How to theoretically explain good time feel?

[pamosmusic]

I was just using the stupid analogy that someone else used and you agreed with vehemently.

You explain it to me.

[ragman1]

I think the general consensus is that something that has its roots in human nature, like a natural or instinctive feel for rhythm, can't really be quantified. The rhythm itself can be written down and mathematically justified, and all that, but that's merely a technical exercise and it can be copied. That's different from a human ability, like being good with numbers or words. Some have it, some don't.

But you're saying that if someone isn't good at it, that they lose track of what they're playing, that it sounds messy and out of sync, that they can improve their ability by undergoing some kind of regimen that forces them to stick to a beat. And hopefully, after time, their ability will increase.

That may be true or not. Personally I'm not sure because if it's not 'in them' naturally it'll never really be there. They'll only ever be adequate, shall we say, and not much more than that.

That's basically it. We won't go into love because that's a slightly different issue. Is love something instinctive, to be copied, repeated and practised? Can you repeat love?

We feel love or we don't, really, and the tragedy is not many do. It's why our lives are so ugly for the most part.

[pamosmusic]

That's different from a human ability, like being good with numbers or words. Some have it, some don't.

I'm going to be blunt with you on this one. This is absolute nonsense. Everyone has rhythm.

When I ask my students to subdivide a beat into eighth notes and they have trouble, I tell them to get up and walk. Right foot upbeat, left foot downbeat. Their body subdivides perfectly. Ask them to stamp their foot, down is downbeat up is upbeat, it falls into a perfect rhythm. They don't leave their foot there for forever and then jerk it up suddenly so they can drop it down again.

People who say that good time and good rhythm can't be taught are almost universally people who haven't spent any time teaching or put any thought into how one might go about doing it.

So to the extent that "you either have it or you don't," I would argue that basically everyone has it. The part you have to learn is how to translate it to an instrument or a voice. But the idea that it's impossible to do that is just silly.

Here's my reply to when you said this exact thing over a year ago:

This is very much debatable. People absolutely have aptitudes and that’s all well and good, but most of what makes music interesting and pleasant has little to do with the extreme ends of the spectrum on any measure of skill.

And with that said … what you call a technique is extremely limited. Not everyone has perfect pitch, but great relative pitch can absolutely be taught. We’re talking about the ability to hear and feel time. It’s an aural skill. Skills can be taught and everyone has *some* aptitude for them. Greater or lesser aptitude is a red herring, because people can learn these skills well enough to use them.

I don’t know man … I’m absolutely a mediocre talent who has become a pretty good musician. Not the height of excellence or whatever, but that’s a silly standard in the first place. People used to tell me in ear training class that they “wished they had my ear” but honestly I kind of struggled with it sometimes. I just sat at a piano practicing solfège more than most people practiced their primary instrument.

I still work a lot on time but jfc it’s way better than it used to be.

It can all be taught. Whether or not they meet your subjective standard of high excellence is beyond the scope. People need tools to make good music and anyone can learn those tools well enough to utilize them when they’re playing.

And as for your thoughts on "love" I'd say our lives are probably more ugly because people think love is a feeling that magically appears rather than a daily practice of partnership or friendship with another person. But sure, another topic for another place and time.

[ragman1]

You see how you suggest that everything can be practiced, repeated, imitated, and probably needs a teacher, guide or leader to help you do it?

What comes out of repetition and imitation? Is it creative? Can anything vital, natural, living, original, come out of repetition? There is such a thing as creativity but surely it's not the result of repetition. A machine can repeat something constantly but that's not creative.

Any technique can be copied, obviously. Tying a shoelace can be practiced till we've got it. But technique is one thing, and essential, but it needs something else to bring it to life.

[pamosmusic]

You see how you suggest that everything can be practiced, repeated, imitated, and probably needs a teacher, guide or leader to help you do it? Is that true?

