Piano Video Lesson: How to Play "Extreme" Rubato

Hi and welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com I'm Robert Estrin with a really fascinating topic today, "How to practice with Extreme Rubato." Rubato is a give and take of the tempo, a speeding up and a slowing down, without ever gaining or losing time. It's a technique that's used in performance of romantic period music like Chopin, Schulman, Liszt, and other composers from this era, that really had so much emotion to the music. Only appropriate really for certain styles of music and certain periods of music like the Romantic Period and then even old pieces.

And the idea of practicing with extreme rubato, is a way that you can see just how far you can push something. Because after all, how do you know if you're doing too much unless you do too much? I've talked about it in the past like practicing too fast. Sometimes, you can gain insights by taking something to an extreme level.

So I'm gonna take a little snippets of the B-flat minor Scherzo of Chopin. First, I'm gonna play it absolutely straight, metronomically, with no rubato at all. So you can hear what it sounds like in perfect time.

[music]

It sounds a little sterile that way. Now, I'm gonna play it with extreme rubato. It's almost like if you're ever in a car going up and down hills, you get that feeling of acceleration and then that, aah, coming down the hill. That's kind of an analogy as to how rubato affects you emotionally. Let's do an extreme rubato further than you'd actually want to go on performance, just to get a sense really of what this is.

[music]

So, by doing this, you get a feeling for where the rise and fall of the phrase is. Now, of course, tempering that extreme rubato and playing it in a more musical fashion now. Not metronomically, but not quite as extreme as this, you can get something that's quite beautiful that gives you a nice emotional lift.

[music]

So, this can be a really valuable practice technique, to kind of contort your music to an extent. The important thing whenever playing with rubato is, anybody listening should be able to tap along with the pulse. So the pulse gets faster, the pulse gets slower but you never lose the pulse. And that is the secret to rubato, that and never gaining or losing time.

My father would sometimes demonstrate this technique by putting the metronome on and playing with the rubato where you get ahead of the metronome, and then come back down and get back to the beat. Never gaining or losing time and having that sense of the pulse always in your music.

I hope this has been helpful. Experiment with your music. Push it to the limits and then come back to a comfortable level of rubato in your playing.

Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at virtualsheetmusic.com.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---