Timing accuracy: objective criteria?

The same. Bury the click.

 

I started a thread yesterday in reference to this on a metronome that can give you training input. In any case, I'm learning how to play drums and there is a program in the module that features a click and gives you real time feedback on whether you're behind, on, or in front of the beat.

 

I do a lot of metronome work, both to build speed and accuracy and also switch between different not groupings. The click and your beat should be audibly indistinguishable unless you intended something else.

You need to be able to hear that, not rely on a machine to tell you otherwise.

 

The only metronome I ever played to was a conductor, but I maintain that tempo, timing, and rhythmic accuracy is an ensemble skill, and everything I ever learned about them was from tapping my foot with a hundred other people. Timing is more about listening than insisting or exerting your will. Timing is a contract you enter into mutually with all the members of your ensemble; it lives and breathes, and micro-adjusts in such small increments it isn’t even perceptible.

And when it’s done right, it is never about leading—it’s about following.

 

Hear hear!

I think this is true whenever humans and not machines are involved in setting the tempo. For example: I practice with a metronome, or a drum machine, which is an unfeeling automaton. That's useful for me, but the metronome doesn't hear me pushing the beat forward and go along with me. It's much harder to play in correct time with an actual human drummer, or a human conductor, because their tempo is alterable. (Ideally, perhaps not, but in practice, it is) So the trick is to (as dreamadream said) listen and not assert your will. Metronomes are incapable of change due to the context around them, and so even though it's important to practice with one, the real purpose of the practice is to learn the feeling of being in time, so that when you're in a band you participate in that together.

I'm an old banjo player, and I remember a story that Earl Scruggs told about how he and his brother (a guitarist) would start playing a tune together in front of their house, and then each would walk around the exterior in a different direction -- with the goal being to see if they were still in sync when they met at the rear of the house. So, lately, I've found running my drum machine through a footswitch has been a big help -- I can mute the drum machine for 4 bars, 8 bars, and so on, and re-engage it to see how close I am to it. Kind of like walking around the house