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Well sure there's more but if you don't have steady tempo then you don't have the foundation on which the feel is built. Working on accent this and slur into these beats and playing Wes swing versus Clifford swing before being able to keep a steady beat is like trying trying to play Giant Steps without learning what a BMaj7 chord is.
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05-17-2014 12:02 AM
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Habits, good or bad, usually become what you play... If you keep playing a rhythmic figure incorrect... after time, your method of playing that figure becomes instinctive... your default. If you keep practicing with bad time.... after a while that bad time becomes your default.
At gigs... there are different type or levels of musicians. Some need time spelled out and set up... the group creates time and the feel... the actual time might not be perfect... but as a group the time is together. No problems... except during difficult music. Other musicians have an internal pulse that is going on... whether played or not. You can still stretch and compress the time... but they're aware of what's going on.
It's a very interesting subject, as far as practicing... I would thing you should do both as mentioned by most. I personally have really never used metronomes... but I've always played gigs etc...
Just like with trio gigs as a guitar player you might need to imply changes depending on the bass player... sometimes you need to imply more time, set time up... for the audience. If the musicians are not sure, what's going to happen with the audience.
Another good discussion is time with sight reading, rehearsing and live.
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Yes...something that has happened to me in my limited experience is noting that some players are all about listening to each other and "creating" the time via what's actually played and others are about having a steady pulse in their heads that everybody plays off of. I'm speaking of, specifically, playing without a drummer.
Originally Posted by Reg
I think both methods can have good results, and there is middle ground, but it's important to have a gauge of who you are dealing with.Last edited by JakeAcci; 05-17-2014 at 10:59 AM.
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Really good points made here.
this is just a general point here because IMO absolute strict time or tempo is not always called for or desired but it can be. But in general, if you are waiting for others or another to create time or tempo then you are late or behind. People talk about letting a drummer set tempo but if you are not in there with him creating time with him you're going to fall off or drift. I think this is why we get thrown off. One of the hardest things to do is keep time just by listening to a soloist. Soloists love to play out of time, or they make mistakes, or rush lines. I think this is how we end up speeding up or dragging. You have to have the ability to groove or keep time and let the soloist come and go as they please, otherwise it gets sloppy.
i thnk metronomes are fine and useful although I'm not an absolute stickler for them. You can learn time just from playing a lot. IMO, good time or tempo comes from being able to subdivide. You have to be able to predict where "1" is in the beat (as well as any beat) and the ability to predict the beat comes from being able to subdivide. If you can subdivide, feel quarters, eighths, 16ths, triplets within measures as well as across measures then you'll have good sense of time and be able to generate it with a band or playing solo. You'll also be able to manipulate it too, rubato, ritardando, etc and it'll make sense and have the right feel....
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excellent point quoted above and this mirrors my perspective - Originally Posted by Michael Kaye
wanted to add - I feel like the ability to hear "and of three" or "the 'uh' of four" etc, hearing specific hits or accents and knowing exactly where in the measure the accent falls, i feel like this ability is just as important as hearing melodic intervals.
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Intrinsic timing, like intrinsic intonation, seems to vary a lot among individuals. Playing with and without various types of rhythmic accompaniment will teach you different things. Choose according to your needs.
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That is interesting that pop and rock musicians use metronome click in the studio.
It is called metronome track .
I do not think that jazz musicians use metronome track during studio recordings.
this is a good quastion: why?...:-)
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I think the main reason is that those pop / rock records require much overdubbing---they're not the pruduct of a whole band playing a tune from start to finish. The drummer and guitar player may record on different days. A click track makes overdubs easier to synch.
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This thread reminds me of something I read years ago in a book on jazz by James Lincoln Collier. I don't have the book handy, so this is from memory. (I'm hoping someone here can double check this.)
According to Collier, a psychologist (-perhaps Collier's own son) analyzed the recordings of several jazz pianists (-one was Teddy Wilson, widely regarded as having especially good time) and found that their playing was far less exact than most jazz musicians thought. One response to this was, well, piano players often play alone and they 'get like that.' So several full-band recordings were analyzed and it was found that, over several takes, the band would slightly speed up and slow down at various points in the performances. They were not aware they were doing this.
The conclusion was not that jazz musicians cannot keep time but that the time they kept was more fluid than even most jazz musicians thought it was.
Again, I read this maybe 20 years ago and wish I had the book handy to check my memory. If anyone else has Collier's books on jazz, or is familiar with this research from another source, I'd love to hear about it. Especially if I misremember it!
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There is absolutely no good reason to purposefully avoid practicing with a metronome.
