How and why classical musicians feel rhythm differently

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Rhythm is treated very differently in classical music from the sharp precision that other musics might require - it's organic and fluid. Recognizing this difference and being sensitive to the nature of rhythm itself in different contexts is important if you're trying to bridge gaps between different styles of musicianship.

I recognize also that I come off as pompous and harsh sometimes with my critiques of - the musicians who played on inside//outside's record were absolutely phenomenal and had to learn and record the music in a very short amount of time. What they did was, quite frankly, incredible, and of the highest professional standard.

Hear inside//outside here:

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Peace,
Adam

[thereforebeloved]

Nobody tell this guy about Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." His head might explode, lol.

[douglasgreen]

So if I play the wrong notes, it's jazz. But if I play the wrong rhythm, it's classical. All this time I've been playing classical jazz!

[mornevanheerden]

I am a professional orchestra musician - the joking rule is: whatever you do, DON'T look at the conductor:)

[emizfliu]

bold of you to assume we actually look at the conductor

[ClaytonRegoMusic]

Classical pro here, and I can tell you that any perceived lack of rhythm you've observed among us has nothing to do with the conductor. I can assure that 95% of the time, 80% of the orchestra isn't looking at the conductor and is staying in time with their ears and (YES) with feeling the groove of the music

Also the example you showed of Leonard Bernstein's conducting to show a conductor beating out of time is sort of a red herring. The beginning of Mahler's 5th Symphony is an unaccompanied trumpet solo. His beats you see here aren't him "keeping the trumpet player in time", they're there as a cue. He's essentially saying "go ahead john do your thing". Moments after you cut off the clip the rest of the orchestra joins in and you would see Bernstein's baton line up in time with what you're hearing.

Good video, but I think you misunderstand the conductor's role a little bit. That's not to say there aren't very poorly rhythmically developed classical players, ESPECIALLY string players. That I believe is connected more to practice habits, culture and personality more than it has anything to do with musical style or whoever is leading the ensemble.

[noamcinnamon]

In the mahler symphony, both Bernstien and the players are correct, as the downbeat for the player is the upbeat of the conductor. The conductor's downbeat is essentially a "get ready, this is how i want you to play it", not a misallignment between the two.

[tramquangpho]

This video is funny because it is like putting two groups have huge ass egos inside the cage seeing who win, cool vid

[kozkozof]

Having been trained first with classical music (piano) and then jazz music (bass & double bass), I've always felt that the two sides feel rhythm completely differently, and I was enthusiastic about this video.
I agree on most of it but I think I would phrase it slightly differently : to me classical musicians feel rhythm as breathing, it is indeed fluid and it flows, whereas jazz musicians feel more of a internal drive (especially as a bassist, that's like crucial). But in both cases, it's still internal and I don't think the conductor is as an important of a factor as you imply it.

[slay-thoven]

as a classical tuba player, i'm required to play all over the beat. if i'm in an orchestra and i'm not on or ahead of the beat of the rest of the ensemble, the acoustics of orchestral halls will make the sound emerge such that i sound late. in brass ensembles, i am the beat and the pulse. depending on the style of music we are playing, i can lay back, push ahead, or provide strict time. i appreciate the sharp contrast drawn in this video - it calls an important issue to mind, and clearly, a few classical musicians have taken offense. i provide my response simply to share that each musician is different depending on all sorts of circumstances, and none are more valuable simply because they can play with a sense of time. the only value the musician has is to themselves and their audience, in communicating emotion or entertainment, or some form of art.

[etiennedelaunois]

Mate I kind of agree with what you said about the fact that musicians feel the rythm differently regarding the music they play.

I'm a classical pianist, I still play classical. I'm also a jazz pianist.

I started in a fusion funk jazz band. The first rehearsal I nearly cried 🤣😂.

I was phrasing everything and the drummer used to hate me.

I had to start from scratch and it took me a bit of time to get used to it.

I seriously started to loose confidence, thinking that all I learned so hard in classical Conservatoire was rubbish.

My band mates were mocking me a lot which didn't help.

Until one day, one of my band mate suddenly had the idea to play classical as an outside project of the band.

And he asked me for advice. I listen to him playing and it was horrible!
The rythme wasn't fluid, the phrases weren't there, harmonicly, he was playing each bar isolated from each other but not a global view of the harmony.

When he realised that he had to learn from scratch he gave up.

