Humans with perfect internal tempo? Do they exist?

[micguy]

There was a Kenny Loggins video once where they had two live takes they wanted to
"mix" for a video - sound and video. The worry was that the two performances wouldn't sync up - they'd have to do a lot of adjusting of things to keep things lined up. Turns out, over the whole 4 minutes or whatever, the drummer had kept the band (on two different nights) dead on time wise - without a click. The mixed the thing without having to compensate at all for timing.

There are actually a fair number of good musicians that have really good timing. The drummer in my college rock band was a metronome - the joke was, if he played with a metronome, it was so that the metronome could calibrate itself. If someone started a tune too fast, he'd lock that in, and you were locked there for the duration of that tune - no way out.

I play with a lot of drummers, many of whom are very solid time wise. It's a more common thing than you might think, but still very appreciated.

 

[jdwinva]

I'm a decent bassist and I do not have perfect pitch; I have relative pitch. I can't sing a note. However, all my life I have been able to identify when the beat is a even a hair slow or a hair fast. I might have perfect tempo. It's my only musical super power.

 

[Burwabit]

I played a gig or two with a guy who claimed to have perfect time and tempo. He was former orchestral drummer. His name was Joe Time… true story. RIP

 

[GwenOnBass]

Art Tatum played perfect time.

 

[scott sinner]

I have played with two drummers that could do this. Obviously, most nonEDM songs do not/should not stay one tempo throughout, but, with those two dudes, often we’d record a few takes of the rhythm instruments where there was a good bit of improv, and I’d go to comp the takes to get the best parts and each section would be dead the same bpm as the other takes.

And the rare song without any tempo changes, they still recorded without a click and when I went to map it onto the grid, perfection.

It is quite wild to be honest…playing live, Ill have delays setup sometimes, with a tap tempo just out of habit, but I won’t need it with either of them.

Im pretty good myself but not like them. If I count in, I might be off a bpm or two, and if I start the song correctly, Ill usually rush a little by the end, but they are like robots.

 

[thmsjordan]

I don't know how you could actually quantify this kind of thing short of a well designed study but I will say this.

One of the greatest conductors who ever lived, Maestro George Szell had something to say about rhythm. Szell, famously conducted the Cleveland symphony. Under his baton they produced what many still consider to be the world's finest recordings of Beethoven's 9 Symphonies (among many other master works). He once quipped that there are far more musicians who have perfect pitch than there are musicians who have an adequate sense of proper rhythm. After decades in the business (and as another mortal who struggles with this issue myself at times) I tend to concur.

 

[thmsjordan]

Art Tatum played perfect time.

The fact that there are musicians in here who mention Art Tatum makes my heart happy. Thank you Morrighan.

 

[darkwasthenight]

I played with an excellent pit drummer who spent his downtime between shows vanishing a metronome - his goal was 5 minutes solid and if he heard the click he had to start from zero. He'd do that for a couple different tempos and then practice rushing/dragging/swinging against them while still feeling the original bpm.

In his case it wasn't naturally perfect inner tempo. but just putting the hours of study in to develop his sense of it. Despite having zero theory knowledge outside of rhythmic concepts, he actually taught me how to think about musical approach more effectively than just about any teacher I've had.

 

[Jeff Hughes]

I guess a more philosophical question to ask is whether tempo can drift based on perception of time: exciting things might seem faster whereas boring things might seem slower.

And then there is time dilation...

 

[Turnaround]

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.

Nor should they. Do you notice how they also get louder and softer in different passages of the same song? It's all part of musical expression.

 

[thmsjordan]

there are people with really good rhythm and people with really bad rhythm, so it would follow that at the extremes of the spectrum there are some people with NO rhythm and some others with effectively perfect rhythm.
of course it would be useless without also developing perfect feel. In a drummers case, perfect stick control, rudiments, techniques, knowledge of styles, beats, rhythms etc.
all that stuff is way more important.
with pitch, there's a lot of people with very good relative pitch, but a very select few with actual perfect pitch. ive heard anecdotally that they consider it as much a curse as a blessing. they can get very distracted, or even physically irritated by a tone thats off by a few cents. that would not be a good trait for a jazz player for example. same would be true with tempo. as someone else said above, real music breathes.
take Headhunters' Chameleon. some of the best musicians in the world and that thing speeds up like crazy. im sure they didn't do it by "accident" but it goes to show that the greatest musical minds don't necessarily stick to a monolithic metronomic meter.

