To the timing experts: What exercise helped you most?

You mean chop off one sixteenth note I'm sure?

Edit: I do think it's great though when you do the chop off thing but keep the quarter note
pulse at the same place!

Yes I meant 16th note :)

The quarter note pulse is always at the same place, the metronome is playing consistent quarter notes. It is you who needs to still hear the metronome consistently during the changes. I think this requires you to think pretty fast and you don't have any click to latch on to. When the click is on the e and a's you can hear that you are off if your timing is bad but the click it self doesn't help you. It just tells you that your timing is off.
 
Yes I meant 16th note :)

The quarter note pulse is always at the same place, the metronome is playing consistent quarter notes. It is you who needs to still hear the metronome consistently during the changes. I think this requires you to think pretty fast and you don't have any click to latch on to. When the click is on the e and a's you can hear that you are off if your timing is bad but the click it self doesn't help you. It just tells you that your timing is off.
Well you did say "so the click shifts so it lands on the "a", "&" and the "e" " in your first post.
But actually you mean the click stays but the backbeat and bassdrum lands on the "a"s,
right? That's what I assumed.
Yes that's a cool exercise for sure - shifting grooves or other patterns one sixteenth away, but did it
actually help your timing and control over not pushing or dragging when playing music with other people?
 
For me there was no single exercise.

I first became aware of great time when I heard Weckl for the first time as a teenager. The way he locked in and every note was exactly where it was supposed to be and at the perfect dynamic amazed me. I learned that he studied with Gary Chester so I bought "The New Breed".

I ran through that book (all 39 basic systems) three times complete. I sang every variation, I played it at every tempo I could. When I finished that (more than a year later) my time was miles ahead of where it had been before.

Other things that helped were (some of these have been mentioned already)

1. Playing with better players than me.
2. Recording myself (painful)
3. Learning the table of time over 1,2,3 and 4 beats (warning this is very advanced and will take quite some time to really feel all the odd subdivisions NOT for beginners)
4. Playing along with sequences that have open, choral and/or string (legato) sounds. The lack of a staccato click makes it much tougher.
5. Setting the click to play only the first downbeat (or no downbeat) and the offbeat (e's and a's) 16th notes. When you play 8th notes on the hi hat against the click playing off beat 16ths, the click constrains your 8th notes and forces you into locking in or else the 16th note flow between your 8th notes and the click's offbeat 16ths will sound stilted. This is a GREAT way to use the click. Many times while playing with a click, drummers are not EXACTLY on it. With this method, if you are not right on, you will hear it right away. Gary Chester used ti make his advanced students sing the rests.

6. And last but not least SING. The human brain can recognize changes in tempo when sung more easily than when hearing a beat. That's why singers are always bitching about the drummers time. If you actually sing the melody line or vocals as you play you will be more locked in to the tempo.

Good Luck
 
T
"Knowing where you are in the music at all times, and generating a swinging time feel, is what it’s all about. Do not imagine that you have come the change the course of music and that your time is beyond question. Continually investigate your time and feeling. The polishing of the time should be like that of the polishing of the heart – to a state of purity. The endeavor is an endless one."

Jim Blackley
Syncopated Rolls for the Modern Drummer
Page 56

Great quote from Jim. Just had a long conversation about him with a guy I met who's about to go to Canada to study with him. I told him about my first experience with Jim and the exercises he had me do to work on my swinging time feel. Exercises of the kind Jim gave me were the best exercises I've ever done (still do) to work on my time.

Basically, working at very slow tempos and orally and mentally subdividing. COUNT OUT LOUD no matter who is listening. Think of it this way: if you can hear perfect triplets at 40BPM, you can hear perfect 1/4s at 120. I think that any exercise that is working on your mental conception of time - i.e. what is going through your head in terms of time when you play - is going to help. Repetitions with the metronome aren't going to do it alone. As Yogi Berra put it, "(drumming) is 90% mental. The other half is physical." The physical part comprises making your motions reflect what is going on in the time. If you're playing 8ths, make your arm pendulum up and down to the 16th note. Mind and body working together, but ultimately it starts in your head.

Billy Ward's Big Time points in the same direction from a slightly different angle. Gary Chester's method of teaching pointed in the same direction. Peter Erskine talks about hearing the subdivision comprising the groove in his head (8ths, triplets, 16ths). Look what Weckl is doing with his right hand to keep time post-Gruber. All these masters keep saying the same things. Slow. Relaxed. Fluid. Fully concentrated. Hear the time inside. Make the motions reflect the conception of the time.

It's not about playing target practice with a click, we want to use the metronome to help us develop our internal clock. Heck, I've gotten tonnes of profit out of putting a metronome on and simply counting/singing up and down the Table of Time. If you can't hear it, you can't play it.
 
Does anyone know of a free Android app that cuts out?