It's just a different language. Classical musician has to feel the beat, when you play rubato as a pianist for example, if you don't feel the beat, if you don't sing, if you don't have the beat inside you, you might play a very bad and unnatural rubato.

Somebody told me one day that if I was a classical musician, I couldn't improvised. It's totally wrong.

I struggled to improvise in funk/jazz or the new style I was playing but I always improvised.

Improvisation is not just a jazz thing.

Today, my band mate ask me to do a solo on each new composition we do.

Music is full of different type of language. You can be good at all of them. If you want to learn a new one then it take time and practice.

I finish with this, I met an idiot who told me: "classical is for technical and jazz for musicality".

The guy is a full time teacher in a public school and never touch his instrument.
All the great legend of jazz, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, ... are very respectful for the classical compositions.

There are no dumb music, we can always learn something from a piece. Even a Katie Perry song can tea h at least one little thing.

[calvind]

Just a note about Leonard Bernstein conducting ahead of the music - this is actually totally intentional. It's a more advanced conducting technique than conducting with the music. I had a conductor in college that tried it on us once when we were playing Beethoven 1. It was kind of weird but kind of cool. The point is that the conductor can better cajole the orchestra by telling them what to do before they have to do it. I imagine it must be very tricky for the conductor, since he/she would need to be very detached from the sounds he/she is hearing in order to keep his/her gestures a beat ahead. The phase locking theory is interesting, but I think a better explanation is just relative familiarity and practice. Most standard classical rep doesn't have those rhythms very often, so classical musicians can't just look at it and hear it in their heads (and if the tempo is fast, it makes it difficult to subdivide). It's like having to sound out a word vs just looking at it and recognizing it. Now, if they play lots of more modern classical music then the rhythms you mentioned would probably be easy for them, but if they just play Mozart all the time they are not going to see those rhythms a lot. Which brings me to another point - they might just not be very good classical musicians. Many of the difficulties you described classical musicians having (not really together, not listening to each other) are common traits of bad classical musicians (I say this as a rank amateur myself). Yeah, it's true that if you are a violinist you can kind of sneak in with a soft attack if you are lost, but not in the big leagues (with regard to that bass player, I can only assume the job market was much less competitive when he got tenure). We are aware that these are common flaws, and expect the best musicians to overcome them completely. If you listen to the best orchestras (especially on a good night with a good conductor!) it can be amazing how together 80+ people can be, even with rubato. The Metropolitan Opera orchestra is especially astounding in this regard (it's probably all the practice they have trying to follow singers! or maybe James Levine deserves the credit...).

[ericlindholm]

Neely really shouldn't talk about classical musicianship, since he knows so little about it. The players read the "wrong" 9/8 beaming with ease because it's common in mixed-meter music for the groupings within the bar to change. The notation says to them, "for this measure, think 3+3+3, " so they adjust instantaneously because they are well trained in doing so. In Mahler 5, it's a single player, so the apparent lack of synchrony is irrelevant. It's standard courtesy in that opening for the conductor to communciate, "Play when it's comfortable, and know that I'm here listening to you, " which is exactly what Bernstein was doing. (Bernstein's tremor before the first and fifth downbeats communicates the speed of the triplets, because Mahler's instruction is for the triplets to be played faster than strictly notated, but he doesn't specify how _much_ faster, so it's always a gray area.) As for the sixteenth rest followed by the dotted quarter, I don't know why that particular group of players struggled in that instance, but that's not a rhythm that would bother me in the slightest.

[AdamNeely]

Hey everyone! I have NO idea why this video suddenly became so popular. I made this video because I wanted to try and figure out why classical players have such a hard time with popular rhythms, syncopation and playing backbeat-oriented music when they have such deft technical control and precision for other things. I didn't do nearly good enough of a job exploring certain things, and I didn't tie it together as cleanly as I should, my apologies.

Here are a few other things!

1) I got the stuff about conductors wrong. Sorry about that! I know Bernstein was using a particular technique that to me, as a jazz musician, looks ridiculous, but I can understand the utility.


3) Yes, I am a trained musician, I swear. And yes, the classical musicians I've played with have been worldclass. Watch my other videos, I think you'll dig them!

[GeoffMcCausland]

Bernstein was doing what is known as a delayed beat. totally purposeful and although disorienting at first, it can be very interesting to play in that manner vs phase locked.

[petitoiseaubleu]

This is amazing, I’m coming from classical music world and I never figured out why I had such ‘bad’ sense of rythm in other style of music.... I was such frustrated about it but now I understand a bit more where it’s coming from! Nice topic, congrats!

