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Old 05-07-2018, 09:31 AM
gfirob gfirob is offline
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Default Tempo Challenged

I have been playing the guitar for decades, but I have always had an issue with tempo. I play a fairly aggressive style of syncopated fingerpicking, and I find myself just building up speed in the course of the song, especially at instrumental breaks. Other musicians will sometimes helpfully point this out to me (“Would you slow down!).

Anyway, I tried one of those little vibrating metronomes you wear on your wrist, but it was terribly distracting, like getting shock therapy while trying to play the guitar.

I wondered if some kind of very understated rhythm generator or drum machine might help me out. My style would not support actual drum background, but maybe something very simple would keep me on time and actually enhance the music. Something like a Beatbuddy or one of its competitors.

Any suggestions?
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Last edited by srick; 05-07-2018 at 09:43 AM. Reason: removed implied profanity
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Old 05-07-2018, 09:36 AM
gfa gfa is offline
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Easy way to test that out is to try a free drum machine app on your phone.
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Old 05-07-2018, 09:43 AM
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gfirob -

I've been playing for far fewer years than you have, but have recently dealt with a similar issue. I have gotten a good handle on the problem by:
  • breathing
  • tapping my foot or swaying my body with the bass or with a Metronome
  • practicing slowly
My teacher really stressed the 'zen' of the beat and essentially made playing a form of meditation.

Rick
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Old 05-07-2018, 10:46 AM
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In addition, consider tapping your foot on every other beat to give you headroom with the playing tempo of the song. This tip from AGF’er Eric Skye (see his 30 Day Guitar Challenge on YT and watch the first segment on Groove, very helpful).
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Old 05-07-2018, 11:14 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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A metronome is really the beat trainer here. Drum machines and backing tracks are more fun, but give you too much information: they're a crutch, not a trainer.

The trick is to play slow - slower than you're comfortable with. Play slow and stay slow. The metronome (set right) forces you to do that. Get the notes right on the click, until you can settle into that slow groove.

I agree I wouldn't want one of those vibrating ones! All you need is an audible click. (The old ones with the swinging arm give you useful additional visual cues, but it's good to be able to do without that.) The advantage of a drum machine is you can set the click sound to something a lot less annoying than the ones most digital metronomes produce.

Set it to a reasonable medium tempo to begin with (anything between say 100-160). You don't have to play at that tempo - try playing at half that tempo, so the click is on every 8th. That's great for rock rhythms, where the 8ths have to be regular, and to help you tighten up your upstrokes and syncopations.

For swing or blues, of course, you want the click on the beat. Again start at an easy tempo, where you can hit the click reliably each time, and get into a steady groove.
Then - when you can stay with it really easily - you need to gradually make it more difficult by slowing the metronome. You can reduce the tempo gradually, or (perhaps better) keep the tempo the same (whatever suits the tune) but halve the click rate. Now it clicks on 1 and 3, or 2 and 4 - and you have to fill in the missing beats correctly. This is how you train your internal clock, by making it work harder.

A good general tip when playing live (when adrenalin kicks in and messes up your clock) is to take a breath or two before you start. You need to find a tempo you can sit on, like a passenger, not one you feel you have to drive. If you feel you're propelling the music, then it's always going to accelerate. Think of the beat as something that's just there in the air, that you're latching on to.
The closest thing I know in the physical world is one of those ski drag lifts, where you sit on a little disc between your legs and let the pole drag you. When you first use one of those it's easy to get it wrong, by hanging on for grim death, feeling you need to steer or guide it. You need to learn to relax, lean back and let it take you.
Musical rhythm is the same: you sit on it and let it take you.
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Old 05-07-2018, 12:02 PM
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I've been playing for about 40 years. Thought I had pretty good meter.. When I played with bands, my tempo was controlled by our drummer.

Now that I'm doing mostly solo work, it's all on me. Where I've noticed some drift is when I use my looper. I'll sometimes start looping at the very beginning of a song to capture and store the basic progression I want to later solo over. If I've sped up, then kick in that loop later in the song, it's noticeable! I'm getting better because I'm now very conscious of it. It takes work and paying attention. If I let my emotions drive the tempo, I speed up.
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Old 05-08-2018, 11:29 AM
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I think the advice to breath and to tap that foot is the best advice. That is what helps me from tending to speed up.
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Old 05-16-2018, 10:34 PM
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It's no help for you, but you're in good company. I remember several quotes by Leo Kottke to the effect of "Oh, I played that too fast."