What comes out of repetition and imitation? Is it creative? Can anything vital, natural, living, original, come out of repetition? There is such a thing as creativity but surely it's not the result of repetition. A machine can repeat something practical constantly but that's not creative.

Any technique can be copied, obviously. Tying a shoelace can be practiced till we've got it. But technique is one thing, and essential, but it needs something else to bring it to life.

I don't think I said it requires a teacher.

But you're also operating on a different standard here. I don't really care if someone is making High Art, or being what outside observers would consider to be Creative or Original. I'd like for them to be able to make music they enjoy.

And what comes out of repetition and imitation is a command of the sounds you (presumably) enjoy listening to. I actually think a much more interesting question would be whether or not there is anyone out there making interesting or original music (or interesting or original art at all) who hasn't spent an enormous amount of time imitating their influences. Generally I find the folks who sound interesting and original do this more rather than less. Think about an iconoclastic musician like Bill Frissell or John Scofield or Pat Metheny or Brad Mehldau or The Bad Plus. It's not that they spend all their time living in their own heads, obsessed with their own originality. It's that they have a much more eclectic view of what might constitute "an influence" than your average jazz dork –– Nirvana, bird sounds, Schoenberg, The Beatles, Irish folk music, Bach, pop country, construction noise, etc.

And out of curiosity ... do you think that you meet your own standard here? Is your music vital, natural, living, or original?

Or more to the point ... how do you assess your own sense of time? How do you work on it?

[mr. beaumont]

Can anything vital, natural, living, original, come out of repetition?

When DaVinci died, they found a ceiling high stack of notebooks in his apartment. Those expecting a trove of lost masterworks were greeted with hundreds of drawings of human hands, over and over. DaVinci never felt he was great at it, so he repeated it over and over.

A teacher told me that story when I was in high school. When I looked confused, he followed it with "Shit ain't magic."

[ragman1]

I don't think I said it requires a teacher.

I did say probably. You do push a teaching scenario.

But you're also operating on a different standard here. I don't really care if someone is making High Art, or being what outside observers would consider to be Creative or Original. I'd like for them to be able to make music they enjoy.

And what comes out of repetition and imitation is a command of the sounds you (presumably) enjoy listening to. I actually think a much more interesting question would be whether or not there is anyone out there making interesting or original music (or interesting or original art at all) who hasn't spent an enormous amount of time imitating their influences. Generally I find the folks who sound interesting and original do this more rather than less. Think about an iconoclastic musician like Bill Frissell or John Scofield or Pat Metheny or Brad Mehldau or The Bad Plus. It's not that they spend all their time living in their own heads, obsessed with their own originality. It's that they have a much more eclectic view of what might constitute "an influence" than your average jazz dork –– Nirvana, bird sounds, Schoenberg, The Beatles, Irish folk music, Bach, pop country, construction noise, etc

I think you're taking off on the word original a bit. I wasn't really talking about High Art, just using the word to emphasise that repetition, by default, can't mean something spontaneous.

And out of curiosity ... do you think that you meet your own standard here?

It's not my standard. I'm not laying it down as a requirement. If people want to do it, they will. Up to them.

Is your music vital, natural, living, or original?

I doubt if it's very 'original' but in the sense that it's not premeditated, yes. The improvs I post are completely unrehearsed so they probably qualify most of the time. Whether they're any good is another matter. I dump a lot of stuff!

Or more to the point ... how do you assess your own sense of time? How do you work on it?

I don't work on timing, I don't need to, it's not a problem for me, thankfully.

Btw, there is such a thing as Congenital Amusia. Not all people have tonal or rhythmic capacity. I just looked it up.

[pamosmusic]

I don't work on timing, I don't need to, it's not a problem for me, thankfully.

okay. interesting.

I doubt if it's very 'original' but in the sense that it's not premeditated, yes. The improvs I post are completely unrehearsed so they probably qualify most of the time. Whether they're any good is another matter. I dump a lot of stuff!

