Is it fair to play live with a metronome?

I recently started using a Tama Rhythm Watch live with the phono out running into the on-stage mixer/ "ear rack" in an unused in channel (16) and I run a hardwired 1/4" out to my earbuds. I've got it set so I have stereo click and a balanced band mix in both ears. My lead man has gotten a fair amount of positive feedback as to how we sound as a group with me being on a click and having musicians that can follow and stay with me no matter what, and I can honestly say that it's not only improved my drumming, but i'll never go without it again. When the subject of sterility and musicality is concerned, it breaks out like this... if you're selling CDs at a merch booth of your originals, the folks at your show want to hear live what's on the CD... same tempo, etc... in order to ensure we're giving the crowd a quality product, we mimic the CD for all originals... this promotes consistency and keeps folks coming back show after show, IMO.
 
No its not!! Unless live means with help!!! Tempo is to be learned like anything else that has to do with performance. You have Live performances confussed with rehearsals. I honestly would feel cheated as a concert goer to find out that the drummer needed assistance to maintain time. Sorry your wrong, times do change so does tempo but thats the human element thats most appreciated by real listeners who want to see and hear you on your own not with help. You set the tempo whats next going to a drum track?? Stay home we don't need you any more your to human!!! Before you sit down behind a kit stand up and be counted...............in time the best YOU can do not a damn crutch!! Doc
 
No its not!! Unless live means with help!!! Tempo is to be learned like anything else that has to do with performance. You have Live performances confussed with rehearsals. I honestly would feel cheated as a concert goer to find out that the drummer needed assistance to maintain time. Sorry your wrong, times do change so does tempo but thats the human element thats most appreciated by real listeners who want to see and hear you on your own not with help. You set the tempo whats next going to a drum track?? Stay home we don't need you any more your to human!!! Before you sit down behind a kit stand up and be counted...............in time the best YOU can do not a damn crutch!! Doc

Agree to disagree. And I think you'd be very surprised (and apparently disappointed) if you knew how many huge bands play with click tracks live. It's not like the drummer isn't playing his instrument anymore. He still has to play his parts, but he has the click to help with the tempo.

How about keyboard players who use horn sounds? Do you also feel cheated when you find out that the band doesn't have a horn section?
 
No its not!! Unless live means with help!!! Tempo is to be learned like anything else that has to do with performance. You have Live performances confussed with rehearsals. I honestly would feel cheated as a concert goer to find out that the drummer needed assistance to maintain time. Sorry your wrong, times do change so does tempo but thats the human element thats most appreciated by real listeners who want to see and hear you on your own not with help. You set the tempo whats next going to a drum track?? Stay home we don't need you any more your to human!!! Before you sit down behind a kit stand up and be counted...............in time the best YOU can do not a damn crutch!! Doc

You must feel cheated often.

It is very common in modern music, and a requirement for a lot of paying gigs.

Many touring pros I know use clicks live because it's in the job description.
 
No its not!! Unless live means with help!!! Tempo is to be learned like anything else that has to do with performance.

And playing a gig with a click =/= not learning tempo in the first place.

You have Live performances confussed with rehearsals.

No.

I honestly would feel cheated as a concert goer to find out that the drummer needed assistance to maintain time.

And I thought it was all about the music...

Sorry your wrong

Who's wrong, about what exactly, and why?

times do change so does tempo but thats the human element thats most appreciated by real listeners who want to see and hear you on your own not with help.

Down with amplification, lightshows, sequenced interludes and roadies! Hey, which listeners aren't real exactly?

You set the tempo whats next going to a drum track??

Not entirely unheard of.

not a damn crutch!! Doc

Like that darn electronic amplification.
 
Sometimes youth is so gooffy, your the ones being cheated!! I don't like synths trying to sound like horns because they can't. If you want a keyboard for a part fine but if I want a tenor I hire a tenor. You think your being innovated but what your doing is slowly and methodically eliminating the human factor, a natural response and the core of playing music and thats spontaneity!!!'Listen smart ass when your making a living out of performing live music call me we'll talk. An amp is sound rienforcement a click is leaning on a device to help maintain something you should be trying to perfect in time. Using a click isn't a roadie or lights those are additions what your doing is actually subtraction. The subtraction of the human element , honestly its been used for teaching for ever, try LEARNING something then go apply it.
I prefer my duck in orange sauce not to tuff you know it can get gamy when excited. Doc
 
Sometimes youth is so gooffy, your the ones being cheated!!

Classy.

You think your being innovated

I think you need to rephrase this coherently. We think we're innovating by using a click live? We think we're listening to someone innovating by using a click? What?

but what your doing is slowly and methodically eliminating the human factor, a natural response and the core of playing music and thats spontaneity!!!

Well sorry, but I love classical music, I have an incredibly emotional experience at Tool concerts and so on. The success of film music is almost completely dependent on successfully evoking emotion and so on. Of course you don't have to like it all.

Listen smart ass when your making a living out of performing live music call me we'll talk.

You're already talking. Albeit in a very vaguely directed rant form, rather bizarrely laid out as if if you were responding to one person. (I also remember you negatively referring to Nas in the plural...)

