How to stop Speeding up Tempo live.

[Earwitness]

Originally Posted by Al Acuff

Practice with your metronome and play very slowly then change the speed. Faster. Slower. Etc. Find what is too fast and too slow. What's in between is fair ground.

I get tired of the click click of the metronome so I use a software plugin called Toon Tracks which provides all kinds of drum loops using sampled drum kits. It makes practice more fun.

If you're performing solo it's OK to speed up a little for effect. It's one of the ways a solo performer can build excitement. Modulating the key upward is another way.

Good post!

[lpa53]

Originally Posted by YamahaGuy

Relax. Play it slower than you think you should. Anxiety does this to me.

This is one of first things I thought of. While I do have a tendency to speed up even when playing alone at home, when playing out the tendency is exaggerated for pychological reasons, the moan one being that I subconsciously think that the audience really doesn't want to listen and thus I need to just get the song over with as soon as possible. The result? For me, it's a self-defeating poor performance that the audience may indeed not want to hear.

So since you're there to play, just relax and play.

Now if only I can take my own advice.

[vindibona1]

Originally Posted by mattbn73

I work with young drummers and pianists a lot on tempo issues, and a high percentage of the time there is a basic issue with hearing "characteristic rhythms" which kind of set the tempo for a song. Could be a characteristic vocal phrase or something on your instrument. For drummers, it's very often subdividing to sixteenths instead of 8ths and finding some kind of clave or polyrhythmic pattern. If you're thinking all quarter notes in counting, tempo is going to be more difficult, especially when the heart rate gets up. If you can subdivide and hear clave type patterns or some other kind of characteristic "reference rhythm", tempo problems can be remedied fairly quickly. That's not a simple answer, but this is the next level type of stuff that makes you a better musician overall in my opinion. Anyway, I do a lot of it with schoolkids.

There is a lot to be said for the above. I like the term "characteristic rhythm". I'd not heard it before but makes total sense. I detest when a song is a couple BPM's to fast or too slow and ruins the character of the music.

As far as steadiness goes, you have to learn to subdivide, then allow the subdivision to become second nature so that tempo remains steady. What often makes the tempo go faster is when we shorten the rest or don't play extended notes for their true full value. We need to maintain the values and the correct space of rests so that everything else can remain constant.

As a side note, you're lucky you're accompanying yourself. I often accompany singers, and sometimes ever the better ones have R.A.D.S (Rhythmic Awareness Deficiency Syndrome... even worse, drummers of percussionists with this disease ). Or worse yet, when playing in musical theater and the singer drops two whole beats with 20 musicians wondering if they should stay on the stick or adjust for the singer. You can't imagine. It's a blessing to be in total control of all the aspects of the tune. Small tempo discrepancies should be easy to deal with once you become aware of the problem.

[rmsstrider]

"You have a case of checkeredflagitis, or gethomeitis"
or "have R.A.D.S (Rhythmic Awareness Deficiency Syndrome."

Fun! Guilty

Thanks for all the grate suggestions.

[Dylan]

Originally Posted by rmsstrider

would an metronome app on my phone sent via blue tooth to an ear bud be of any use.? But then i'm not sure if i could program for my set list ahead of time.
Maybe I just need to practice more.

Start with practicing with a metronome. This will really get at the heart of the issue. Also, when practicing, try making the tick of the metronome, the upbeat instead of downbeat. In other words, you would count the ticks as "and, and, and, and" instead of 1, 2, 3, 4. When performing live, subdivide beats in your head or at the very least, tap a foot along. When I mean subdivide, I mean break the beat down to smaller parts so that you are doing more counting per measure. Instead of counting 1, 2, 3, 4, count 1, and, 2, and, 3, and, 4, and.

[Mr. Jelly]

When you practice a particular song practice it at a faster pace and a slower pace than you plan on doing the song. In this way you will start to learn the differences. They will become ingrained. Then when you do the song at the rhythm you want to do it pay attention to the rhythm more than you have in the past. The added benefit of this is that when you happen to start out incorrectly, while in a live situation, you can deal with it. Which is to not stop and start over but grin like you are having a good time and play through the song as it is.

[amyFB]

I have experienced the same challenge and try to manage it with a couple things.

practice, good old fashioned practice, using a metronome, has the effect of eventually embedding the tempo into my inner guitar.

singing along helps because I can tell if I'm rushed or lagging by the delivery of the words.

something about leads and solo breaks is where I tend to lose touch and speed up. I'm extremely aware of this trigger now and remind my self to pay close attention during breaks to keep the pace where it belongs. (this is epecially challenging when comping for another lead player, and it helps to discuss it and both be aware of it).

some folks are successful at keeping tempo with a foot tapping - not me .

good luck to yoU!

[Mr. Jelly]

Way beck when I was auditioning drummers. I ran into what I called bedroom drummers. They were guys that had never really played with a band and practiced alone. They could do okay until they hit a part where they did a fill. Then the fill would be at a different rhythm. They had learned to do the fill at a certain pace and when it came time to fill it was always the same no matter what the rhythm of the song was at. A real train wreck.

