in both hands and the nice steady ticking of the metronome we will start firstly with semibreves.
Why?
We've now added the obstacle of playing something and - even though our hands are doing the same thing each time, it would be of huge benefit to us to hear beats 2 - 3 and 4 counting us in to alleviate some of the pressure we may initially feel with this added burden.
(for each of the exercises following, treat the repeat mark on bar 2 as being applicable as many times as you require before finishing on the chord on bar 3 and - similarly to above - count out loud on the main beats and alternate emphases on different beats to get a good feel for pulse with slightly varying rhythm and emphasis).
Exercise One
Once you feel comfortable with semibreves, move on to minims:
Exercise Two
Exercise Three
...then to crotchets:
Exercise Four
...and finally quavers:
When you feel comfortable with these exercises and their variations, try taking up the metronome value and increasing the speed to really put your pulse to the test!
Third Exercises - Syncing Up The Hands
Well done on making it here!
Now is the time to try syncing up your hands if they are doing different rhythms whilst keeping that pulse nice and strong!
(Re)set the metronome to 60 BPM and work through the following exercises. As previous, when you feel you have them, try counting out loud on the main beats and then emphasising different notes throughout the bars:
Exercise One
Exercise Two
Exercise Three
In each of the above exercises, we have the same basic idea but we're just applying a double speed effect each time. Feel free to speed these ones up too when you have the basic exercises mastered!
Fourth Exercises - Applying Fingers and Melody
Now we have used chords to demonstrate a steady pulse and synchronisation - as well as an improved internalised rhythm - we just need to ensure that we can apply this to a melodic situation. After all, melody on piano accounts for at least 50% of the music we play!
There are countless exercises already out there, of course: scales, arpeggios, broken chords, chromatics, those as written by Hanon or Schmitt et al, but these exercises - whilst good at instilling a basic pulse (as my earlier ones on this post did) don't really develop on that specifically.
We're going to strip a basic C major scale right back to a pentascale (its first five notes i.e. C - D - E - F - G) and use this as a basis for our following exercises.
(Re)set your metronome to 60 BPM and play on, using the above rules of repeat marks, counting the beats and emphasising different beats to ensure you get a good all round practice of pulse:
Exercise One
No doubt this scale will be very familiar. Ensure you use each finger of both hands, so start with your thumb in the right hand playing middle C and your little finger on the left hand playing the C underneath, then use each finger following in turn to play the next note up or down.
Exercise Two
To avoid getting too complicated, we will momentarily strip the scale away from the left hand and focus instead on just its root note - C. Your right hand will play exactly as it was, but your left hand will now play C in minims (every two beats).
When you feel comfortable with this exercise, try these variations:
swap the hands so that the left hand takes the scale and the right hand takes the C. Keep in the same octave, so middle C in the right hand and the scale starting on the C below in the left.
alternate the fingers in the left hand (or right, if you have swapped!). Try playing all measures with the same finger, or alternate between fingers for every individual note. Tell yourself first what fingering you would like and try to stick to it, as this will help your fingers get used to moving on demand whilst maintaining pulse.
Exercise Three
All that we are doing now is double speed of the above!
Exercise Four
Now we have introduced the scale back into the left hand, however we have kept it at half tempo to whatever the right hand is doing! In this instance, the right hand is going to play a pentascale in quavers whereas the left hand is going to take crotchets.
Exercise Five
And to conclude, we do the same as above but we swap hands!
Conclusion: Improve Your Pulse on Piano
One of the strongest arguments for practising with a metronome is simply due to its forcing of a pulse into us, and once we have a strong pulse we can comfortably deviate away from it with little consequence to the musicality of our performance.
Whenever you listen to music, count along to yourself and try to spot rhythms and measures and try to apply some of the above exercises to pieces of music you hear (ones in 4/4 time, of course!). It will all go towards strengthening your internal rhythm.
ANSWERS
In my video above, there were three beats in a bar in piece 1 and 4 beats in a bar in piece 2 (three time and four time respectively).
Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.
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