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Humans with perfect internal tempo? Do they exist?

ThinCrappyTone2

ThinCrappyTone2

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Jan 19, 2022
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Haverhill, MA
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#1
TL;DR - have you ever met anyone who has proven they have perfect tempo?

I record a lot of people in my little home studio, and try to use a click when possible. Its always been my assumption that no matter how good a musician is, "nobody keeps perfect tempo" for the entirety of a song without a click. Meaning, there is nobody I have ever encountered who starts and ends dead-on 120bpm, for example, with no drifting in between.

But for all I know, there may indeed be people who can provably do this. Heck, since I'm not somebody who went to a conservatory, it may in fact be more common than I realize in certain circles. To me that seems super human. But then again, so does perfect pitch, and that definitely exists.

So I am just asking out of curiosity, do you know or have you encountered anyone who's tempo is "perfect" just like someone with perfect pitch? Are there people to whom you can say "play me a 131 bmp beat for 3 minutes" and it starts and ends on that exact tempo without drifting?
 
#2
Surprisingly, I've never heard of or really even thought of the concept of "perfect tempo" -- even though, as you imply, if "perfect pitch" exists why shouldn't "perfect tempo" exist?

But I suspect the reason is, because Really Good Internal Tempo is close enough to Perfect. And there are lots of musicians who have Really Good Internal Tempo.

I'll bet drummer John "J.R." Robinson could get started with just a 4-beat click intro and 3 minutes later you'd discover that his tempo didn't drift discernibly; he's been described as a "human metronome" by some producers.

Frank Zappa once opined that percussionist Ruth Underwood had a built-in atomic clock that was counting off 32nd notes.
 
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#3
Bob_Ross said:
Surprisingly, I've never heard of or really even thought of the concept of "perfect tempo" -- even though, as you imply, if "perfect pitch" exists why shouldn't "perfect tempo" exist?

But I suspect the reason is, because Really Good Internal Tempo is close enough to Perfect. And there are lots of musicians who have Really Good Internal Tempo.

I'll bet drummer John "J.R." Robinson could get started with just a 4-beat click intro and 3 minutes later you'd discover that his tempo didn't drift discernibly; he's been described as a "human metronome" by some producers.

Frank Zappa once opined that percussionist Ruth Underwood had a built-in atomic clock that was counting off 32nd notes.
Click to expand...
Interesting! Thanks for the reply.

My base assumption has always been that perfect tempo is not a common thing, if it exists at all, and therefore a click must be used if one wants the tempo perfectly consistent.

But sometimes I get the impression that other musicians are almost offended when I suggest that we use a click, seeing it as a lack of trust in their abilities. Meanwhile I just assume nobody has that ability. :)
 
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#4
I can't say I have perfect tempo, but I'm pretty good. When I played rhythm guitar for almost 50 years starting in 1965, I was often told I should play bass, saying I had good feel and tempo, but I didn't want to be encumbered by a large electric bass, forget a standup double bass.

About 25 years ago I was out on a date to Sushi on Tap in Toluca Lake that had open mic tap dance nights. A number of people came up using a boom box or such with music. Then an older guy came up who I recognized as one of the retired dancers from the movie Tap with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. He didn't have any music and I could see that he was struggling to keep time, so I started slapping my thigh to help him. He carried on for about 15 minutes, and when done, he made a bee-line to me, shaking my hand, asking if I'm a drummer. I said no, rhythm guitar and my younger brother is an accomplished drummer. He thanked me profusely.

A year after I joined a ukulele group (and gave up guitar), in mid 2014, the leader asked if anyone would take up the bass to fill in our sound. I discovered all the bass ukes/mini bass guitars and went for it. Bass uke is now my main instrument, and I make sure that everyone in the group keeps with me because we have member who tries to do percussion who can't keep time. I even got a compliment from the leader the other day that I'm the keeper of the time. She's always telling the group to stay in the pocket with the bass.
 
