Drumless Tracks - Help

M

Mike_In_KC

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I am learning "Simple Man" by Lynard Skynard. I have it down - almost note for note, there are a few areas I need to work on but overall I could get way with playing this in front of people. Anyhoo - I found a drumless track of the song on yt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCt87pOVnMo

I was practicing with Lynard Skynard but was having some tempo issues. I decided to set my click at 121 (the bpm that is on the sheet music I found at onlinedrummer) and see if helped me. Far from it - some of the song is at 121 but other parts I swear speed up and slow down - but just by a tad - hardly discernible to ear of the newbie but it comes out pretty clear when I have the click on. I am pretty sure I am starting my click on time - there is a count in at the start of the drumless track. Am I off or does the song indeed speed up and slow down? If it does vary in tempo - WHY???? And do other bands do that?

MM
 
That's that human element getting in the way of perfect metronomic time, man. A lot of bands didn't record with a click back in the day. And even on some "clicked" tunes, composers would insert tempo changes. Dang humans!
 
Thanks Bo - those subtle tempo changes are making me REALLY listen and feel the song which is a good thing.... I am getting it. Slowly.
 
Hi, Mike. as i said in another thread about drumless track on youtube. I think most of them are fake what i mean by that is: sometimes the song goes slower than the original song, most of the time it goes faster. i had trouble with drumless track before, the way i fix it is i download the drumless track of the song and the drum track of the song, and put them together(get the all the tracks from youtube) then record with this track. this will always work, i'm not sure why but this happens though!! There are some songs i tried to make a cover of: Holy Wars... The Punishment Due, Symphony of Destruction any many more, when i try to record with the original song and put it with drumless track, it always stuff up, and these songs are recorded in the 90s, i don't think Megadeth doesn't use metronome for studio recording thanks.
 
Thanks for the response - I too have found some truly awful drumless tracks. The one for Simple Man seems ok - just a bit of tempo variance.

MM
 
The band I'm in does a Riot song called "Swords and Tequila." When I listen on my iPhone to the song I ripped from the cd, I notice some obvious tempo changes -- going into the first chorus, for example, it speeds way up, then slows down again after a few bars, speeds up again, and so on.

I mentioned this in practice one day. Nobody knew what I was talking about. I'm not a brilliant player but one thing I do well is keep time, so I really don't think it's me. It makes me a little batty when I'm trying to play along!
 
I am learning "Simple Man" by Lynard Skynard. I have it down - almost note for note, there are a few areas I need to work on but overall I could get way with playing this in front of people. Anyhoo - I found a drumless track of the song on yt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCt87pOVnMo

I was practicing with Lynard Skynard but was having some tempo issues. I decided to set my click at 121 (the bpm that is on the sheet music I found at onlinedrummer) and see if helped me. Far from it - some of the song is at 121 but other parts I swear speed up and slow down - but just by a tad - hardly discernible to ear of the newbie but it comes out pretty clear when I have the click on. I am pretty sure I am starting my click on time - there is a count in at the start of the drumless track. Am I off or does the song indeed speed up and slow down? If it does vary in tempo - WHY???? And do other bands do that?

MM

Music is esoteric. It's going to ebb and flow. Especially those older classic rock tunes because metronomically perfect time was not really a thing until the late 1970's. Everything prior to that was about feel.

While it's good to be able to play to a click track, that's NOT going to make or break you as a musician. Rather, the ability to lock in regardless the situation will. Developing that empathy to a tune will be an asset for sure.

When artists send me their tunes to track I always request a version with no click track so I can learn it without the click; that way I can get deeper into the piece without the hindrance of the click, and learn the "curves" of the emotion, the ebb and flow.
 
It's like Bill Ray said.

I noticed the alternating BPM's as well when practicing songs (like some Jimi Hendrix) for my former classic rock band.
Over the last decades a steady BPM has become more or less standard. Maybe even to the extreme.

For more info you can check out this: http://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/02/in-search-of-the-click-track/

And you can upload and check BPM deviations here: http://static.echonest.com/bpmexp/bpmexp.html
Edit: somehow this Java app doesn't seem to be functional anymore.
 
Billy Ray says a lot of good stuff there.

Basically every band you have ever heard from 1980 and earlier does what you are saying. They speed up and slow down as they feel it.

Stuff didnt used to be recorded with a click and quantized to the nearest 64th note.

John Bonham is a great example of this. Pick a song. It moves with the emotion of the song. The choruses usually push.

Quantizing and adding a click also took a lot of the personality out of drumming. How many drummers today can you just listen to and know who they are?

But yet if Bonham or Moon etc etc etc etc are playing you know who they are by the feel that they play with.

I despise quantizing. If Bonham's stuff was quantized his behind the beat feel would be sucked to the nearest 64th or whatever and he would sound like everybody else.

Course I'm going off track a little here... but a click track isnt always a good thing and certainly not always needed by a drummer who has a great meter and the knowledge of when to push and when to lay back.
 
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