Some really great exercises:
1) Set to a lower tempo, 40ish or slower. Set yourself up to feel each click as a dotted quarter, aka 3 eighth notes tied together. Then walk a bass line, playing a note every quarter note. Now the metronome will be sounding on beat 1, the and-of-2, 4, etc.
2) Set to a lower tempo to feel pulses on 2 and 4. Then set yourself up to feel each click as the and-of-2 and the and-of-4, then try the and-of-1 and the and-of-3, etc.
I highly, highly recommend buying an app called Time Guru. It gives you the ability to set up just about any complex rhythm and more importantly, the ability to drop random pulses. I set up a pulse on 2 and 4 and have it drop beats 20% of the time. Another good app is Time Trainer by Justin Guitar, although it's lacking some features that would make it exceptionally great.
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Do you mean this phenomenon, Mark? When the beat goes off | Harvard Gazette Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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That is not the research I read about. What I read about involved jazz musicians playing jazz. I found this interesting, though. Thanks. Originally Posted by Vihar
I did find the source of what I read some years ago: James Lincoln Collier's book "Jazz: The American Theme Song." Via googlebooks, I have isolated page 78 but cannot copy it. I'll have to get it via inter-library loan to read the complete section on this subject. Meanwhile, I emailed Geoffrey Collier, son of James Collier and a psychology professor, to ask if he has published more recent (and publicly available) work in this area.Last edited by MarkRhodes; 05-19-2014 at 09:47 AM. Reason: Added detail
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i didn't read the article but i have played hundreds of gigs with classical musicians that were hired to do shows and/or play/accompany pop and society bands. The one generalization I can make is that most classical musicians (even great ones) are unable to comprehend the time concepts for pop music or jazz. Or putting another way, the time is horrible. I've spoken with a number of seasoned musicians about this and the general agreement is that classical musicians are used to being very loose with the time as a means of expression during performance when playing solo and many times there is a director doing something similar with the overall ensemble.
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That's just a matter of familiarity. Every style of music has a different time-feel which is a big part of what makes them different styles (any number of jazz standards are pop tunes played in their respective musicals but jazz tunes when Miles plays them... because of a different concept of time and note placement etc). There a classical cats out there (myself included) that have good jazz time. Because I play jazz as much as (now more than) classical music. I can also tell you I was VERY loose with my time when I played solo classical stuff. Very. Like... too loose
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Also some classical musicians are very loose with time and some are not. John Williams is a freaking machine and plays with robotic time sometimes. Segovia is very loose. Also the time there is just a bit different. There's a give and take... if you listen very closely to Segovia he will slow passages to let them breath and then play a complementary passage at a faster accelerating tempo to balance it out. If he played with someone who played along with a metronome then they may actually end a 8 or 16 measure phrase at the same time. Very interesting. Again... not loose time just a different concept of time. Classical guys who are familiar with jazz and pop can play with very good time in both.
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i have to disagree bud, based on my experience. Classical musicians, whether they are familiar with jazz or not are notoriously bad at playing in time with a pop or jazz ensemble. This is based on 35+ years of playing society music with a wide variety of players of all levels. Just as an example, I have played society and/or jazz gigs with orchestral players (both in accompaniment and ensemble capacity) who were playing in major symphonies. DC, cleveland, baltimore, etc. In almost every case, the average society musician has time way better than the symphony players for jazz, pop, society even when comparing a society musician who is a part timer vs. an orchestral player in a major symphony.
Now, there are exceptions of course. For example, I play occasionally with bassist Jeff Grubbs who is in the pittsburgh symphony and he has exceptional time but he's someone who is a jazz musician as well as classical musician. I'm talking mainly about musicians who are classical musicians but who moonlight doing society or pop gigs...
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Originally Posted by jzucker
That goes to what I was saying. At what point is someone a classical musician and not a jazz musician or both or neither or whatever. If someone has experience with a style of music their time will reflect that accordingly. I'm just not a fan of the notion that one type of musician CAN do this and the other CAN'T ... time comes with familiarity with a style. I'm a jazz musician (I guess?) and I have a great swing feel. My time when I play Bossa's or Latin jazz styles (which frequently fall under the umbrella of "jazz") is terrible. It's not that I can't play those styles ... it's that I haven't familiarized myself enough with them.
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Well, music is generally made to be danced, the best classical musicians are the ones who still have a contact with folk music, when I say "folk", I mean traditional music.
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That's a nice perspective! It's surprising how much "high-brow" classical music (old and new) is based on dances. Especially guitar music. So much comes from Spanish, Carribean, and Latin and South American folk traditions. Frequently the most interesting players are the ones who make the music dance!
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That's what I was saying. I've just never been a fan of saying some people can do something and others can't... the wording bothers me ... implication is that it's beyond the skill-set of a "classical musician" to do what a "jazz musician" does. I try to see it much more in shades of gray I guess.
