are you born with good timing?

[BassChuck]

I think that whilst some people may have a natural advantage in being born with good timing, anyone can develop good timing with practice and time.

That said, I seem to have great timing!

Shame I can't ear-play too well...

Interesting comment. I've known a lot of musicians with very acute relative pitch or perfect pitch that had really horrible sense of time and tempo. AND..... players who could semingly remember exact tempos (I tested them with a metronome) and had great time that couldn't find a pitch to save what soul they had left.

IMHO we all have good timing and good pitch, but its what we choose to pay attention to that makes a difference. We all hear our voices go up in pitch at the end of sentence to indicate a question. And people tend to walk in steady tempo, and almost everyone has a steady heartbeat, so the rhythm is in there.

In my experience as a music teacher I've found that everyone seems to have one of these things stronger than the other, and in most cases with some practice and work, the other can be brought up to near the same level. The age that we start working and the intensity have a lot to do with the end result.

 

[geoff_in_nc]

So here's a thought. I think I have a pretty good _sense_ of timing, but (a lot) less than perfect execution of timing - the actual playing individual notes. I'm not all over the map, but I recognize where I'm off.

I believe that execution of timing is definitely improvable with practice - its muscle control and development of coordination basically I think. However I wonder if that sense of time might be more inborn? Not totally inborn, but more an instinct-like.

I think that sense has to be there first to develop the coordination. Without the sense you can't recognize that your execution needs improvement, and you just continue on playing but not meshing with the rest of the band.

 

[madmatt]

I was born with it.
I have Kung Fu timing.

 

[Liam Wald]

Ever notice that when some people dance they look really cool and seem like they are in sync with the music while others look like they are having a seizure?
Some people have absolutely no sense of timing or rhythm. No matter how many lessons they have or hours of practice they will always be really poor musicians.
Everyone has some talent for something. Finding what that is can be a challenge. Some people will just keep trying to be something that they can never be.
I think the old saying, "You can be anything that you want if you just put your mind to it and never give up" is ********.
At some point you have to realize that you suck and move on.

 

[pklima]

Keeping steady time is harder for some people than others, but what really seems hard for those "people with no rhythm" is finding the "one" in a syncopated beat.

 

[Skitch it!]

Timing has never been a real issue to me really, one of my better points in fact. I think playing along to tracks while I was learning back in the day instilled that early on, playing along with synth b-lines get's things right on track ime.

 

[fractiouslowend]

i do love watching people at a gigs try to nod their heads in time with anything that's not 4/4

 

[animvl]

I wasn't born with good timing, thats why I put drums on the back burner many years ago. I've noticed there are certain tempos that come easily to me and tempos in between those I tend to speed up until it is one my comfortable tempos if I don't pay attention. I'm much better than I was timing wise now though, I believe.

The drummer in my band had good timing... he'd count the oven timer so he knew when to get his toasted sandwich out and was usually very accurate with that.

 

[garmenteros]

Throw in a ton of hours of practicing with a metronome and I believe anybody can get a good sense of timing

+1 I was born with no sense of timing. A metronome and a lot of practice fixed all that. What you can be born with I believe is the ability to pick it up faster than others.

 

[pocketgroove]

I've never had to sit down and work on mine. I will, if a certain tricky part requires it, but from the day I started playing and got pulled into a band I was able to play in time without tapping my feet or so much as thinking about it. Which isn't to say that I don't have bad days; I just know it when I do.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

I do not know if one can be born with timing. It's actually an empirical question. If you could control the confounds, you could find a scientific answer to the question.

I do know that my timing has greatly improved. Playing with other (good) musicians definitely helps with timing. Raise your hand if you've been asked or hired to play with a cat who plays guitar and writes his or her own songs but has never played in an ensemble situation before, and upon first playing with this person, it becomes painfully obvious he or she has no timing at all due to never having to play with other musicians.

I've gotten pretty good timing over the years. Actually, one of my biggest things is asking drummers not to put in extraneous hi-hat clicks during rests for timing purposes. Unless the room and stage are creating phasing and slap-back issues, I don't need those hi-hat clicks for timing purposes, and not having them makes the band sound tighter and more impressive and dynamic, IMHO.

 

[Snarf]

throw me in the "it takes practice like anything else" camp.

a berklee-grad keyboard player once described it best to me; he said it's not a "groove" at all, where you fall into it and it's hard to get out.

it's actually more like a "ridge", in that you have to jump up on it and work at keeping your balance to stay up there.

Wow, I'm going to remember that, because it is SO TRUE.

I actually had bad time when I was a kid/young teenager. But I spent a LOT of time drilling with metronome and drum machine exercises. My time is as good as anyone else. Except for the guys that are born with perfect time. That truly IS something you can be born with, and not many people have it as compared to perfect pitch. I know Questlove has perfect time.

 

[John Wentzien]

All humans are born with impeccable timing...Being AWARE of it is the only problem!

 

[I<34080]

Anything in X/4 or X/8 I have no problem with, but once you start getting into X/16 I have some trouble.

I've never had problems keeping tempo.

 

[Fassa Albrecht]

The drummer in my band had good timing... he'd count the oven timer so he knew when to get his toasted sandwich out and was usually very accurate with that.

I can always remember an old housemate getting freaked out because I could do something similar with stuff like boiling an egg without a timer or setting away the microwave and then timing it so I walked back into the kitchen just as it bleeped.

 

[SBassman]

- For every drummer with imperfect timing, there is a bass player with imperfect timing who thinks his timing is *perfect* and thinks all timing issues are the fault of the drummer.

- This is not only a DNA thing. Anyone can improve their timing - significantly - with work.

 

[kaputsport]

My drummer and I have great timing. He is a walking metronome, and I fall two clicks lower than him.

I can play effortlessly to a click. My guitarist cannot. To put it into perspective, We were recording a track which has a substantial slow down into a bridge of some type... At the end, we sped back up to the original tempo, and finished the song. The drummer and I were both playing (he was tracking, and I was support) and we ended up back on the one with the met blaring the original tempo at us the whole time through.

Oddly enough... We had done this before when we tracked the song the first time with lesser equipment 4 years ago. Now we are doing it for real.

We tend to have a common heartbeat. We know exactly how each other reacts, and never fail to hit the one, or any other beat for that matter. Sometimes he can tell I rushed something (like a fill) but he reigns me in with an offbeat, and we are back together.

 

[SBassman]

My drummer and I have great timing. He is a walking metronome, and I fall two clicks lower than him.

I can play effortlessly to a click. My guitarist cannot. To put it into perspective, We were recording a track which has a substantial slow down into a bridge of some type... At the end, we sped back up to the original tempo, and finished the song. The drummer and I were both playing (he was tracking, and I was support) and we ended up back on the one with the met blaring the original tempo at us the whole time through.

Oddly enough... We had done this before when we tracked the song the first time with lesser equipment 4 years ago. Now we are doing it for real.

We tend to have a common heartbeat. We know exactly how each other reacts, and never fail to hit the one, or any other beat for that matter. Sometimes he can tell I rushed something (like a fill) but he reigns me in with an offbeat, and we are back together.

That sounds like a good musical connection. Stay close to him - these connections are not frequent. Not in my life, anyway.