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#5
Every top-flight musician has excellent time. It’s a product of knowledge that good time is important, the desire to play in that manner, and plenty of experience doing this with like-minded players. There may or not be a little drift in that. Harder to do in current times because everything means on a click so hard.

I think there’s exemplars that come really close to perfect time, Anthony Jackson and Steve Gadd among them. Those guys were playing perfectly on the grid before the grid was even invented.
 
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#8
It's hard for me to accept the word "perfect" in any discussion that also includes the word "human." Even the concept of "perfect pitch," at least for me, is open to a need for more precise definition. If "perfect pitch" is the ability to identify any pitch simply by hearing it, then I have perfect pitch. If it's the ability to home in on A440 within a few cents reliably, then I have perfect pitch. If it truly means no errors ever, and the ability to know, upon hearing one A without any other A in comparison, whether it's A440 or A440.5, then no, I don't have perfect pitch. Somedays I'm off by as much as three or four Hz. When people ask if I have perfect pitch, I just shrug and say, "Nah.. really good pitch, maybe."

As far as "perfect tempo" goes, I kind of view it the same way. A reliable "internal clock" is extremely valuable to any pro (or anyone else wanting to play music, for that matter of course), but equally valuable is the ability to keep one's ears wide open and mesh with what's going on around you. With great players, the tempo doesn't usually slide around too much, but if it does, it's more important to be together and groovin' than it is to be absolutely MIDI-clocked right. Click tracks, at least to me, are useful when "assembling" music via individual tracks recorded in different locations, but a death knell to the real magic that happens when musicians play together. I've played a lot of shows that use clicks, backing tracks, etc., including the authorized touring companies of Les Miserables and Book of Mormon (I was a local sub... I wasn't on the road with either show, just to be clear). The players were, bar none, great players, and the "product" was amazingly consistent night after night, performance after performance. Still, there wasn't any magic... might as well all have been machines.

One of the most amazing feats of internalization I've ever heard is Bill Evans' "Conversations with Myself," where he recorded three tracks, left, right, and center, without a click or really any pre-planning. The tempi are pretty much dead-on throughout. I know a couple professional dancer/choreographers who are pretty amazing in being able to tell pretty accurately what bpm a given piece is, or able to count off a given bpm reliably without referring to a metronome.

Like "perfect pitch," those with an extremely heightened sense of pulse certainly exist. Perfect? .. nah....
 
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#9
KohanMike said:
I can't say I have perfect tempo, but I'm pretty good. When I played rhythm guitar for almost 50 years starting in 1965, I was often told I should play bass, saying I had good feel and tempo, but I didn't want to be encumbered by a large electric bass, forget a standup double bass.

About 25 years ago I was out on a date to Sushi on Tap in Toluca Lake that had open mic tap dance nights. A number of people came up using a boom box or such with music. Then an older guy came up who I recognized as one of the retired dancers from the movie Tap with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. He didn't have any music and I could see that he was struggling to keep time, so I started slapping my thigh to help him. He carried on for about 15 minutes, and when done, he made a bee-line to me, shaking my hand, asking if I'm a drummer. I said no, rhythm guitar and my younger brother is an accomplished drummer. He thanked me profusely.

A year after I joined a ukulele group (and gave up guitar), in mid 2014, the leader asked if anyone would take up the bass to fill in our sound. I discovered all the bass ukes/mini bass guitars and went for it. Bass uke is now my main instrument, and I make sure that everyone in the group keeps with me because we have member who tries to do percussion who can't keep time. I even got a compliment from the leader the other day that I'm the keeper of the time. She's always telling the group to stay in the pocket with the bass.
Click to expand...
Love it! By the way I love your mini bass collection :)
 
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#11
MuseChaser said:
It's hard for me to accept the word "perfect" in any discussion that also includes the word "human." Even the concept of "perfect pitch," at least for me, is open to a need for more precise definition. If "perfect pitch" is the ability to identify any pitch simply by hearing it, then I have perfect pitch. If it's the ability to home in on A440 within a few cents reliably, then I have perfect pitch. If it truly means no errors ever, and the ability to know, upon hearing one A without any other A in comparison, whether it's A440 or A440.5, then no, I don't have perfect pitch. Somedays I'm off by as much as three or four Hz. When people ask if I have perfect pitch, I just shrug and say, "Nah.. really good pitch, maybe."

