Developing Good Time

(First off, apologies for any grammatical or other lapses in the following: I haven’t slept for two nights, now, and am feeling a bit tetchy.)

Anyway, getting to the topic at hand, I played two-and-a-half sets at one of the local bars on Thursday night, and two songs in I wanted to kill the bass player (no drummer).

Why? His time sucks. He was pushing the tempo in almost every song. And that was exhausting for me, trying (unsuccessfully) to hold him back. His poor sense of time/rushing robbed me of most of the joy of playing music. I felt like King Canute, trying to hold back the tide with a pitch fork.

And that’s totally unnecessary.

It’s easy to develop a good sense of time. It’s boring, but it’s easy. Spend fifteen or twenty minutes a day on it for maybe three months, and you’ll have at least a decent sense of time. Most amateurs never attain that, which is why they remain amateurs.

My pal/bassist told me something the other night that was incredibly revealing: we were playing with another friend, a drummer, and the bassist was screwing up all over the place. At one point, when I waved my hands and said “Stop!” he was half a beat in front of me. His excuse? He couldn’t hear the bass drum — as if keeping time wasn’t his responsibility (as it is for everyone; but in a band it comes down like this: drummer first, bassist second; guitar/keys third; and in the absence of a drummer, it’s the bassist’s job.)

So, how do you develop a good sense of time? As I said, it’s easy but boring. Here’s how to do it:

• Use a metronome. Play scales, play along with tunes (the drummer is almost certainly playing along with a click track). Metronome apps are easy to find and are free. There’s simply no excuse for not using one. Use a metronome or metronome app fifteen minutes a day for three months, and you’ll have decent time. You’ll find it boring, but it won’t kill you. And other musicians will want to play with you. If your time is crap, the good ones won’t. Suck it up and do the necessary work.
• Subdivide. Get in the habit of doing it. In straight time, count 16th notes (“one-e-and-a two-e-and-a” etc.) or in swung time (“one and a two and a” etc.). I went out dancing with the GF recently, and she told me she could see me mouthing the subdivisions. It’s a great habit to get into.
• Play slow. And count. It’s way easy to get into playing fast passages and then telling yourself, “Damn! That sounds good!” Slow it down, count it, and you’ll have it.

If you think that’s too boring, and won’t do it, you’ll never be any good.

 

For Musicians — Developing Good Time

by Chaz Bufe, author of An Understandable Guide to Music Theory: The Most Useful Aspects of Theory for Rock, Jazz & Blues Musicians

The number one attribute of being a good musician is having good time. If you don’t have that, you really don’t have much. You can have the greatest chops in the world, but if your time is bad, no one will want to play with you.

To cite one example familiar to almost everyone who’s played in bands, playing with a rushing drummer is one of the most miserable musical experiences in the world. (There are probably twenty drummers who rush to every one who drags.) You’ll try to hold him back, but it’s like trying to hold back the sea with a pitchfork. (Curiously, at least some drummers with bad time are entirely unaware of it, and take great offense if you point it out. In such cases, it often helps to record rehearsals–then they might admit it and be willing to do something about it.)

Fortunately, there are things you can do to improve your time, they’ll help in fairly short order, and they’re all easy to do; all that’s necessary is to do them consistently.

The first and probably most important is to count out loud while you play, and to subdivide while you do it. If you’re playing a shuffle, for instance, you’d count it “One . . . a Two . . . a Three . . . a Four . . . a One” etc. (omitting the middle triplet). If you were playing rock or country with straight eighth notes, you’d count “One and Two and Three and Four” etc. With slow tunes you might want to subdivide further, using sixteenth notes rather than eighths, “One e and a Two e and a Three e and a Four e and a” etc. The important thing is to count out loud and to subdivide. In situations where you can’t count out loud, you can always count under your breath.

The second thing you can do is practice with a metronome. It’s irritating, but it helps. Beyond this, it’s good to turn the metronome off while you’re playing (and counting) and turn it back on 15 or 30 seconds later to see if you’re still in sync with it. For drummers, this is easy to do, as they can just keep the beat going with their foot on the bass drum. The rest of us have to stop playing but can keep counting and then resume playing after we’ve stopped the metronome; the same goes, of course, for turning it back on.

That brings us to the final point. A few nights ago I was talking about time with my friend and ex-bandmate Mick Berry, co-author of The Drummer’s Bible, and he mentioned something that had never occurred to me–that it also helps to play every note at the last possible thousandth of a second. He swears that it works, and that it helps tremendously in overcoming rushing. He has excellent time and teaches drums for a living, so I tend to believe him.

If you’re having timing problems and begin doing all, or even most, of these things, your time will improve significantly.