[joekcollins]

I play cello in a lot of classical scenarios and am currently studying for a BM in cello performance, and I also play guitar, bass, and drums in a lot of different modern genres (going from jazz to metal to psychedelic to whatever, I just like to play music man), and when it comes to the classical environment it really depends on a lot of different factors.

The conductor's job is not to keep the tempo; his job is to conduct rehearsals and have the piece played in the manner that he seems best. It really depends on the piece and the conductor on how he conducts time. Some music doesn't require an orchestra to rely on a strict downbeat, but this sentiment depends mostly on the piece or the conductor of the piece. Also, musicals, operas, and ballets are almost un-performable without a strict sense of time. It's also important to note that conducting has varying styles, and just like how Jimi Hendrix's playing is completely different to Chet Atkins' playing, Leonard Bernstein's conducting might be completely different from Gustavo Dudamel's.

Despite all that I've just said, whether or not a conductor wants a strict sense of time or a delayed downbeat is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to keeping time in an orchestra. Orchestral musicians keep time by watching the conductor's tempo and by listening to the musicians around them, and therefore the responsibility is entirely on that of every individual instrumentalist in the orchestra to keep time with themselves and their colleagues. The purpose of the conductor in an orchestra is to have the piece played with his implications and his musical decisions in mind (if there was no conductor, then every musician would be constantly arguing over how the piece should be played). Orchestral instruments, those being the bowed strings, the brass, the woodwinds, the percussion instruments including piano, or any other thing that someone decides to throw into the mix will all have completely different parameters that decide their method of attack when playing a piece. These parameters are decided by the composer, the time period of the piece, the seating of the instrumentalist in the orchestra, the conductor's wishes, the room or hall that the instrumentalist is playing in, and et-cetera.

For example, the strings of an orchestra don't necessarily have to worry about anticipating a downbeat because they are at the front of the orchestra and their sound is the first thing to travel out into the audience. The woodwinds, on the other hand, already have a delayed sound due to the nature of the instrument (sound isn't produced until after air starts circulating through the instrument), and they also have to factor in how far away from the front of the orchestra they are sitting. If they're in a small ensemble, or if they have been seated towards the front (like for a solo piece), then they won't have to worry as much. If it's a larger ensemble or if for whatever reason they've been seated very far back in the orchestra, then they have to factor in the amount of distance their sound will travel to reach the front of the section to match that of the strings. One of the major signs of an inexperienced orchestral woodwind player is constantly being behind the beat, because although they are counting in time correctly, they are failing to factor in the distance.

In regards to the Ravel quartet, that piece in particular requires an incredibly good sense of time. The second movement is even titled Tres Rythme due to it's rhythmic complexity. What you're noticing is that the musicians are so used to playing with each other that they have developed phrasing that allows the tempo to fluctuate for musical expression. In this piece, and many pieces of that time period, the tempo has to breath and fluctuate to give better musical expression. It's like how a pianist can have complete control over the tempo of a solo piece, but in this instance the musicians are such great players that they can share this control amongst the four of them. There's still a lot of counting going on in that performance, though. Playing any kind of chamber music requires a strongly developed sense of time.

I don't normally comment on YouTube videos, but I strongly recommend you discuss this topic with some professional classical musicians and make another video, because a well-trained musician should have good rhythm (if they don't then they haven't been well trained). In my experience, most modern musicians who haven't had any aural skills training or rhythmic training fail to accurately subdivide, especially in dotted rhythms (I've heard it called the "dotted rhythm triplet conspiracy" by some famous violinists) and they struggle with hemiolas and smaller subdivisions such as sextuplets or very fast notes.

[themike_]

It's actually really common to see orchestras about a beat behind the conductor. That gives them time to see the tempo changes and other instructions from the conductor and play them without tripping up.

[TheEdwardNigmaShow]

Your example for the Mahler 5th is a bit wrong, Bernstein is giving the trumpet player a rhythmic lead in, as the part is a solo. Check out Bernstein's "conducting" during the part, there is a noticeable white space for 2-3 counts, and right before the rest of the ensemble comes in there is a noticeable count off before he goes into regular conducting

[ObamaoZedong]

As a classical musician, let me tell you. We never look at the conductor. Unless they're yelling at us.

[KFlorent]

Why am I watching this if I can't play an instrument and I am tone deaf ?

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