Why would working on rhythm and time or spending time transcribing mean that someone's improvisation is necessarily premeditated?

[pamosmusic]

When DaVinci died, they found a ceiling high stack of notebooks in his apartment. Those expecting a trove of lost masterworks were greeted with hundreds of drawings of human hands, over and over. DaVinci never felt he was great at it, so he repeated it over and over.

A teacher told me that story when I was in high school. When I looked confused, he followed it with "Shit ain't magic."

Yeah ... the originality isn't that he didn't need to copy, but that he thought to copy individual hands with that level of detail when other people hadn't.

[frabarmus]

In my direct experience: I know two people (both ex Jazz pianists, one professional, the other not.) who gave up playing with other people because they just could not get tempo, rhythm, time feel etc. no matter how hard they tried, woodshedded, went to great teachers and so on and so forth.

One of them even recorded some records with some great American rhythm section and gigged with them (he payed them well!).
I once went to see them live and it was painful to watch (and even more to listen to)... I've actually heard one of the world's best rhythm sections "play bad" because of the pianist/leader of the Trio. The most painful aspect was the tension and resentment (almost despair) of the rhythm section and the unconnectedness, devoid of any even slightest interplay. At the end of the gig the three of them had gloomy faces and were not talking to each other. That pianist quit playing (at least in public) shortly after and I've never heard of him again, though he was quite well known in Italy, for a while.

The other one is a personal friend of mine, she can beat anyone at theory and harmony and she's a pretty decent composer (she recorded three albums of her compositions without playing in them). Every time she tried to play with someone else it was a train wreck because of her rhythmic problems (and she did work her head off to overcome them, studying with some great teachers etc.). She eventually decided to stop playing Jazz Piano and switched to cello (classical), moved on to composition studies with a good composer and still enjoys composing her own music.

At the end of the day, I don't think that people who "don't get it" (in a practical sense) don't resolve their problem because it is not "theoretically explained" properly or well enough to them.

[ragman1]

Why would working on rhythm and time or spending time transcribing mean that someone's improvisation is necessarily premeditated?

I didn't say that, it never entered my head. I wouldn't know anyway.

[ragman1]

Yeah ... the originality isn't that he didn't need to copy, but that he thought to copy individual hands with that level of detail when other people hadn't.

I actually think that art is something different. If I discovered I wasn't good at doing, say, trees I probably would spend a lot of time trying to get my trees to look good.

[pamosmusic]

I didn't say that. Never entered my head. I wouldn't know anyway.

Will then what does the "unpremeditated" nature of your improvisation have to do with anything?

[pamosmusic]

I actually think that art is something different. If I discovered I wasn't good at doing, say, trees I probably would spend a lot of time trying to get my trees to look good.

But when you discover your time sucks, you say "ah well, wasn't meant to be."

[ragman1]

But when you discover your time sucks, you say "ah well, wasn't meant to be."

No, I don't. I mean, really!

To be honest, not boasting, it rarely sucks. If it does there's an obvious reason like a finger slip, or a distraction, or hesitation, or something like that. But very rare.

I'll tell you one thing. Occasionally, for the forum, I transcribe bits of what I played. I've discovered that frequently I can't get the rhythms to sound right on paper. I try everything... pauses, triplets, odd groups, rests, but what I actually did just isn't there. I can't reproduce it the exact way. BUT when you listen to it, it sounds perfectly natural, glides off the fingers, nothing clashy about it.

Weird thing.

[Christian Miller]

Hands up if your rhythm with the guitar is worse than your rhythm just singing and clapping

^puts hand up*

I’ve always found that interesting. What is it about the guitar that messes me up?


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[Christian Miller]

Yeah this is really interesting. I think of Herbie and Wayne (and sweet Jesus Tony Williams) as having incredible time. But they're also sooooooo hard to transcribe because of that ability to play straight down the middle, to swing hard, to stretch or float the time, to play complex subdivisions. It's all there. I've gotten my ass absolutely kicked this month by transcribing Wayne. Tried transcribing three solos. One I finished, one I quit halfway through, and one I quit about two-thirds of the way through.

