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Can a sense of time be learned?

#41
ATTHEBOTTOM said:
A natural sense of timing is something not everyone is born with. I believe that if one works at it that improvement is possible. But if this singer is already trying to be in a working band it seems to me he's skipped one of the basics. ...
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Is your objective to have a working band, or to be an instructional group teaching people/yourselves how to perform? If the former, you need a different person.

I have found that singing pickup notes seems to be one of the very most difficult things for amateur singers to do. I don't know why; I'd guess something like half of all the lines of lyrics ever composed and sung have pickup notes.

We're dealing with the same population here that will insist on clapping on 1 and 3 on backbeat songs (and always just slightly off time).

The way most song sheets are written doesn't help either, because the words for the pickup notes are generally typed at the beginning of the line, when for clarity they really ought to be at the end of the preceding line. When I type song sheets I always boldface the word (or syllable) that's on the ONE, and when I use someone else's typed sheet I often underline or circle the ONE. (I'm not a very good singer and I need all the help I can get.)

I think that as a working band you have the right - nay, the duty - to demand that each performer meets certain base level standards of ability and skill. A singer who can't come in on the right beat does not, in my opinion, meet those criteria.

Now if what you've actually got is a social hang with instruments, or if you've set up a joint learning workshop where the main purpose is for you all to learn how to do this stuff better, THEN you can start talking about how to teach the singer how to sing. It's not just tone quality and remembering the words, it's RHYTHM too.
 
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#42
Timing can be improved if the person in question is willing to work on it and be coached. I worked with a singer for a while who had an incredible range and could sing almost anything. He had timing problems and when anybody brought it to his attention he would become argumentative. He also didn't have good stage presence for what we were doing. Sadly we had to let him go. Here is one of our performances from 2009.

 
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#43
Some have a natural, innate sense of time and consistency in terms of feel. It doesn't mean that there aren't certain things which need to be refined. Those folks have a much easier time adapting to other peoples' quirks. A lot of those people are bassists for obvious reasons. But - I have encountered people who have good time, but zero knowledge of FORM. And if one is unsure of the form, then timing can suffer due to 'decision paralysis' in the moment. So maybe it's a combo of shoring up the sense of time, but also understanding the song forms better. A metronome can come in handy for working on both of those things, along with using charts.
 
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#45
JazznFunk said:
Some have a natural, innate sense of time and consistency in terms of feel. It doesn't mean that there aren't certain things which need to be refined. Those folks have a much easier time adapting to other peoples' quirks. A lot of those people are bassists for obvious reasons. But - I have encountered people who have good time, but zero knowledge of FORM. And if one is unsure of the form, then timing can suffer due to 'decision paralysis' in the moment. So maybe it's a combo of shoring up the sense of time, but also understanding the song forms better. A metronome can come in handy for working on both of those things, along with using charts.
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In this specific instance, his problem is knowing when to come in. Once he's singing a continuous phrase, as long as the drums are going, he will be fine. He usually won't rush, drag, or skip a beat. But the moment he has to pause for more than 2 quarter notes his mental timer resets completely and he has no idea where he is. Would you call that a time problem or a form problem?
 
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#46
Schpeaker said:
I just did a gig with a singer who has a poor sense of time. It's not a tempo issue, it's just where we are in the measure and when to come in. He doesn't have any formal training. But neither do I, and I don't have to think about it at all, so I really struggled to explain to him how I (or any of our other band members) do it. I mean, I can try and explain that you start singing on the "a" of the 5th bar but that's not how I perceive a song, so it's a lot of work for me to reverse-engineer my instinct and lay it out for him for every single verse of every single song. FYI we're not doing any crazy prog time signatures, it's mostly 4/4 stuff.

He ended up doing a ton of work memorizing specific hooks in some instrument melody or a drum accent that he would use as a cue. That worked pretty decently at our final rehearsals leading up to the show. On stage, it all went back to poopie and the rest of us were left covering for his mistakes.

It's sad because he has a good voice and is an excellent frontman. He's also an awesome fellow, always willing to take feedback, and willing to work to improve himself. But I'm not sure what to tell him. Should I encourage him to take voice lessons? Instrument lessons (he plays a little guitar)? Can one learn timing, or is it an innate ability so if you don't have it you're completely screwed? If there's no hope for him I'd rather give him the harsh news instead of false hope.

Do any of you have experience working with someone who had a hard time with timing, but improved over time? FYI we're all in our 40s to there's no more brain cells left to develop, they're all dying slowly.
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In my experience, a lot of singers without formal training who have some understand of timing in rhythm count the legnth of events and/or the spaces between them, rather than using up and down beats that reflect the time signature. As an example, if they were doing My Girl, they would sing "I got sunshine" and count the word "shine" for 6 beats before singing "on a cloudy day," instead of counting 3 beats for "I got sun" to be &-4-&. Once I know how someone understand music, I can usually use their theory of it to explain the idea. Do you know how the singer understand music?

