Subdivide the beats so you understand how they relate to each other, and practice very, very slowly. You can gradually come up to tempo after the pattern becomes firmly established in your mind and your hands.

Here’s what it looks like on paper. Write out two groups of eighth notes, 3 eighth notes in each group. All the stems should be pointed down, and barred so that the first 3 notes are barred together, and then the second group is barred together. So what you have is two groups of eighth notes, stems down, with the first three barred together, and the second group barred together. Tie the three notes in each group together. If you were to tap this out now, you would count each eighth note, but tap only the eighth note that starts each group. So you’d count 1,2,3,4,5,6, but tap only on 1 and 4.

Now put stems pointing up on eighth notes 1,3, and 5. These will be quarter notes, so don’t bar them. They are not tied together. If you were to tap only the stems up notes, you’d count 1,2,3,4,5,6, but tap only on 1, 3, and 5.

Now count the eighth notes(1,2,3,4,5,6,), and tap the stems down part with one hand, and the stems up part with the other. The stems down part is the two to a beat part, and the stems up part is the three to a beat. Start slowly and once you get the hang of it, speed it up. This is exactly how you have to play the 2 against three in the Debussy. The left hand notes (two to a beat) are played on 1 and 4 when you are counting 6 to the beat, and the right hand notes(3 to a beat) are played on 1,3, and 5 when counting 6 to a beat.

Once you have learned the rhythmic pattern, it will become automatic and you won’t have to count anything.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by carl-swanson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by carl-swanson.

Hi Kathy!

It’s good to see you on harpcolumn.com!

I think the rhythm can be internalized.
Tapping is fairly easy, but when playing such 2 against 3 confuses my mind sometimes.

For me it works best if I do it on the harp. The trick I used is to play 3 notes repeatedly on the right and 2 notes on the left, and keep changing my focus from RH or LF to make sure the rhythm is regular on each hand.

e.g. RH: 123 123 123 123 and LH: 12 12 12 12 just to get it going. The RH part could be changed to 213 213 213 213 or 321 321 321 321 or in scales or arpeggios etc…

I think once both hands learnt how to deal with the 2 against 3, playing different notes wouldn’t be an issue.