I can't tap my foot and play at the same time (much like my inability to walk and chew gum at the same time; they're probably related). Also, I think that tapping my foot takes a little away from whatever amount of "drive" that I should be putting into the music, so I force the rhythm and tendency to want to tap my foot into my right hand.
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Old 05-17-2018, 05:11 AM
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The problem with foot-tapping is that your foot is controlled by the same brain that's controlling your hands. So it's not going to help keep your tempo steady if you can't already do that.

Where foot-tapping does help (IME) is where you're playing a lot of syncopation. You can mark the beats with your foot, which - I find - makes it easier to play off the beat on the guitar, to get syncopated rhythms right.

I.e., it helps to express the beat physically in some way, not just imagine it. It doesn't have to be a foot tapping, it could be bobbing the head or shoulders - provided, of course, it doesn't disturb what your hands are doing.

But as I say, keeping a steady tempo is a different skill. Foot tapping can sometimes help you keep the speed down, but adrenalin makes us speed up without realising it (until we start making mistakes that we never normally make...). If we're not careful, we end up playing as fast as our fingers will let us - which is always too fast!
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Old 05-17-2018, 07:35 AM
Big Band Guitar Big Band Guitar is online now
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Default Good advice

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonPR View Post
A metronome is really the beat trainer here. Drum machines and backing tracks are more fun, but give you too much information: they're a crutch, not a trainer.

The trick is to play slow - slower than you're comfortable with. Play slow and stay slow. The metronome (set right) forces you to do that. Get the notes right on the click, until you can settle into that slow groove.

I agree I wouldn't want one of those vibrating ones! All you need is an audible click. (The old ones with the swinging arm give you useful additional visual cues, but it's good to be able to do without that.) The advantage of a drum machine is you can set the click sound to something a lot less annoying than the ones most digital metronomes produce.

Set it to a reasonable medium tempo to begin with (anything between say 100-160). You don't have to play at that tempo - try playing at half that tempo, so the click is on every 8th. That's great for rock rhythms, where the 8ths have to be regular, and to help you tighten up your upstrokes and syncopations.

For swing or blues, of course, you want the click on the beat. Again start at an easy tempo, where you can hit the click reliably each time, and get into a steady groove.
Then - when you can stay with it really easily - you need to gradually make it more difficult by slowing the metronome. You can reduce the tempo gradually, or (perhaps better) keep the tempo the same (whatever suits the tune) but halve the click rate. Now it clicks on 1 and 3, or 2 and 4 - and you have to fill in the missing beats correctly. This is how you train your internal clock, by making it work harder.

A good general tip when playing live (when adrenalin kicks in and messes up your clock) is to take a breath or two before you start. You need to find a tempo you can sit on, like a passenger, not one you feel you have to drive. If you feel you're propelling the music, then it's always going to accelerate. Think of the beat as something that's just there in the air, that you're latching on to.
The closest thing I know in the physical world is one of those ski drag lifts, where you sit on a little disc between your legs and let the pole drag you. When you first use one of those it's easy to get it wrong, by hanging on for grim death, feeling you need to steer or guide it. You need to learn to relax, lean back and let it take you.
Musical rhythm is the same: you sit on it and let it take you.
I would add start painfully slow. On a new tune with many chord changes I will start at 30 then work up to speed and beyond.
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Old 05-17-2018, 08:32 AM
mattbn73 mattbn73 is offline
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I think in the beginning we see tempo as being somewhat arbitrary , and it's so opposite of that. It's probably the most important factor in defining the style of a tune. If you think of songs as only quarter notes or eighth notes , then, tempo is truly arbitrary . You have to get beyond that at a certain point and really nail down what it is about a tune that makes it want to be a certain tempo. Why does it sound wrong if it's faster or slower? How would you know it's not right without a metronome? Is it something in the vocals, bass, drums etc.?

Generally, the slower things are , the more you subdivide . At slower tempos there are more and more sixteenths note kicks or accents. At midtempo's these are very subtle kicks at the end of four bar phrases etc., and then, at MUCH slower tempos, 16th note accent patterns define more like EVERY beat. At faster tempo's it's mostly eighth notes patterns. "patterns" is the key word here . There has to be something besides just feeling music beat to beat or even measure to measure. There are larger patterns which make something feel like a four or eight bar phrase.

The questions above may seem philosophical, but they're very practical and mechanical. It's often hard to narrow this stuff down if you're just listening to the acoustic rhythm part on a recording , because very often, it's not about just what the acoustic player is playing . It's more about the interactions between instruments. You really have to become aware of what makes a song" want to be " at a given tempo beyond simple arbitrary reasons , like "it's supposed to be that tempo" or "the metronome says so or original recording etc".