An amp is sound rienforcement a click is leaning on a device to help maintain something you should be trying to perfect in time.

A click live can achieve things that not playing with a click can't. This has been pointed out to you, though you've completely refused to address it in preference to calling people goofy and smartasses, telling us we're being cheated completely regardless of what we actually listen to.

playing a gig with a click DOES NOT EQUAL not learning tempo in the first place. You recognise this right?

I do not think Porcupine Tree or Tool or Pink Floyd were all confusing live playing with rehearsal.


Using a click isn't a roadie or lights those are additions what your doing is actually subtraction. The subtraction of the human element

Or adding elements - you know what they are, right, despite completely unaddressing them so far? Because we have several pages of people pointing them out.

The subtraction of the human element , honestly its been used for teaching for ever, try LEARNING something then go apply it.

PLEASE elaborate on exactly what you mean, in a coherent sentence. These three statements are occupying the same sentence rather confusingly.

I prefer my duck in orange sauce not to tuff you know it can get gamy when excited. Doc

Classy.
 
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Doctor Dirt: but what your doing is slowly and methodically eliminating the human factor, a natural response and the core of playing music and thats spontaneity!!!

Duckenheimer: Well sorry, but I love classical music, I have an incredibly emotional experience at Tool concerts and so on. Of course you don't have to like it.

I agree with both of you. Music aimed at young people is becoming increasingly digitised. No doubt some music is best when it's super precise. However, I'm hearing a lot of pop songs on the radio that I think would be better served with more organic treatment ... but that's just me (and other oldies, I expect). Each generation's tastes vary.

I have this little conspiracy theory where I imagine The Evil Record Companies have deliberately conditioned young people's ears to respond to digital music because it's cheaper to produce. It's also artistically easy to control by hiring a programmer to create backing tracks for cute teenagers who can dance/writhe and just about carry a tune with the help of Autotune.

I've heard young people describe old music as "sloppy", which it is when compared with machines. Not sure if the next generation will get sick of Gen Z's digital sounds and rebel by being organic, or whether music will become ever more digital.

I'm guessing the former, based on Adele's popularity in 2011.
 
I agree with both of you. Music aimed at young people is becoming increasingly digitised. No doubt some music is best when it's super precise. However, I'm hearing a lot of pop songs on the radio that I think would be better served with more organic treatment ... but that's just me (and other oldies, I expect). Each generation's tastes vary.

I completely 100% agree that a helluva lot of music would be much better with more organic production and breathing in time and feel that a lot of modern music is very sterile and inhuman.

But do you agree that - er, someone - has live performances confused with rehearsals? How about Pink Floyd, Tool, etc? Do you agree that playing live with a metronome is unfair? That amplification and effects and light shows have never got in the way of human elements of playing? That a metronome being used live suggests a crutch for someone who hasn't learned time? That we're being goofy and cheating ourselves by not requiring every emotional experience music takes us on to be click free?

And does anyone have the slightest idea which listeners aren't real exactly?
 
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However, I'm hearing a lot of pop songs on the radio that I think would be better served with more organic treatment ... but that's just me (and other oldies, I expect). Each generation's tastes vary.

I feel exactly like you Polly, some of today's pop songs could be really good if it was more organic, but that would imply using a drummer instead of a machine, and that's costing a whole lot more money to record an album.

Thankfully, there's still some good artists who still use real musicians within their recordings.

Now for the OP question, I only use a metronome or a click to practice and for rehearsals, not for live playing...
 
I'm hearing a lot of pop songs on the radio that I think would be better served with more organic treatment ... but that's just me (and other oldies, I expect). Each generation's tastes vary.

I've heard young people describe old music as "sloppy", which it is when compared with machines. Not sure if the next generation will get sick of Gen Z's digital sounds and rebel by being organic, or whether music will become ever more digital

The concept of perfection if everywhere.

In the "my playing" section, how many times has someone pointed they were a bit sloppy, yet compared to 99% of the drum tracks from the 60's they would be well with-in the confines of what was considered "in time" ?
 
The concept of perfection if everywhere.

In the "my playing" section, how many times has someone pointed they were a bit sloppy, yet compared to 99% of the drum tracks from the 60's they would be well with-in the confines of what was considered "in time" ?

in fairness how strictly "in time" someone is and how "sloppy" they are aren't necessarily linearly related... If the guy lays the wrong parts of the groove behind or ahead the beat he will sound a lot sloppier than Steve Gadd pulling and pushing real wide. The guys who are grooving usually have the microtiming sitting in incredible places, regardless of how metronomic it is.
 
But do you agree that - er, someone - has live performances confused with rehearsals? How about Pink Floyd, Tool, etc? Do you agree that playing live with a metronome is unfair? That amplification and effects and light shows have never got in the way of human elements of playing? That a metronome being used live suggests a crutch for someone who hasn't learned time? That we're being goofy and cheating ourselves by not requiring every emotional experience music takes us on to be click free?

And does anyone have the slightest idea which listeners aren't real exactly?

Nah, I think all's fair in love, war and music. Whatever works IMO.