Yes, this.

There are many great musicians who varied tempo during a tune. Not sure where we got the idea that machine-like time is always a good thing. Listen to YES in their original recording of Roundabout. The tempo varies as they are playing. Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, etc. all varied time (intentionally) quite a bit . Playing with a varied tempo isn't always a bug, many times it is a feature.

 

[robassable]

Perfect time? No, but there are humans that are gifted with the ability to keep exceptionally great time.

 

[Lo-E]

I’m not quite sure what to make of the word “perfect” in this context. How accurate are we talking here? Within how many BPM at what tempi and for how long?

I’ve been told I have very good time but I know for sure my time ain’t perfect. I’ve been lucky enough to play with a few drummers who were shockingly accurate, though. Like, scary accurate. Typically, these were guys who still - even after decades of playing - busted out the metronome and practiced their rudiments every single day. Perfect? I don’t know, but you could set your watch by these guys.

 

[RhinoBass]

Something I do in the car to "practice" is to listen to the first few seconds of a song I know, then turn the radio down and sing the song in my head (or sometimes out loud) until I get near the end, then turn the radio back up to see how close I am to the actual song.

 

[MuseChaser]

Me.

I'm a classically trained pianist in a previous life, and figure I have at least a year or two in aggregate practicing with metronomes, I got hard-wired in the brain by Seth Thomas.

Here's the easy test. Watch a clock or watch with a second hand that steps each second, not a smooth sweep like a Rolex or some wall clocks. That's 60 beats per minute, obviously.

When it crosses 12, count along with it for the first 10 or 15 seconds. Keep counting but look away. When you get to 45 or 50, look back at the timepiece and see if you're still synch'd up.

I won a lot of money on bets I couldn't do it . . . . Of course in a band, if one guy was dragging, I'd hear it right off the bat. Strangely, it was OK if the whole band was a little behind the beat. If the only one dragging or speeding up was the drummer against the rest of us, that was a real pain.

I also knew one guy with almost perfect pitch, and a woman who absolutely had it 100%. I'm convinced it can be a curse after being with them. Hers was so acute to the point she could hear the bend in tempered tuning, a perfectly tuned grand piano was barely tolerable on some days.

I hope the Seth Thomas metronome wasn't one of the mechanical ones.....

And, FWIW, almost any professional jazz or legit player hears and adjusts for tempered tuning when playing with a piano or other keyboard instrument. Not only is it not unusual to be able to do so, it's a necessity.

 

[ThinCrappyTone2]

Just to clarify the original post, it's not to suggest that music should always be played to a perfectly consistent tempo. Just asking the questions "is it possible?" and "Have you seen anyone do it?"

Also, after reading some of the replies, it should be mentioned that playing to a consistent tempo doesn't mean you have to play like a robot. Far from it. Musicians who are experienced and comfortable playing along with a click can easily swing and put lots of "feel" into the groove without locking to every single division like a quantized sequencer.

I get that some music would be destroyed by a consistent tempo. But my experience, which is mostly rock bands, it's often the opposite. A band writes a song that would sound good with a consistent tempo, but they vary the tempo unintentionally, without even realizing it, which kills the groove and can make it sound amateurish.

 

[ThinCrappyTone2]

Nor should they.

Never?

 

[Swerve]

Out of all the YouTube bassists that pop up in my feed, Juna Serita stands out to me as having impeccable timing.

 

[Bozendoka]

It is.
Funny story: a former girlfriend had perfect pitch, she threw out her microwave because the humming was somewhere between an F# and a G and it drove her nuts. She bought a new one and insisted on hearing it in the store just to be sure.

My daughter has near-perfect pitch. For most of her childhood she would tell me what key songs were in and I thought she was making it up because it didn't match what I thought the key was. Found out a year ago or so (she's 20 now) that she was right! It's not so perfect that regular noises bother her but she's super picky about bands being in tune with each other or people singing songs in incorrect keys. She's also better at sharps than flats, too.

 

[JazznFunk]

No. Even the human heartbeat isn't mathematically perfect. Then again, there's also debate on what 'perfect' even is in terms of time/tempo. A click track that is set to be mathematically 'perfect' and quantized with zero drift would be the most clinical definition of 'perfect'.... or perhaps a very highly accurate quartz watch/clock at 60bpm. After all is said and done.... would we want to listen to someone with perfect, unwavering, clinically 'perfect' time? I guess we'll never know.