Mastering Dotted Rhythms in Beethoven’s Pathétique

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin with a viewer question.

And the viewer question is, Robert, could you possibly do an updated video of Dottie Rhythms Part 2 using the first bars of the Pathetique Sonata to see how this transcribes.

As I still find it difficult to count the dotted rhythms there, I can't believe how many performances I've heard of the Pathetique Sonata where the rhythm is not precise. I'm going to play it for you and I'm going to be counting in my head and then I'm going to show you how you can count to get the rhythm of the beginning of the Pathetique Sonata spot on because man, it sounds so great when you do it that way.

And that is the beginning of the Pathetique Sonata.

So what I am doing here is I am counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So here's how it goes, you watch this.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

See how that works? Now you don't have to count 1, 2, 3, 4, I was just doing that so you could understand that it's the 1 and the four.

Now here's the challenge.

If you only count.

There's no way you can maintain tempo because...

So you have to have a combination of the beat.

So you have to feel the pulse of the beat of the quarter note, but also these faster notes so that you can have the rhythm precise.

Actually, the eighth notes.

So you must always have the subdivisions, yet having the larger unit of the beat in mind so you maintain tempo. And that is the challenge of dotted rhythms in a nutshell.

Subdividing, yet maintaining the pulse of the larger beat simultaneously.

Nobody said it was easy playing the piano. You have to know people talk about this as being, you know, hard to do. The piano, multiply that by about a thousand. There's all kinds of things you do at the same time.

What's the secret? Breaking it down into individual steps. That's the methodology in my teaching that I show people all the time. How to break things down into the visual steps, whether it's sight reading, whether it's memorizing, refining, technique. Music theory each has its own methodology for those pillars of piano playing. Check out the description if you want to know more about that. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/mastering-dotted-rhythms-in-beethovens-pathetique/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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