I've recently started to use a metronome while practising. It seems that I'm playing to fast at any tempo I'm able to keep comfortably. After 16-20 bars I'm a couple of beats ahead of the metronome. I've got a feeling that I tend to increase the speed at chord changes, and realise that I got better time on the changes than I believed. I have played almost exclusively on my own for nearly 30 years, and that may explain how I developed some bad habits about keeping a steady beat. I wonder if there's any good exercises for improving on playing steady rythm, guess that I will have too keep on using the metronome, though it's annoying to have to wait for it at every new bar! :wink:
Practice for a while without playing the full piece - just play the beat notes, ie, one strum when the chord changes. Keep your strumming hand moving, but just don't hit the strings except on the beat. Because you're not playing anything else, it'll allow you to hear easily if you miss and adjust, but as you're still doing the strumming action you'll be traiing yourself to get the timing right.
I can't remember if that's how I got it myself, but I came up with it for a freind who had the same problem and it sorted him out :wink:
My teacher absolutely insists I tap my foot while I play. If you do that and concentrate on tapping to the metronome, maybe that will help your rhythm.
(actually, my teacher is WAY more pedantic than just that, he also insists on perfect technique matched to the foot tapping - as in upstroke picking when the foot lifts up and downstroke when hitting down on the beat. Triplets make things more complicated but there are rules for those too!)
My KORG MA-30 metronome has an earphone jack. It can help to hear the clicks loudly enough while playing. Also, if we're just playing rythym without any other music, it can get monotonous. It may help to sing along with your playing.
try to make it a natural rhythm, part of your body's biomechanics. give yourself time to warm up and find that pocket.
My teacher absolutely insists I tap my foot while I play. If you do that and concentrate on tapping to the metronome, maybe that will help your rhythm.
(actually, my teacher is WAY more pedantic than just that, he also insists on perfect technique matched to the foot tapping - as in upstroke picking when the foot lifts up and downstroke when hitting down on the beat. Triplets make things more complicated but there are rules for those too!)
Sounds like you have a good teacher.
Regarding tempo. If you're speeding up, you need to turn the metronome down even more. If you're having problems maintaining the beat, you're metronome is set too fast. It's painful but turn it down till you can play it perfectly at tempo. That may end up being 40bpm. So be it. Good tempo is something you can learn once or you can struggle with it for eternity. Believe me, the people you jam with will thank you for practicing. There's nothing that twists my nipples more than someone with poor time and my time ain't perfect.
I need to be a little more precise about my problem. I'm learning solo fingerpicking, and have been experimenting with "Freight train" at various tempi. It seems to me that I play on the beat with the metronome at 180 bpm, which sounds reasonably well for the tune, while I speed up at slower speeds. I suspect that I've got my "image" of the tempo the tune should be in, and unconsciously increases the speed because I feel I'm playing it to slow. Not being used to play with the metronome, I find I'm picking the tempo from it, play, and check if i'm on beat after some bars. Need to get used to listening to the little box ticking away while practicing.
Lack of rhythm becomes more apparant when you slow down. It's easy to 'fake' a tight performance at high speeds. And yes, it could also just be that you ain't used to listening to the metronome. Make sure that every note that is on the beat connects perfectly with the click. Remember that playing slowly and rhytmically is harder then fast and rthymically so practice it slowly.
I've recently started to use a metronome while practising. It seems that I'm playing to fast at any tempo I'm able to keep comfortably. After 16-20 bars I'm a couple of beats ahead of the metronome.
Hi,
I'm guilty of that too. :oops: I seem to get a little bored with the pace and start galloping ahead a bit. I also like to change the speed a little in certain passages, because it 'feels right' in those spots. Not so bad if you're playing on your own, but unacceptable in company, so I do have to work on it. The metronome refuses to accept my 'improvisations' and it's not easy to get back on track once I've lost it.
But I have found that I do much better with an old fashion mechanical metronome. With the electronic one the beep just doesn't seem quite so 'ear-catching' and the pointer is small. Whereas the big old clockwork clanger has a nice long solid pendulum that seems a lot easier to follow, even if I'm not looking directly at it. It seems much easier to tell how far through the beat I am, while working on building timing accuracy. It gives a good solid noise too.
I seem to do a lot better if the 'foot-ronome' is in on the act too.
Cheers,
Chris
Practice for a while without playing the full piece - just play the beat notes, ie, one strum when the chord changes. Keep your strumming hand moving, but just don't hit the strings except on the beat.
Yep - I have students do this early on so that they can get the chord changes in on time
Best,
A :-)
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What about playing along to the actual song? If you use a program like guitar pro and find a tab you can easily speed up/slow down the tempo or alternatively slow gold is a program that will take digital wav files and allow you to change the tempo without changing the pitch.
These are both great programs and I don't think Slow Gold is expensive. Not sure about Guitar Pro though.. Of course, unscrupulous types might be able to "find" these programs.
Anyway, I think if you are speeding up a solo then playing along to the song instead of a metronome would be a great way to try to keep the right feel while still being able to ramp up the tempo. Hope this idea helps!
Sorry - forgot you are talking about chords not solos, but i think this advice is still valid.
My metronome has an audible click, which I record and setup as a track in audacity, then when I'm playing something I'll play along to the click. Once I've got a track down I'll put another track over it and repeat until both sound in sync. The nice thing about this is you can often see your mistakes visually, and of course you can play it back and hear when you mess up, I neglected playing to a metronome a long time and primarily play alone, this made a huge difference in a short period of time and I've been loving doing the recording/mixing stuff anyway so I've managed to get a lot more practice in lately.
