Developing a better sense of time

bopster

I found this app online that is really pointing out the weaknesses in my internal timekeeping. You can program this metronome to give several measures of time, mute a user determined number of measures, and come back in. This can also be randomized for a more advanced workout:

http://www.iguitarmag.com/magazine-editions/guitar-interactive-issue-13/reviews/time-trainer-metronome-app/

bbwood_98

Nice. A lot easier then what i do now.

Jazzaferri

Years ago for several months last thing I did before going to sleep was to use the flashing metronome on my iPad. I'd get in the groove counting out loud, quietly, and then look away for a four count and then look back just as I said one to see how I did. After a while I got up to about 8 bars or so keeping the time accurately without looking.

I have to confess it was Vic Wooten's idea, not mine, but it sure helped me.

bbwood_98

Jazzaferri indeed. I put songs into audacity, and drop them out for bars at a time, then back. I used to do that and clapping drills in the am, and still do - surprisingly before coffee!

Bob Holo

Ben - that is a fantastic idea.

I used to play rhythm for a guy with an uncanny sense of time and I did a lot of things to work on my constancy of time and relative sense of time, but never that (Audacity - dropping bars)

Way clever... Kudos.

kungfumonk007

www.bestdrumtrainer.com - it already exists online as well. I think though that what people forget to do is to set the metronome for other things than 1-2-3-4. For example divide your tempo by 8 so it is just hitting beat 2 every other measure - than set the metronome to drop a measure. Or set up in a sequencer so it just clicks 1-the and of 2, every other measure. I don't do that last one :0), but I know people who are into supergroove styles do crud like that all the time. Also making sure not only to run your la pompe, but practice improvising melodic lines to those same clicks without getting lost in the changes or turning around the beat.

Jazzaferri

More great ideas.

BUT NOW THE HARD PART........ How many here practice everyday with some sort of time keeping device....metronome, band in a box, iRealpro etc.

Not human backing tracks unless they have been checked for accuracy with a metronome. You'd be surprised.

MattHenry

I get a lot of mileage out of practicing with a metronome click on the 4 only. For me just staying even in all that space with rhythm, heads or solos has been really helpful. I do that at varying tempos each day and I think it's made a difference. I don't think playing with iReal or backing tracks does much for your sense of time; it's true that it's correct, but there's too much being done for you.

I use the ubiquitous $24 Seiko metronome, but TurtleGal137 gives this one 5 stars "for excellence in helping me". Note that she also has more views than everything any of us have every posted:

dennis

alas i have very little time to reply these days, i'm insanely busy. however, i just want to quickly say that while i think it can certainly be beneficial to play with a metronome for obvious reasons, it's important to understand that it's not the ultimate tool out there. the idea of perfect timing is a recent concept, the same way society expects women to look like photoshop women on magazines, musicians today expect musicians to have the timing of a heavily quantized track in the studio... all this stuff did not exist until recently..

and the proof is that i've recorded many of the world's best musicians in my studio with isolated tracks with a click... They ALL move in one way or another...

if u listen to minor swing from 1937, the band speeds up (but it's not so obvious unless u really pay attention, compare beginning to end)... when i did a note for note cover of it with tim kliphuis, we took the tempo of the beginning and did it to a click track... i should have record the rhythm naturally instead. the difference is huge!

MattHenry

Denis has a point but I don't think it's one any of us should emphasize:

Too many times ideas about the little things that make music more human are used as excuses to be half-assed about technique and study. In my experience with students and other players it's much more common to find somebody trying to avoid doing the work than to find someone who takes playing in time so seriously that it makes them rigid or unfeeling.

Sure, maybe Denis and the studs he works with still pick up a bit sometimes, but it's not at the problematic level you see with more terrestrial players. I think we could all practice with a metronome on the 4 for five+ hours a week and it'd just make us steadier.

Lastly, I want to mention again the pleasant surprise that practicing rhythm with a metronome on the 4 (particularly with some upstroke) helps my gypsy picking for soloing.

Back to work on those Sebastien clips, Denis!! =P

dennis

oh man don't remind me... i shouldnt be posting here, and i've yet to reply to the vbirato post... i just spent 90 mintues translating 10 minutes of video, because seb talks so freakin much..


yes, there's a fine line between musicality and laziness.. i agree that the metronome can certainly be useful and we should try to strive for a certain stability... but i'm starting to think that stability is subjective. Like I said the idea of metronomic perfection is a very recent invention in the history of music..

Every performance moves in one way or another. Seb talks about it in his videos as well, that sometimes, when plays aggressively , he pushes the beat on purpose, and when i played rhythm for him, he asked that certain songs push more... that doens't mean speeding up like crazy but it definitely means that the beginning tempo isn't the same as the ending tempo..

every single django recording has tempo fluctuation in a musical way.

many years ago i was told about a guy giving a workshop telling th students that the tempo moves and should move... at the time i laughed my ass off, but now i'm starting to think he has a point