IRCAM TS is $99 right now

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Going o/t but in line with what Shooshie posted, when I was working for Martha Graham, Aaron Copeland conducted Appalachian Spring and as company pianist, I was able to sit right behind him. He hadn't rehearsed with the dancers prior to the NYC performance at City Center, but they knew the piece and he knew the piece so what could possibly go wrong? The guy was 90-ish so at worst we were expecting slower tempi. NOT! He flew through that piece, probably for the same reasons Lenny did with Candide (considered by many as the BEST overture for a Broadway show ever - well, at least before Sweeny Todd). But I digress....

The dancers ended up running through parts of the piece (literally). I remember them flying through the air where there were previously not any leaps. There were a few that night and when they hit the wings, they had to come to a very sudden stop. The looks on their faces were priceless. The comments backstage were less than complimentary.

Martha said something to the effect that when her musical mentor, Louis Horst, was "hungry" (Louis was a very big guy) he would take all the tempos fast so he could get to dinner earlier. LOL.

When I was teaching music for dance (1986-2000) at UC Santa Barbara his book Pre-Classic Dance Forms was required reading as was Modern Dance Forms for upper level candidates.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... ouis-Horst

[Tritonemusic]

Haha, good stuff, MLC. Thanks for sharing.

[Shooshie]

Great stuff, MLC! There are too tempos [yes, too, and only too] in dance: Too fast and Too slow! Too fast can be exciting, to say the least, but heaven forbid that it move too slow.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

NOTHING teaches a musician about keeping a steady tempo like working with dancers! It's either rock solid or you don't work for long... LOL

[mikehalloran]

I used to have a problem in the '70s where choreographers would never believe the tempi I gave before rehearsals started. I learned to make rehearsal tapes with one of the pianists and give them out beforehand.

Until I read this, I'd forgotten how little I liked working with choreographers back then.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That's not a solution with some. One great teacher/choreographer was know for yelling at the tape recorder "DON'T SPEED UP!" Ha ha ha...

[mikehalloran]

That's not a solution with some. One great teacher/choreographer was know for yelling at the tape recorder "DON'T SPEED UP!" Ha ha ha...

I worked with her in 1981.

[toodamnhip]

That's not a solution with some. One great teacher/choreographer was know for yelling at the tape recorder "DON'T SPEED UP!" Ha ha ha...

I worked with her in 1981.

I remember, when I was teaching her, telling my daughter; "if you’re not playing in good time, it will sound like the metronome is playing out of time or like it has a bad feel...but it is not the metronome, it is you. Practice until it sounds like that metronome is really swinging on those back beats”..

[Shooshie]

That's not a solution with some. One great teacher/choreographer was know for yelling at the tape recorder "DON'T SPEED UP!" Ha ha ha...

I worked with her in 1981.

I remember, when I was teaching her, telling my daughter; "if you’re not playing in good time, it will sound like the metronome is playing out of time or like it has a bad feel...but it is not the metronome, it is you. Practice until it sounds like that metronome is really swinging on those back beats”..

I used to have a duo which was very popular in this area. The guy I worked with was an incredibly good musician, but he had a tendency to rush. One day we got the idea to expand our duo electronically, using WX-7s and a Mac with Performer. It went over quite well, all things considered, but there was a technical problem. When we played Vivaldi double concertos, there were sections of 12 bars during which the MIDI orchestra —the concerto grosso, to be more precise — remained silent while the concertino (soloists) played alone. Twelve bars is a long time to go, alternating melody and accompaniment without a hesitation or rushed note. But embarrassment when the orchestra comes in at the "wrong" time is a great motivator. I didn't have to explain the stakes. Once we practiced it a few times, it was quite obvious what had to happen. We had to play it perfectly. Not almost perfect, but... perfect.

Guess what? That's not hard to do when everyone does their job. Every time we performed it, the orchestra came in exactly in time, which meant that we did our job. It's a groove. A mindset. You see time as a physical shape, while the music is the color with which you fill that shape, and you don't vary from it one bit, because you can see how to color inside the lines.

When someone can't play in time, it's not because they can't or because it's too hard. It's because they don't care enough to do that. They haven't placed their sense of time at the center of their technique, because it's the easiest thing to gloss over. You're not a complete musician until you have placed time on the same level as notes, rhythm and expressivity.

That's not to say that all things must be metronomic. Music has to breathe, too, and the great pianists, balladeers, and jazz soloists teach us better than anyone how to do that. But within the give and take of that breath there is a pulse, and that pulse is absolute.

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

After years of evaluating my own playing deficiencies I discovered why I tended to speed up (rarely do people slow down). In my case and I suspect others, I had a tendency to "shortchange" a beat every so often. Then to compensate and match the shorter beat I'd make the tempo match the shorter beat. The process is cumulative and if not corrected can be career ending. It was working with dancers that cured that once and for all and have me the opportunity to evaluate what I was doing wrong. Eventually I married one of those dancers and after 33 years we're still very happily together. Now on to sight reading! Lol

[toodamnhip]

I was in a Latin salsa band playing piano parts, (montunos) with a guitar synthesizer, a really cool gig. But the drummer/ main percussionist, would slow down, nothing worse than salsa music slowing down. I would look at the dancers and wonder if they had any clue LOL. They probably just thought they were getting tired

[mhschmieder]

I'd say if you married her, then your timing was just right.

[Shooshie]

I'd say if you married her, then your timing was just right.

Good one!

[mikehalloran]

(rarely do people slow down)

Do drummers count?

[MIDI Life Crisis]