The other answer is that everyone involved in making music should be grooving to it. If they aren't moving some part of their body to the beat, they probably won't be doing it with their instrument.
 
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#47
This reminds me of our church keyboard player....and a few singers too... pitch and chords were accurate, but the timing just did not compute. She had some hearing loss issues, not sure if that affected things at all? It's kind of baffling and fascinating. It came naturally for me so I don't have a clue how to understand someone that is struggling with it. I didn't learn it in a perceptible way, how would I teach someone?
 
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#48
Schpeaker said:
In this specific instance, his problem is knowing when to come in. Once he's singing a continuous phrase, as long as the drums are going, he will be fine. He usually won't rush, drag, or skip a beat. But the moment he has to pause for more than 2 quarter notes his mental timer resets completely and he has no idea where he is. Would you call that a time problem or a form problem?
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Both. It sounds like he is unable to sense mathematically what a bar of '4' feels like, and is also not aware of how the form feels AND sounds to know what is right, and what is right-on. A lot of inexperienced singers do this.... especially in jazz. It's how a 4/4 standard turns into a standard with a bar of 5 here and there, or a bar of 4 followed by a bar of 6.... etc. etc.

When I was first starting out I had really good time, but I didn't understand form well. It's why I loved long-form jams on a couple of chords here and there in my very early year or 2, and could play with a drum machine/click easily with good feel, but I didn't understand form (or have a good knowledge of chords yet) so I struggled until I got in a band setting where I started learning from other people who were better than me - and patient - to fill in some of those gaps. They appreciated my time and helped me get more solid as an ensemble member.
 
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#51
basslayer said:
The other answer is that everyone involved in making music should be grooving to it. If they aren't moving some part of their body to the beat, they probably won't be doing it with their instrument.
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This has come up before. One shouldn't have to dance or tap in order to KEEP time. Moving because one is feeling inspired to move is one thing - but feeling like you have to force movement to keep time is a crutch. Try it. Set the metronome or drum machine up and play without moving any body part other than your fingers/hands. Just as an experiment. It might be eye opening. It was for me a while back!
 
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#53
JazznFunk said:
This has come up before. One shouldn't have to dance or tap in order to KEEP time. Moving because one is feeling inspired to move is one thing - but feeling like you have to force movement to keep time is a crutch. Try it. Set the metronome or drum machine up and play without moving any body part other than your fingers/hands. Just as an experiment. It might be eye opening. It was for me a while back!
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Like everything in music, all rules are contextual. If a musician's time is solid, they are already feeling the groove and can express in time without tying it to music. If that isn't the case and someone isn't able to feel the time, then this should help them feel the time.
 
#54
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He needs to learn to count.
Practice with a metronome.
 
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#55
Sure, it can be learned, but… the only person who can teach it is one’s own self. Even with the aid of a teacher. The time, desire and drive have to be there. It might be too late, it takes a huge effort to internalize musical timing. It’s good that he wants to improve, but none of us can speak to his actual ability to do so.
 
#57
pepj said:
This is a basic fail. If they cant hear what virtually everyone picks up on naturally this will be a world of pain.
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and that is why this is so baffling. just about every person on earth can sing along with popular music, starting from young age. i'm almost wondering if this singer simply doesn't know the songs very well at all. i'd bet money they are reading the lyrics from a sheet or phone.
 
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#58
Well, this is another one of those things where my life experience just isn't set up to instruct anyone. From the age of two or three, I had that little toy workbench in my room and I was tapping out rhythms on it - Boom boom Boom boom (2/4) Boom boom boom Boom boom boom (3/4) Boom boom boom boom Boom boom boom boom (4/4) and so on. I didn't even know what I was doing yet, but I was doing it. I suppose there are people whose childhood didn't include any kind of exploration and internalization of banging rhythmically on stuff.
 
#59
basslayer said:
Like everything in music, all rules are contextual. If a musician's time is solid, they are already feeling the groove and can express in time without tying it to music. If that isn't the case and someone isn't able to feel the time, then this should help them feel the time.
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I never said not to move if you are naturally dancing or grooving as part of the music. I also never said it was a rule. It's an exercise in the basics. I said that time should be aurally based first and foremost, and one should be able to play the instrument to a time reference and keep it solid without having to tap or stomp to 'make time happen.' There is a difference, and nuance is key when discussing this concept.
 
#60
aprod said:
Get that foot tapping.
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Maybe. I gave the singer a stick & cowbell and asked him to click along 1-2-3-4 (a la Mississippi Queen)...couldn't do it. I'm starting to lean towards what was mentioned earlier: they learn via recordings and use familiar phrasing as cues.

That's okay. I had one guitarist who couldn't hear and react to chord changes on the simplest of tunes. If the chord wasn't written above the lyrics, it wasn't happening.

Riis
 

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