I would happily get one that costs a few bucks except I'm new to smartphones (one week) and haven't worked out how to organise my Google account.

Anon,
Try to find these using Android Market. All aps are free with some bonus stuff if upgraded to full/pro version:

Mobile Metronome (by Gabriel Simões)
Metronomerous (by Knoedelbart)
Metronome Beats (by Andy Stone)

Hope this helps.
 
Here's my two cents on timekeeping.

I've been working on playing with the click at very slow speeds, 10 bpm right now but in reality, I'm playing at 40 bpm with the click on the first beat only. I do that for long periods of time and I noticed it helped my timekeeping a lot. The thing I notice the most now is that I'm much more aware of when I speed up or when I slow down. By practicing very slow, you start hearing those things a lot better. Apparently that Jeff Porcaro, Steve Gadd and Matt Chamberlain practiced these kind of things back in the day.

I've also practiced an exercise that Gavin Harrison shared somwhere, maybe on this very forum. You start by listening closely and memorizing the click at 60 or 70 bpm (sing it to yourself) and then, stop the click, start the recording machine and count yourself in by clicking the stick four beats and play a bunch of bars. Then listen to yourself back and play the click over your recorded performance. You obviously want the click to sync with your recorded performance. This is very hard but really worth working on. When you get more confortable with this, start changing the subdvisions while you play. It's definitely hard.

You can also practice your usual exercises (rudiments, coordination, new breed, whatever) with the click on odd places in the bar. On all eight notes upbeats, on the and of 1, on all upbeat 16ths, etc. This will also be hard but again, worth it.

All these suggestions are technique based things. You should get yourself in playing situations where your time will be challenged too but now with real human beings, not a metronome. Try to always record yourself, whether it's rehearsals or shows, that's what I do. This way, I become aware of all tendencies I might have when playing with people.

Hope this all helps and best of luck in all your time endeavors.

Daniel

www.danielbedarddrums.com/en/
 
I think experience with clicks & tracks has been the most advantageous to me over the years, and has helped identify and correct common timing issues that I had (speeding up on fills, and triplets.) A click or sequence or track has been essential to my most important gigs for over 30 years.

Practicing with clicks certainly doesn't hurt, but on the job with other players, with or without a click, is another matter. All the practice in the world doesn't prepare you for the pushing and pulling that you'll hear from most other players, and unless you can practice that, you're basically starting from square one out there in the real world. So, again, it really comes down to experience over training.

In just about every field - law, medicine, art, music, etc - experience teaches more than schooling.

Bermuda
 
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definitely no time expert here but I do my best to have good time

the two things that helped me the most were / are

1) using a click that cut out for a number of measures
this site is great for that
http://bestdrumtrainer.com/tt/

That link is great............very humbling for me.

I think experience with clicks & tracks has been the most advantageous to me over the years, and has helped identify and correct common timing issues that I had (speeding up on fills, and triplets.) A click or sequence or track has been essential to my most important gigs for over 30 years.

Practicing with clicks certainly doesn't hurt, but on the job with other players, with or without a click, is another matter. All the practice in the world doesn't prepare you for the pushing and pulling that you'll hear from most other players, and unless you can practice that, you're basically starting from square one out there in the real world. So, again, it really comes down to experience over training.

In just about every field - law, medicine, art, music, etc - experience teaches more than schooling.

Bermuda

Extremely well said
 
For the most part I believe my time developed simply from the process of playing along to cassettes (that's right!) & CD's for countless hours.

I suspect more efficient techniques exist with the aid of a click track etc, but I was learning a whole lot of musical information by playing along with songs. If you are really in to the music you are emotionally connected AND playing good time. That's the nearest thing to doing a gig that you can do whilst staying home!
 
Playing with other musicians who had stellar senses of time helped me the most. You learn a lot about how time really works and how it relates to music and musical phrases by playing with real guys instead of a sterile click. This is even different from playing along to pre-recorded stuff because you really have to pay attention to the musical conversation and the time that surrounds it rather than just playing through a "script" in a recorded song.
 
Playing with other musicians who had stellar senses of time helped me the most. You learn a lot about how time really works and how it relates to music and musical phrases by playing with real guys instead of a sterile click. This is even different from playing along to pre-recorded stuff because you really have to pay attention to the musical conversation and the time that surrounds it rather than just playing through a "script" in a recorded song.

Sure, but unless your time sense is already of a reasonably evolved standard they are never going to ask you back! That is, assuming you're not the guy with the trailer / rehearsal room or something. So, this isn't much of a workable solution in most cases.
 
Sure, but unless your time sense is already of a reasonably evolved standard they are never going to ask you back! That is, assuming you're not the guy with the trailer / rehearsal room or something. So, this isn't much of a workable solution in most cases.