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Indeed. Albeit, its difficult to speak two very different languages really well. Such, if one is an expert in say improvisation of baroque basso continuo, it means not much with respect to being able to play jazz changes credibly. And the other way round. The stylistic differences are enormous, bigger than one might assume. Always talking about time, that is, ignoring the other more obvious differences.
I come from the classical piano, and the reason why I ended up (many years ago) to play guitar when playing jazz is that I am just useless in playing jazz piano. There are too many reflexes at work that have been formed into patterns that I cant change any more. But with a different instrument, its all much easier.Last edited by Phil in London; 05-19-2014 at 01:50 PM.
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Of course! Certainly never said it was easy! Also not necessarily talking about full-on improvising monsters. Zucker mentioned time and being able to fit into a jazz context with respect to time-feel.
Also... interesting distinction too... Classical and Jazz/Pop timefeels might be over generalizing... Classical, jazz, and pop timefeels might be more appropriate. Subdivisions and time/feel in pop and rock and funk music are all very different than traditional jazz. Jazz guys who are a little more conservative and old school have as much trouble transitioning into pop bands as a classical musician. I think that would suggest that exposure to and willingness to experience different styles has more to do with stylistic authenticity than the styles you already have some expertise in.
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Agree fully, and may add that somebody who is an expert in playing Chopin might be lost if put into a group of specialists performing early music - from a time perspective.
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Today I've tried to play with a metronome, it's something difficult, it plays 2 and 4 beats...
I think it can really help...
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Disagree
The Emily video explainable some of it. You play a lick by yourself. It sounds great. Then you play it with a band, but it doesn't work. Why? Because the lick doesn't actually fit over that beat. A metronome would have fixed that
Now I do understand the pulse a musician needs to have. Simply listening to the hundreds of lessons on YouTube by so-called jazz guitar teachers, will tell you most people dont understand the pulse, but they're great at staying in time and playing cool runs.
Most people aren't talented enough to tap their foot in time without training. Tapping your foot keeps you in time, your talent gives you the pulse.
In my head, I think of the drums (or the pulsing rhythm) as an EKG chart. A great in-the-pocket musician can follow each pulse (or make their own pulse). He can run up and down each valley and hill. Most musicians on YouTube jump across each valley. Their paths are smoother. You want a pulsing chart, not a flatline!
So, to sum up, the metronome is to keep your timing, not teach you how to play great rhythm.Last edited by eh6794; 06-01-2014 at 10:27 AM.
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Some great replies here! As others have pointed out it depends on what you are practicing. I think the criticisms leveled at metronomes are valid if the generated pulse doesn't become internalised. Put on a piece of music, start tapping your foot to the beat and then have a ponder on how you were able to discern where the pulse was. We all have some degree of ability to feel time and it's this ability that's used when we tap out foot. No thought processes used at all. This ability to feel time, like everything in music, can be developed with practice. It's actually developed through body movement done in time to a perfect pulse, and a metronome supplies that pulse. That is, training yourself to tap your foot in time (or move your body in some way) to a metronome while practicing will improve your sense of time. With one caveat that is: the foot movement needs to be an outward manifestation of your inward attempts to really feel the beat. Simply developing a mechanical ability to move your foot up and down will have little to no effect at all.
I used to have a shocking sense of time. So much so that it was actually a joke in the first band I was in. A large part of this was due to the fact that I am a little bit introspective, and whenever I listened to music I just sat there and, well, listened. I never moved, even when something syncopated/funky/cool was playing. Sometime later I became a full time professional guitar teacher (I taught for 10 years) and needed to find answers to a lot of rhythmic questions. So I started thinking about a few things. If you play syncopated/funky/cool music to people a significant percentage of them will start moving, grooving to the music in some way. Why? Each aspect of music (rhythm, harmony, melody) I believe affects us on a different level, and rhythm is the visceral aspect of music. That is, it primarily affects our bodies, rather than our emotions/intellect/sense of wonder/etc. As such it makes sense to improve our rhythmic abilities via the very same element that is affected by it. It has certainly worked for me. Hope I am not sounding like some sort of cosmic cowboy here(!).
Another valid use of a metronome is to gain some sort of metrics with regard to improvement. If I can play at 150 bpm today what I could only do at 140 bpm last week I have empirical evidence that my practice is having some effect. Personally I find it easier to practice technical material for longer with a metronome. For some reason if I attempt it without the metronome I run through things for about 30 seconds before my focus drifts off onto something else. The joys of a life that is perhaps a little too full(!).Last edited by andrew_k; 06-01-2014 at 04:56 PM.
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