Tips to Improve Timing (I'm asking - You're telling)

[Art Araya]

Thanks for making these available!

This is exactly what I've done there some months ago, really helpfull : https://soundcloud.com/joachim-mahoudeaux/sets/internal-tempo-exercises
Starts @ 120 BPM and drecreases to 50, from easy to difficult
Feel free to download cos'... yeah it's free !

 

[Rockin Mike]

When playing with a drummer or along with a recording, make sure you get the downbeats in the right place. Everything else in the measure can be a little sloppy, but as long as you "punch the 1" in the right place it will sound OK to the average audience.

YMMV, but there are 2 time cycles I think about when I'm playing. The first is like a big slow rolling wheel - I call it the "pace" - as long as it feels like that is rolling steady then the song is not speeding up or slowing down. The second is like a 16th note ride - that helps me keep phrasing tight. When I'm playing I have those 2 time cycles going on in my head. I don't know if that makes sense but it helps me.

IMHO you don't want to be a robot metronome. A real song played by real musicians for real people should have some "feel" to it. Take a metronome to some of your favorite recordings, studio or live, and you'll see that even superstars speed up and slow down, even superstars play a little sloppy next to a metronome.

Jeff Beck is a guitar legend, he plays with anybody he wants, the best players in the biz. Listen to "Goin' Down". That song speeds up so much you can hear it with an untrained ear, yet it's one of his most famous and most loved.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying it's OK to play sloppy, to rush/drag or speedup/slowdown; It's really really important to get those things right. What I'm saying is that "right" is not usually the same as "machine perfect".

 

[the_stone]

One thing you can do with a metronome: instead of keeping the "click" the same while you get faster, keep your playing the same speed while making the "click" go slower.

Example: take any melodic pattern/phrase you want (let's go with a 2-octave major scale):
1. Start playing the scale in quarter notes at 200 bpm
2. Once you're comfortable with that, turn the 'nome down to 100 bpm, but keep your pulse the same, so that you're playing 8th-notes, with the click falling on the 1st 8th-note.
3. Once that's comfortable, keep playing 8th-notes, but start so that the click is falling on the 2nd 8th-note.
4. Next, turn the metronome down again to 50 bpm, but keep playing the same speed, so that you're now playing 16th-notes against the click, with the click falling on the 1st 16th.
5. Then, adjust your downbeats so that the click is falling on the 2nd 16th, 3rd 16th, 4th 16th (and feel free to adjust the metronome to a comfortable speed for all this).

There's plent of other variations, with the purpose being to get the click on something other than a straight downbeat, so that you are then responsible for maintaining good time, with the click serving as a reference, not a crutch. You could do this with triplets, or (and this is my favorite) - have the 'nome clicked on dotted-note values. You can do dotted halves, where the click occurs every 3 beats in 4/4, or do dotted quarters.

If you have any sort of program where you can slow the click an extreme amount (say 20-25 bpm) you can even play with the click occuring on any beat of a measure, every other measure.

What's cool is that you can do a lot with exercises like this in a pretty short time.

 

[David Jayne]

It's really all about technique. Can you tap your fingers on your desk in-time, in the pocket? Sure you can. You can't do it on bass yet simply because you haven't yet learned to 'operate' the bass precisely with your fingers. But you will, with continued practice. That's really all there is to it. Technique. No matter how or what you practice(but some things are better than others), it will come, with practice.

 

[m0ranwad]

It's really all about technique. Can you tap your fingers on your desk in-time, in the pocket? Sure you can. You can't do it on bass yet simply because you haven't yet learned to 'operate' the bass precisely with your fingers. But you will, with continued practice. That's really all there is to it. Technique. No matter how or what you practice(but some things are better than others), it will come, with practice.

I feel like there is so much truth behind this statement. Plenty of people stated that they work on timing away from music, and that does it for them. Well, for the last three months, I swear I haven't listened to a track without simultaneously internalizing the subdivision.

For example, I'm listening to "Blues at Sunrise" by Stevie Ray Vaughan (ft Albert King) ... I'll tap my foot to the 4/4 timing of the measure, while tapping the triplet-shuffle feel with my fingers. I can do this in perfect time. However, when you put a bass guitar in my hands, my fingers don't always strike at the precise time, every time. I hear it in my head, but mechanically I'm not able to stay in the pocket.

Maybe it came naturally and instinctively to you. However, I think that I need to put in the time.

 

[Tupac]

It's really all about technique. Can you tap your fingers on your desk in-time, in the pocket? Sure you can. You can't do it on bass yet simply because you haven't yet learned to 'operate' the bass precisely with your fingers. But you will, with continued practice. That's really all there is to it. Technique. No matter how or what you practice(but some things are better than others), it will come, with practice.

For most it is, which I think is what people really mean by "developing good time". They already had the nervous system capable of it, just not the experience to bring it out. Me on the other hand, will actually rush slightly when counting out loud. Not as bad as if I was on bass, but still bad.

 

[eukatheude]

Playing with a drummer yes.. But a great drummer that has good time is very important.. To this day i still wind up with drummers that think their time is great till you get them to a studio and play to a grid.. ughhhhh

Here is something that i developed back in the 80s to get myself in time..Someone else may have come up with the idea too...I dont know... But i became aware when recording a ballad and there was no time at the beginning of a song and i needed to fill space.