Finding a groove which suits a specific tempo is really the easiest shortcut to fixing tempo issues, from my experience with musicians of various age and ability levels. the problem really isn't the problem usually. Tempo problems are usually FEEL problems.
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Old 05-17-2018, 08:52 AM
gfirob gfirob is offline
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There is a lot of very good advice here, thanks very much. It is also helpful to find out that I am not the only guy with this problem. A live performance involves keeping a lot of plates spinning in the air—the lyrics, the guitar breaks, the connection with the audience, the various pedals and whatnot, and of course the stress of a public performance. Remaining calm and breathing is very good advice. I practice a lot, but that is never the same as being on stage. A lot to think about, thanks again.
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Old 05-17-2018, 10:54 AM
KarenB KarenB is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gfirob View Post
There is a lot of very good advice here, thanks very much. It is also helpful to find out that I am not the only guy with this problem. A live performance involves keeping a lot of plates spinning in the air—the lyrics, the guitar breaks, the connection with the audience, the various pedals and whatnot, and of course the stress of a public performance. Remaining calm and breathing is very good advice. I practice a lot, but that is never the same as being on stage. A lot to think about, thanks again.
Why do you feel it's bad to speed up? Or slow down for that matter. Are you playing for people to dance to the music? Music can sometimes feel too robotic to me. There's an organic feel to music that "breathes."
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Old 05-17-2018, 01:07 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by srick View Post
gfirob -

I've been playing for far fewer years than you have, but have recently dealt with a similar issue. I have gotten a good handle on the problem by:
  • breathing
  • tapping my foot or swaying my body with the bass or with a Metronome
  • practicing slowly
My teacher really stressed the 'zen' of the beat and essentially made playing a form of meditation.

Rick
I've also paid attention to "tempo dynamics" along with phrasing. Just as you can crescendo and decrescendo, you can subtly s..l..o..w down and resume for effect. Helps develop awareness and control.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SprintBob View Post
In addition, consider tapping your foot on every other beat to give you headroom with the playing tempo of the song. This tip from AGF’er Eric Skye (see his 30 Day Guitar Challenge on YT and watch the first segment on Groove, very helpful).
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonPR View Post
A metronome is really the beat trainer here.

The trick is to play slow - slower than you're comfortable with. Play slow and stay slow. The metronome (set right) forces you to do that. Get the notes right on the click, until you can settle into that slow groove.
I think of it as the metronome letting you know that you have plenty of time, so relax.

Quote:
For swing or blues, of course, you want the click on the beat. Again start at an easy tempo, where you can hit the click reliably each time, and get into a steady groove.
Then - when you can stay with it really easily - you need to gradually make it more difficult by slowing the metronome. You can reduce the tempo gradually, or (perhaps better) keep the tempo the same (whatever suits the tune) but halve the click rate. Now it clicks on 1 and 3, or 2 and 4 - and you have to fill in the missing beats correctly. This is how you train your internal clock, by making it work harder.
I would mention also that you can "double-time" by using both feet, either one for the beat, the other for the upbeat or "half-time" by using one for the odd beats, the other for the evens.

I've highlighted the common suggestion from two quotes. I'd also add that there are visual metronome apps which might be useful:

https://download.cnet.com/s/visual-metronome/

I have an "vintage" black box electric metronome which gives clicks and flashes...and offers a "flash only" silent option.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Fra...8AAOSwRWVa91N5

Lastly...and apropos of the "zen" reference in the first quote...listen to/for what you want to play rather than what you're playing. Let the tune play you.
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Last edited by Wyllys; 05-17-2018 at 01:23 PM.
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Old 05-17-2018, 05:14 PM
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OP,
I've realized that my first post was zero help, so I'm back.
Your iinitial post reads as though you're in a band.
Going with this supposition,
my sense is that you're taking on too much responsibility for the tempo.
As (I suppose) you're in a band,
the band should have already decided which player marks the tempo, be it the drummer/percussionist, bass, or rhythm guitarist/keyboards/you choose, based on which instruments the band employs. IMO, you should be accepting cues from that/those player(s), as should all other players. Vocals (if any) emanate from the rhythm/tracking that is laid down by this/these player(s); you would be comping until your phrasing is desired as an addition, as well as any "lead" playing. It might be of some service to the overall effect if you breathed more and played less; whatever rhythm section exists should defer to you and recede as your voicing (guitar) commands attention, but this is based on their acquiesence, rather than your "forging ahead".
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