Just wrecked.

Which ones?

I should get back on the horse.


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[dasein]

In my experience, bad time feel tends to boil down to one of three things:

1. They don't have a good grasp of the nuances of a style's rhythm. Every genre has their own little idiosyncracies, and amateurs and tourists struggle to pick them up. It takes lots of active listening and usually some trial-and-error to get it right.

For me, it took a tape of Lester Young, Charlie Christian, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Fats Navarro -- edited to just the solos, and listened to day and night for weeks on end. After that, I felt like I had jazz feel in my blood.

2. They aren't good at subdividing. For jazz, that usually means they can't feel the upbeats and they aren't good at feeling triplet rhythms in duple (it still blows my mind how loose classical musicians are whenever they see a triplet -- in general, jazz musicians are way more precise about it. But that's a different topic).

You have to get it from a conscious thought process (actively subdividing in your head as you play) to a subconscious one. Once you don't have to think about it anymore, your timefeel will improve.

Practice clapping in 4/4 while tapping your feet in half note triplets, really get it down, and watch your friends all say how good your time suddenly feels better.

3. Not talked about as much, but many times poor time is because of poor technique. Pretty hard to have a good sounding 8th note line if you can't play 8th notes cleanly. It becomes particularly noticeable on instruments like guitar, which are not at all well suited for bebop.

I do think you can analyze this stuff if you really wanted to. Analysis has been done on waveforms of jazz drummers, and they've found definite patterns that defy traditional notation. But for the practicing musician, immersion is going to be the more practical way to go.

That said, there are definitely things you can point out that make a huge difference in someone's timefeel: practical things like tap your foot on 1 & 3, pick the upbeats, correcting some technical flaw. Sometimes you can hear it, but you can't figure out how to translate it to the instrument. Things like that can be a lightbulb moment for the right player.

[rpjazzguitar]

Just my experience:

There were things I could improve with practice. Things like the ability to play quarter note or half note triplets in 4/4. Playing in 5 or 7 or, in one case, 13. For these things at first I couldn't feel them, but eventually it sank in. It probably helps that you can conceptualize and practice these things with a carefully thought out click and subdivisions.

But these are about time, not time-feel, at least, the way I'm thinking about it.

Time-feel is much more elusive. I recall hearing one of my teachers play a single D note against a Bbmaj7 in a bar of 4/4 swing, and sound great. The placement and articulation of the note were just right, I guess.

Based on my experience, it can't be taught. At least, nobody was able to teach me something that resulted in significantly improved time-feel, and I've been trying. And, I can't think of a single musical acquaintance who accomplished it.
And, I doubt that it can be learned by just anyone. I think there's an issue of innate ability.

To be clear, I think a bunch of things about time can be taught. And, there are some concrete things you can do to optimize your time-feel (like don't play lines you can't really execute in time). But, fundamental time feel -- that's elusive.

[dasein]

Just my experience:

There were things I could improve with practice. Things like the ability to play quarter note or half note triplets in 4/4. Playing in 5 or 7 or, in one case, 13. For these things at first I couldn't feel them, but eventually it sank in. It probably helps that you can conceptualize and practice these things with a carefully thought out click and subdivisions.

But these are about time, not time-feel, at least, the way I'm thinking about it.

Time-feel is much more elusive. I recall hearing one of my teachers play a single D note against a Bbmaj7 in a bar of 4/4 swing, and sound great. The placement and articulation of the note were just right, I guess.

Based on my experience, it can't be taught. At least, nobody was able to teach me something that resulted in significantly improved time-feel, and I've been trying. And, I can't think of a single musical acquaintance who accomplished it.
And, I doubt that it can be learned by just anyone. I think there's an issue of innate ability.