Here it is.... The thing that i do is set up a drum machine with a song pattern.. Have it go for 16 measures of beat.. then write an empty measure to place in the song so measure 17 is nothing, but then the beat returns to a drum beat for 3 more measures starting on bar 18 to 20.. then increase the blank measures to go for 4 empty measures then have the beat come back in... Those blank measures will give you NO time to play with while you are playing along with it.... SO it makes you work at internalizing the beat... go 100 or more measures.. and repeat.. each day!
In theory , as you play along with the beat, and empty beats you should be dead on time when the beat starts again.. Depending on if you are ahead or behind once the beat returns will help you understand if you are rushing or dragging...And show you where to work on your time..

Fast tempos are much easier to play along with than real slow ballad types. try them all.. It is a challenge... and i when i used to teach that was an exercise i gave all of my students...

I use this site for this kind of thing: Link Removed

 

[Jeff Bonny]

This may or may not be emmediately attainable but it's very useful on a number of levels and well worth thinking about: When you're playing to click or a drum machine make it breathe and groove or swing (or whatever is appropriate).

You achieve this by understanding there are five fundamental places to play the time: way behind the beat, a little behind the beat, right down the middle of the beat, a little ahead of the beat and way ahead of the beat. I'm not in favor of always using a metronome but because it shows you the dead center of the beat it's pretty useful for this. Never lean on the metronome though, your time always has to be independent of it.

Developing a deep working understanding of things like the above are much more musically useful than just trying to develop more regular meter.....having metronomic time won't necessarily make you a better player. You don't need to "work" on your meter. More regular meter will be an unavoidable byproduct of working on a sense of playing in time on and around the beat.

 

[Tupac]

This may or may not be emmediately attainable but it's very useful on a number of levels and well worth thinking about: When you're playing to click or a drum machine make it breathe and groove or swing (or whatever is appropriate).

You achieve this by understanding there are five fundamental places to play the time: way behind the beat, a little behind the beat, right down the middle of the beat, a little ahead of the beat and way ahead of the beat. I'm not in favor of always using a metronome but because it shows you the dead center of the beat it's pretty useful for this. Never lean on the metronome though, your time always has to be independent of it.

Developing a deep working understanding of things like the above are much more musically useful than just trying to develop more regular meter.....having metronomic time won't necessarily make you a better player. You don't need to "work" on your meter. More regular meter will be an unavoidable byproduct of working on a sense of playing in time on and around the beat.

You can't do any of those 5 unless you have the control over your fingers to play right in the middle with a metronome. Usually you'll be unable to do that anyway, and your natural tendencies will dictate whether you're ahead or behind.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

You can't do any of those 5 unless you have the control over your fingers to play right in the middle with a metronome. Usually you'll be unable to do that anyway, and your natural tendencies will dictate whether you're ahead or behind.

???
No, you can't do it unless you're HEARING the middle of the beat. Motor control has much less to do with execution than your ability to hear complete musical thoughts including time dynamics.

 

[js1]

My brushup timing exercise is to set a metronome to 30 - 40 bpm, and play whole notes. Work to plant the note in the heart of the click.

By "work" I mean relax and really internalize the click. It'll take a while (at least, it does for me).

Once that's solid, then I'll move to quarters, triplets, etc. After that, grooves.

 

[Tupac]

???
No, you can't do it unless you're HEARING the middle of the beat. Motor control has much less to do with execution than your ability to hear complete musical thoughts including time dynamics.

Unless you're deaf, I'm pretty sure you can hear the middle of the beat . From my perspective, someone with very bad timing, I know exactly where those notes SHOULD be placed, I just don't have the motor skills to sync up my fingers with those thoughts. If I replay songs in my head, I can tell there's no rushing or anything. Yet when I go play it, it sounds stop-start-y. The fact that I can tell I'm off as I play tells that it's not a hearing issue. I can certainly tell if someone is playing ahead or behind the beat, I learned that when I had formal drum training. Maybe some people do have the motor skills but just aren't musically refined enough to detect rushing and beat placement, as you said.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

Unless you're deaf, I'm pretty sure you can hear the middle of the beat . From my perspective, someone with very bad timing, I know exactly where those notes SHOULD be placed, I just don't have the motor skills to sync up my fingers with those thoughts. If I replay songs in my head, I can tell there's no rushing or anything. Yet when I go play it, it sounds stop-start-y. The fact that I can tell I'm off as I play tells that it's not a hearing issue. I can certainly tell if someone is playing ahead or behind the beat, I learned that when I had formal drum training. Maybe some people do have the motor skills but just aren't musically refined enough to detect rushing and beat placement, as you said.

I guess my point is that for a lot of people knowing intellectually where the middle of the beat is and actually hearing it with any consistency are two separate things. Most people's minds are super cluttered with all kinds of irrelevant thoughts that keep them from hearing in any real detail. The prime example I can come up with is that for most players playing super slow with great meter is extremely difficult. But even a rank beginner has the motor skills to play slow.

Maybe for you it is more a physical thing though.
To find out try this experiment: Take something know but that you're having trouble executing cleanly and without your bass work at being able to sing it until you can do that at speed completely relaxed. Then pick up your bass and without thinking about it (this part is super important) just knock it out at full speed and see what happens.