How do you know when you have good timing?

How does one know if they have good time?

When they can score better than 80% on the Beatnik "expert" level at all tempos, LOL.

FWIW, my personal best is 72%....the other levels are fairly easy.

I just THOUGHT I had good meter.

SRJ
 
How does one know if they have good time?

When they can score better than 80% on the Beatnik "expert" level at all tempos, LOL.

FWIW, my personal best is 72%....the other levels are fairly easy.

I just THOUGHT I had good meter.

SRJ

whats beatnik?
20202020
 
Sorry to hijack the thread. But what does it mean when people put ' 20202020' at the end of their posts?
 
I belive its when you can feel the time and improv to it without having to count in your head or use a clikc track. Also when you can do advanced fills and come back in perfectly.
 
same stuff to me. I play with drums 6 years, when i play with metronome, everything is ok, and the fills are cool. When i go to bigband or to orcestrer, there are about 20 musicians, they are unritmical, never played with metronome, so they drops me out of time. And sometimes drunken master is loosing scheme and rythm while conducting...
 
You'll know when you have good timing because by that point you'll have good time!

But for you you need to work on your time first. Do two things: of course you must practice with a metronome. but the second thing is perhaps just as important - record yourself as much as possible, playing with a metronome and without. And for when you record without a metronome, take that metronome and try to keep it in time with what you played while you listen back, so that way you can hear exactly when you start to stray off course (during fills? when you play a certain triplet figure? a certain groove pattern?) and whether you ever return to the established tempo.

Doing that helped me to realize that I was rushing beat 2 coming out of a fill a lot, but by beat 4 or so I was back in the groove. So now whenever I'm coming out of a fill I take this tendancy into consideration and "drag" beat 2, when in reality I'm just keeping the beat in place.
 
i feel like I may have developed a fairly steady internal clock by playing a lot with cds when I first began, but it may not be that and Im not sure if I would advocate it as a technique. Sit down with a metrenome and try and build it, but like the duke said, you either get it or you don't, it just has to happen I think for the most part.
 
The post wavelength ...err... posted is a brilliant way to develop timing. Start it out simply by just having the click play only on 1 and 3, then change to 2 and 4 at a slow tempo. You'll know straight away if you have good time. Once you get it, move the click back to just every 1 and as you keep progressing follow wavelengths post.

I personally think this is the best way to improve your time. You still have a guide but it is minimal, so you have to adjust your mindset to it and of course with practice over time it will become instinctive.
 
A lot has got do with relaxation too and feeling/hearing the tempo. My main foucus at the moment is jazz and on two nights we had two gigs. the first i slowed almost every piece in our fist set (we had not played for a while) and then in the second set i was more conscious of it and was better.
However for the next gig i could instantly tell when the tempo had dropped just through a relaxed approached to the music and not TRYING to be a metronome.
Don't try to keep the time externally to what is being played but keep time WITH the music. I know it sounds really arty farty but that is just how i see it.

Also sing the head (the tune) in your mind, because the timing of that will be more inate if you know the tune and i think you will be surprised at how accurately you will get the tempo.
What Jazzin' suggested though for practice is great.
E
 
Hello All,

First post, though I've been lurking for a while now. Great forum!

I really like the suggestions in this thread. I would also recommend Peter Erskine's book/cd combo "Time Awareness."

spleen
 
i dont know if it helps, but i know im keeping good time when i cant hear my metronome click. i keep my click volume up pretty loud so when the click sound fades out i know my strokes are in the right place.
 
Good timing is on the entire band not just the drummer! I speed up or slow down based on what the other instruments are doing sometimes! If they speed it up I speed up and vice versa they slow down I slow down! Now sometimes if you know the song you have to hold back the band from rushing the song! Rushing happens a lot in bands especially if they have not worked the song out in practice you can get a beat monitor for your drums set this will help you keep the pace within a few beats per minute it tells you how fast you are playing!
 
When you have a weak time, you'll follow the band almost instictively. When you have a strong, solid time, you will notice which way each member of the band is going time-wise, and you can choose whether to follow the others or LEAD the others by pushing, pulling or locking in. There are situations where you might need to conform to other people's time, and then there are situations when you really have to LOCK the tempo down and not let anyone mess with it.

Lots of solo practice with the metronome coupled with lots of band rehearsals sans metronome will hone your timekeeping skills.
 
Lots of solo practice with the metronome coupled with lots of band rehearsals sans metronome will hone your timekeeping skills.

It is very hard for all the band to agree on the timing accuracy after a song unless you also use the metronome for band rehearsals. Our lead singer is very picky with tempo fluctuations. We ended up running a metronome over recorded versions on some songs rehearsed without a click to solve some "discussions", only to find out that nobody is actually right all the time on such issues - everyone's perception on the song is often so different.

We ended up using the metronome pretty much all the time in rehearsals, unless we are working on a completely new song. We find out this way that we almost still hear the click when we choose not to use it. It is the best way we found to improve our band's timing.

The downside of that is that everyone starts listening to the click instead of listening to each other. Ideally, only the drummer would hear the metronome, but it is very unpractical on many songs with drums pauses.
 
when you have good timing, everything "clicks", and flows together... u wouldn't have to ask if u had good timing... timing is something u have to feel... if u have to ask, do i have good timing... u dont
 
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