DD is a blues purist. I'm not a purist with anything - totally pragmatic. Anything goes. I can enjoy incredibly crass, crappy music if I'm in the mood.

Usually I'm just a sucker for a good melody or beat or vibe or well put together song ... I don't care how that's achieved. I couldn't care if they stuck a pulsing mechanism in the bum of a robot and got it farting out the time ... just as long as the music hits the spot, I'm happy.

The idea of "fairness" or "cheating" when it comes to using clicks seems to stem from competition for gigs or kudos. You get the "help" of a click to allow you to play better gigs because every second song isn't speeding up.

It's about purity. The romantic view is that the more technology added, the less direct human expression there is. You could argue that electric guitars and keys made music a little less subtle and personal (as compared with acoustic music). People seem okay with that. I am. I think the trend is against the subtle and personal in an increasingly crowded, noisy and digitised world.

That's my other theory - if the environment holds up then we'll evolve into cyborgs.

Getting back to "fairness" ... The idea is like those swimsuits they banned from international swimming because of the unfair advantage. Or maybe a javelin with a tiny invisible rocket installed at the tail. Or how about the outcry about Oscar Pistorius competing in races with his super functional artificial legs?

Oscar-Pistorius-will-run-at-Daegu1.jpg


"Not fair!" the other athletes cried. (Of course, since Oscar P has it so good they could always arrange to have a catastrophic accident so they lost their legs too).

It's only natural that in the competitive hurly burly that protests are made when people use technology to gain some kind of advantage. Situation normal.
 
Playing with a click does not make drumming sterile!

There is still a human drummer playing along to a click and there are always their imperfections in their playing...that is one of the huge differences between the sound of human drumming and that of a drum machine or of quantized drumming.

BUT!...as far your drumming goes I would not use the metronome for live performance. You have to learn to develop on tempo memory and holding tempo as a basic musicianship skill (this applies to all other musicians)...

...say you are faced with a performance or rehearsal situation without a metronome, you should be versatile.

Metronomes are great rehearsal/practice tools but you have to understand that in a band situation each musician's timing and dynamics interact. If you a have a metronome playing in your headset you might be inflexible to controlling how far behind or ahead of the beat you are in relation to everyone else in the band. In short, timing is balance issue between musicians.

The other downside is that if you are playing a tune that has variable tempo (for example a slowdown towards the end) a metronome will be no good for that and might actually be distracting.

Also remember that live performance does not have to match the recording so close...otherwise, why did the audience come to see your band perform. Live performance should always be something more than what is heard on a CD.

So if I was in your position I would learn to perform without the metronome.
 
Playing with a click does not make drumming sterile!

True, but it is a piece of technology that sits between the player and the music. How much this interferes with the player's expression will depend on how comfortable the player is with the click.

Click or not click, a soulful player who is comfortable with a click will still sound great. Not too many will be able to tell the difference between a strong player with or without the click.
 
The only thing not fair, or cheating in music, is lip synching or having someone else play and saying it's you. A lot of pros play with a click in their ears. If it helps, it's an aid but neither cheating or illegal.
 
2:05 tells you everything you need to know http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jySUpMqmzd4

From this point onwards there's a bit of drag & lift, especially towards the end, & It's bloody wonderful!!!!!!! Why wouldn't you lift the tempo in that end solo, I know I do. Our band is one of the very few who dare to pull this track off live. I'm not boasting, but I frequently get comments about our tempo control on this punishingly difficult number, & we play it a fair bit slower than Floyd do here.
 
There are some more reasons why many big shows are being played with click:

As opposed to jazz (mostly), many pop/rock songs "function" best at a certain tempo,
and a click helps with that greatly. (Of course one could say the drummer could use
the click just for counting in and let go then.)

Many pop/rock shows include some sorts of backing tracks, loops, samples, you name it.
This works best with clicktrack.
 
2:05 tells you everything you need to know http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jySUpMqmzd4

From this point onwards there's a bit of drag & lift, especially towards the end, & It's bloody wonderful!!!!!!! Why wouldn't you lift the tempo in that end solo, I know I do. Our band is one of the very few who dare to pull this track off live. I'm not boasting, but I frequently get comments about our tempo control on this punishingly difficult number, & we play it a fair bit slower than Floyd do here.

Great performance from the old fellas. Good to see them still playing with style and passion. I'm not the best at picking slight tempo fluctuations - not too fussy about it as long as things are flowing nicely.

I like the way your band handles that tune. Very easy song to speed up. On a clumsy day I can imagine myself bumping that sucker up a good 5-10bpm by the final solo ...
 
2:05 tells you everything you need to know http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jySUpMqmzd4

From this point onwards there's a bit of drag & lift, especially towards the end, & It's bloody wonderful!!!!!!! Why wouldn't you lift the tempo in that end solo, I know I do...

Totally agree with this, I'm not a partisan of playing live with a click or a metronome, I much prefer to interact with the other musicians, and if the "mood" of the moments feel like an increase or drag of tempo, so be it... (with all the danger that's implied if you "missed the train" scenario)

...not too fussy about it as long as things are flowing nicely...

+1, an important factor for me to make the music sounding "alive"....
 
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