I guess it's fairly easy if you're tight to begin with. Personally I struggle a bit with timing in general, and it's not like I can control if I'm slightly too early or slightly too late.
Of course you can control it and you can change it, but it's a mental thing not a physical thing. If you have to be able to change it in your head, in other words hear it.
As I mentioned before, in the exercise I posted you can learn to play one and in-between the beats...that part is easy. But changing between them, now that's a different matter.
In part one we learn to keep tempo and learn that just because the notes come round earlier as we sub-divide the changes, the feeling is the exercise gets faster, but it does not, its just the changes come round earlier.
This exercise accustoms the brain not to panic about changes but just play.
In part 2 we learn about making a decision on when to play. Using mutes we have to make a conscious decision to play or not. We also learn how to control the mute in relation to the right or left hand.
In exercise 3 we learn to sub-divide the beat in eight different places, and make a choice on playing or mutiing within the sub-divides.
The reality of this exercise is about being in time to yourself, but playing against the count.
So in reality if the strong beat is one and three, but you play strong beats on two and four, the reality is it is the same time, tempo, and physical process to play each, but there relation to a count in is different. Once the idea is understood and accepted then it's application can be anything, but understanding it is the most important thing. Once you understand how to brak down a count it becomes internalised, this leaves you free to play, not count or worry about tempo...that just relates itself back to what you are playing and what you hear in your head.
Pt.1