I didn't imply it was any kind of "solution". I answered the question of what helped me develop the most. Plenty of building block style answers in the thread already. Use on/off click tracks, and more importantly in my opinion, pay attention when you listen to music. I always keep track of a pulse when I listen to a song. usually I'll tap it with a foot or something.
 
I'm not much of click fan as a general thing, but it's cool to work on a simple groove to tempos you find challenging.

Just playing long to a something like Groove Essentials. Try e.g. the rock ballad from G.E. 2.0

One thing that made a huge difference to me playing with play-a-longs with headphones is to get a mixer and put up a mike or two to hear the attack of the especially the bass drum clearly, instead of just some muffled woooooof that is just guesswork both how it sounds and how precise it is otherwise.

Recording yourself is great. You don't necessarily need a click. You'll hear all you need to her when you listen back and the goal, I guess, is to reach the same level of relaxed awareness that you have when listening to the recording while you are playing. I record audio and video of myself every day now. These days most of us already have what we need on our computers. You don't need much. Just putting a sm57 on the floor between my BD and hi-hat produced not perfect, but surprisingly good results.

Offcourse general overhead the big thing. I really only loose time when I start thinking to technically instead of keeping my mind on the feel of the music. Let it flow just like the groove and listen to the whole picture and movement even when you go for the choppy stuff. If you have an overall view and control, you'll keep time nomatter what you try to pull off.
 
Lots of good things on this thread (and dmacc and Boomka are again reminding me that I need to pony up and buy the Blackley books already. ;-)

I also like "Beyond the Metronome" by Mac Santiago http://www.inchronicity.com. This includes a CD that I actually listen to in my car a lot during commutes to practice timing in my head.

And yes, like many things, becoming an accurate, adaptable, musical timekeeper is an apprenticeship without end. I rather enjoy the pursuit.
 
Anon,
Try to find these using Android Market. All aps are free with some bonus stuff if upgraded to full/pro version:

Mobile Metronome (by Gabriel Simões)
Metronomerous (by Knoedelbart)
Metronome Beats (by Andy Stone)

Hope this helps.

Thanks Bush!

I already installed and uninstalled Mobile Metronome - it doesn't allow you to leave blank bars. So I've just installed Metronomerous and see how it goes.

Also bookmarked Best Drum Trainer for future reference - thanks Anthony.
 
Great thread I play along with simpler studio version songs from Charlie Watts,Ringo,Phil Rudd....As what was said here listening close helps me keep better time.
 
Well you did say "so the click shifts so it lands on the "a", "&" and the "e" " in your first post.
But actually you mean the click stays but the backbeat and bassdrum lands on the "a"s,
right? That's what I assumed.
Yes that's a cool exercise for sure - shifting grooves or other patterns one sixteenth away, but did it
actually help your timing and control over not pushing or dragging when playing music with other people?

Well I've been doing that exercise and my timing has improved tremendously but I can't tell you how much because of that exercise alone because I also did the metronome going silent thing as the primary timing exercise. We all know the metronome going silent will really improve timing so how much the other exercise helped is difficult to say :)

However it's really hard to keep time when the click is on the a's and e's and it becomes much easier if you practice it so I bet it gives you some kind of timing ability you don't get from just playing to a metronome.
 
However it's really hard to keep time when the click is on the a's and e's and it becomes much easier if you practice it so I bet it gives you some kind of timing ability you don't get from just playing to a metronome.
Still not sure if you actually mean having the click on the offs, or displacing the groove.
You've implied both things. But it doesn't really matter, I know both ways :).
 
Practicing with clicks certainly doesn't hurt, but on the job with other players, with or without a click, is another matter. All the practice in the world doesn't prepare you for the pushing and pulling that you'll hear from most other players, and unless you can practice that, you're basically starting from square one out there in the real world. So, again, it really comes down to experience over training.
Yeah, I learned that as well!! There's no practicing playing with real humans than playing
with real humans!
 
I think experience with clicks & tracks has been the most advantageous to me over the years, and has helped identify and correct common timing issues that I had (speeding up on fills, and triplets.) A click or sequence or track has been essential to my most important gigs for over 30 years.

Practicing with clicks certainly doesn't hurt, but on the job with other players, with or without a click, is another matter. All the practice in the world doesn't prepare you for the pushing and pulling that you'll hear from most other players, and unless you can practice that, you're basically starting from square one out there in the real world. So, again, it really comes down to experience over training.

In just about every field - law, medicine, art, music, etc - experience teaches more than schooling.

Bermuda

Man this is so true. One of the hardest things to do is hold the time steady when the bass player is dragging and the guitarist is rushing. It's like you have to drive the truck straight through the center of the two, while simultaneously listening to yet not being pulled off tempo by their playing.

Another fave of mine is why the singer or guitarist is really amped up (drunk/high) and they keep looking back at you mouthing "faster!". I never listen to them and they always get mad but tend to forget by songs end.
 
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