To be clear, I think a bunch of things about time can be taught. And, there are some concrete things you can do to optimize your time-feel (like don't play lines you can't really execute in time). But, fundamental time feel -- that's elusive.

I think part of the problem is that the terms we're using aren't very precise. When ragman goes on and on about how he doesn't have any issues with time feel, he clearly means "the ability to play basic rhythms without it sounding like 4th grade band practice" which is very obviously not what most of the experienced musicians in this thread are talking about.

In the example with your teacher, where does time-feel start and end vs. tone, touch, articulation, phrasing? I don't have the answers, it's a complicated issue.

I tend to believe almost all of this stuff can be learned. Maybe not taught, but definitely learned. But I'm willing to admit I could be wrong.

[ragman1]

I think part of the problem is that the terms we're using aren't very precise. When ragman goes on and on about how he doesn't have any issues with time feel, he clearly means "the ability to play basic rhythms without it sounding like 4th grade band practice" which is very obviously not what most of the experienced musicians in this thread are talking about.

In the example with your teacher, where does time-feel start and end vs. tone, touch, articulation, phrasing? I don't have the answers, it's a complicated issue.

I tend to believe almost all of this stuff can be learned. Maybe not taught, but definitely learned. But I'm willing to admit I could be wrong.

I'm quite sure the very advanced stuff has to be learned. One wouldn't even bother to try it otherwise, it's not an everyday thing. But to master it requires a high degree of rhythmic capacity otherwise you're flogging a dead horse. I'm extremely sure about that!

[pamosmusic]

I'm quite sure the very advanced stuff has to be learned. One wouldn't even bother to try it otherwise, it's not an everyday thing. But to master it requires a high degree of rhythmic capacity otherwise you're flogging a dead horse. I'm extremely sure about that!

Oh ragman

No one ever questioned how sure you were about all this

[Bobby Timmons]

Hands up if your rhythm with the guitar is worse than your rhythm just singing and clapping

^puts hand up*

I’ve always found that interesting. What is it about the guitar that messes me up?

That's the subject of technique sir! I've been targeting that since I discovered technique was a thing. Get drum sticks and a practice pad.

[Bobby Timmons]

How to theoretically explain good time feel?

You can't explain something you feel theoretically. It's that simple.

Which invokes the question why you want to explain something like a feeling at all, let alone theoretically. Say you've 'explained' it theoretically, which you can't anyway, what then? What does it change? I don't understand the advantage of it.

Why don't you try to understand it ACTUALLY, not theoretically? If it's a physical sensation, that can be explained through the nerves, sensations, the brain, and so on.

If it's something you feel emotionally that's a bit more difficult. It has to do with your thoughts, associations, memories, and all that.

So what? Again. once you've explained it, then what? I don't understand the point of all this, it's all rather meaningless to me.

Yep. Two different things. Explain love. Some people think that if you describe it enough, you'll have it. Reality is not like that.

Theorising produces a framework, not a reality. Doing these exercises might reward your effort by enabling you to do something you couldn't before. But that's not feel, that's clarification of a problem and learned behaviour.

It's tough, but at least we can all fall in love.

Exactly.

Mr. Timmons will be coming for you too soon. He should, he needs us.

Is this in some way different than practicing anything at all?

Practicing doesn’t make you an artist, but it does make you better at stuff.

I don’t tend to agree with Bobby that it can be “explained” but that’s not the same thing as saying it can’t be learned and practiced.

If you’ll permit me to stoop to your philosophical depths for a moment … you might not be able to theoretically explain love, but if you’ve been married for more than a second or two, you’ll know that you can absolutely practice it and you can absolutely get better.

[charlieparker]

Hands up if your rhythm with the guitar is worse than your rhythm just singing and clapping

^puts hand up*

I’ve always found that interesting. What is it about the guitar that messes me up?


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Totally. I think part of it is about fine motor skills and thinking about melody and rhythm simultaneously versus just using your hands to bang out a rhythm on a drum.