As far as "perfect tempo" goes, I kind of view it the same way. A reliable "internal clock" is extremely valuable to any pro (or anyone else wanting to play music, for that matter of course), but equally valuable is the ability to keep one's ears wide open and mesh with what's going on around you. With great players, the tempo doesn't usually slide around too much, but if it does, it's more important to be together and groovin' than it is to be absolutely MIDI-clocked right. Click tracks, at least to me, are useful when "assembling" music via individual tracks recorded in different locations, but a death knell to the real magic that happens when musicians play together. I've played a lot of shows that use clicks, backing tracks, etc., including the authorized touring companies of Les Miserables and Book of Mormon (I was a local sub... I wasn't on the road with either show, just to be clear). The players were, bar none, great players, and the "product" was amazingly consistent night after night, performance after performance. Still, there wasn't any magic... might as well all have been machines.

One of the most amazing feats of internalization I've ever heard is Bill Evans' "Conversations with Myself," where he recorded three tracks, left, right, and center, without a click or really any pre-planning. The tempi are pretty much dead-on throughout. I know a couple professional dancer/choreographers who are pretty amazing in being able to tell pretty accurately what bpm a given piece is, or able to count off a given bpm reliably without referring to a metronome.

Like "perfect pitch," those with an extremely heightened sense of pulse certainly exist. Perfect? .. nah....
Click to expand...
This makes sense to me!
 
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#13
Human Tempo breaths. Metronomes and click tracks don't, however if you can make a metronome swing with a series of 16 or 32nd notes that's good time. If you go to YouTube and search for making a metronome swing there are plenty examples. Carol Kaye has one that's pretty good, it was very interesting. The first time I saw that I was astounded. It takes a bit of practice to get there but it's seems to be a common exercise, or a worthy goal.
 
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#14
MuseChaser said:
I know a couple professional dancer/choreographers who are pretty amazing in being able to tell pretty accurately what bpm a given piece is, or able to count off a given bpm reliably without referring to a metronome.
Click to expand...

Yeah, just as there are (at least) two aspects of "perfect pitch" -- the ability to recognize any pitch w/o reference, and the ability to discriminate between "that's an A440" and "that's approximately an A" -- it seems like this hypothetical "perfect tempo" would manifest itself in (at least) two different ways:

- being able to maintain N bpm for some period of time (without reference)
- being able to identify N bpm after hearing a brief sample
 
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#16
Artman said:
I can't stand listening to music that has been quantized and snapped to a grid.
It's artificial sounding, robotic, and devoid of any soul or feel.

I sure hope perfect tempo still has enough variance to not sound like a quantized track. Ugh.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

The imperfections humanize things, and I find that far more interesting than "perfection."
 
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#17
cxcxcx said:
Every top-flight musician has excellent time. It’s a product of knowledge that good time is important, the desire to play in that manner, and plenty of experience doing this with like-minded players. There may or not be a little drift in that. Harder to do in current times because everything means on a click so hard.

I think there’s exemplars that come really close to perfect time, Anthony Jackson and Steve Gadd among them. Those guys were playing perfectly on the grid before the grid was even invented.
Click to expand...

It’s also an endurance skill. You have to train yourself to be focused on more than one thing, and to maintain that focus for an entire piece. I think it’s an advantage that classically trained musicians have over hodge-lodge trained musicians like myself, in that they are required to build that skill and get graded on progressively higher standards as they go through school.
 
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