[DoryDavis]

This was mentioned above in terms of practicing, but you can do it live. Tap your foot on the quarter note (one, two, three, four) and then double it, tap (one, and two, and, three, and four, and). It is harder to speed up tapping eight notes for some people (including me). Don't know the reason

[ManyMartinMan]

Originally Posted by rmsstrider

...How to stop Speeding up Tempo live...

Practice/perform more......live. That's the only way I've found for people to keep from doing this. Performance anxiety (adrenalin) does this as does insecurity on stage. Practicing alone simply doesn't replicate live performance. Also, there's a reason people tap their feet or tap the microphone or ..... to keep that rhythm on time. We've all done it and/or played with others doing it at some time.

[mattbn73]

Again, I think it's important to understand that there are very concrete things - physical references to rhythm, characteristic elements of rhythmic subdivision which LIMIT tempo etc. - beyond just practicing things over and over with the metronome or visualizing playing slower live etc.

At a very basic level, the philosophical question "why does it matter if the song is faster or slower?" opens a lot of doors into understanding the characteristics things which define tempo as being "too fast" or "too slow". Otherwise, any song can be performed at any tempo, literally.

If it suddenly sounds "too fast" at a given tempo , the question must be asked "what SPECIFICALLY makes it sound like it's too fast?". Otherwise, it honestly doesn't matter. For rhythm section players, sometimes it's rushing the vocalist, or even simply the vocalist in a single section of a song. The song may sound okay until the bridge etc., and then you know it's too fast.

I do a lot of work with kids and volunteer players at church, and problems with tempo are usually related to feeling everything one way - like hearing everything in reference to basic quarter notes - instead of subdividing more and learning to hear deeper patterns and subdivisions which AUTOMATICALLY limit tempo discrepancy etc. Drummers and acoustic strummers can very quickly fix rushing problems on the fly, by physically INCREASING the distance covered by individual strokes. That's an easy PHYSICAL remedy, but long-term, there are more important MUSICAL remedies, which are similar but in different ways, being related to rhythmic musical elements.

The thing is, the fact that these keep you from rushing is merely in an AUXILIARY benefit to the PRIMARY benefit of subdividing and finding grooves this way: better sounding music (beyond tempo considerations) you groove more, lock more with others, and everything FEELS better for you and your audience. 100% more enjoyment of music when you're doing this.

I feel like it's really important to find a DEFINING essential groove or pattern which basically CAN'T be played at vastly different tempos. There are hundreds of ways to do this, and hundreds of examples of tunes etc. It might be more helpful to have an actual example of a tune which is problematic.

[ManyMartinMan]

Originally Posted by mattbn73

..If it suddenly sounds "too fast" at a given tempo , the question must be asked "what SPECIFICALLY makes it sound like it's too fast?". Otherwise, it honestly doesn't matter...

That would be fine except the issue at hand is failure in maintaining a specific performance speed. That, in any examination, should be remedied. Fast or slow doesn't matter but maintaining speed does.

[vindibona1]

Originally Posted by mattbn73

Again, I think it's important to understand that there are very concrete things - physical references to rhythm, characteristic elements of rhythmic subdivision which LIMIT tempo etc. - beyond just practicing things over and over with the metronome or visualizing playing slower live etc.

At a very basic level, the philosophical question "why does it matter if the song is faster or slower?" opens a lot of doors into understanding the characteristics things which define tempo as being "too fast" or "too slow". Otherwise, any song can be performed at any tempo, literally.

If it suddenly sounds "too fast" at a given tempo , the question must be asked "what SPECIFICALLY makes it sound like it's too fast?". Otherwise, it honestly doesn't matter...

The short answer to your two main questions is that tempo greatly affects the musical message. Just a couple bpm's too fast and the style of the music changes. Subtly perhaps with small tempo changes, but it changes nonetheless.

Every song has its "style key". Tempo is obviously a major contributor to a given style. The KEY of a song also has a bearing on the perception of the message of the song; perhaps more subliminal than tempo, but it's there.

Music is about subtleties. Sometimes you can't even quantify them. If you are an avid viewer of "The Voice" (as I am) you will quickly learn that often great singers get passed over because even while singing the song perfectly in time the singer gets passed over because the tempo took the song out of it's style key and tamped down the artistry that might have been shown at a tempo that is more correct for the song.

I hope that answers some of the questions posed. JME

[mattbn73]

Originally Posted by ManyMartinMan

That would be fine except the issue at hand is failure in maintaining a specific performance speed. That, in any examination, should be remedied. Fast or slow doesn't matter but maintaining speed does.

Sorry for being too philosophical. It wasn't a literal question in that sense. It's just a different aspect of the same problem.

More broadly and back to what I was trying to say , the things which help you SET the "right tempo" will help you KEEP the tempo as well, if they're organized around something beyond quarter notes, or even any single subdivision.

(Just as 8th notes help lock in quarter notes and 16th notes help lock down eights, specific groove pattern space on 16th's help lock down straight sixteenths etc. It's another level of organization.)