Do you absolutely hate practicing with a timekeeper? Find it frustrating, boring, or downright annoying? I can totally relate to all of those feelings, but the reality of becoming a great musician is that we must learn to master time and using a timekeeper is really the only way to do it well.
To help you get over your metronomic revulsion, here are 5 reasons why you should be practicing with some kind of timekeeper on a regular basis:
1. It Keeps You From Slowing Down at Difficult Passages
We all have certain tendencies when we work on learning new parts. Even after two decades of playing music I still, to this day, have a habit of slowing down when I try to play something that is unfamiliar to me or that is more difficult than I am able to handle. It’s just a natural response. And, I would bet that you do the same thing whether you realize it or not. I have even found that professional players will do this same thing when they are working with completely new parts.
This happens because you want to play things correctly. You want to hit all the right notes in the right places and make it sound good. But, if something is new to you, then you won’t necessarily be able to get everything where it needs to be with the time you have available. When this happens, you will try to compensate by stretching out the time so that you can make it fit. If you recognize this in your own playing, don’t feel bad; we ALL do it.
Practicing with a timekeeper forces you to keep everything at the same tempo regardless of have difficult it is to play; you can’t either do it at that speed or you can’t. If you can, awesome! If you can’t, then you need to get more comfortable with the part, slow down the tempo, or both. In time, you will be able to effortlessly play the part in time, but you should never force it to happen and expect it to sound good.
2. It Keeps You From Speeding Up at Comfortable Passages
Just as difficult parts cause you to slow down, the opposite can also happen. When you finally get to that part that is easy for you to play or that you know really well, you probably have a habit of speeding things up.
Have you ever noticed how bands often play their songs faster live than they did on the studio recordings? Part of the reason this happens is that the excitement and adrenaline of performing live makes the passing of time feel different from the performers. If you asked them in the moment if they think they are playing fast, they might not notice it. But, when you compare a recording, it becomes obvious that things were faster.
So, why exactly does this happen? As you get more excited, your body will respond by increasing your heart rate, breathing rate, as well as release different hormones that stimulate your nervous system. Your body physically speeds up and this makes you naturally want to speed up what you are playing. This doesn’t just happen with songs but also applies to particular parts or sections.
Just as with slowing down, working with a timekeeper will help you to reign in the tempo and keep you from playing faster. Assuming you are still playing with the metronome, you will keep easy passages at the right tempo.
3. It Provides Measurable Results and Objectives
Do you know with absolute certainty that you got better the last time you practiced? If so, how do you know? Can you back up that claim with factual evidence?
Using a timekeeper, especially one that allows you to vary the tempo allows you to track your progress by measuring the tempo that you can play at. By having actual numbers to compare from day to day, you will be able to tell when you’ve improved and when you haven’t. Even if you only played your song or solo 1bpm faster than the day before, that is still an improvement. As long as you continue to increase your playing speed, you will get better.
An added benefit is that have a measurable quantity gives you something to shoot for when you practice. If you sit down to practice with the objective of “I want to play that Dream Theater solo better,” you may or may not actually play it better; the only thing you have to go on is if it FEELS like you played it better. Although feelings can be good for the creative process, they are absolutely useless when it comes to measuring your progress; how do you really compare yesterday’s feelings with today’s feelings.
If instead, you sat down to practice thinking “I’m going to play that Dream Theater solo at 75% or 108bpm,” this is a much better objective to aim for. You will know for certain when you’ve achieved it because you have a number to compare against.
4. It Prepares You to Play in a Band
If you’ve read my post about who responsible for time, then you already know my thoughts about who needs to have good timing in a band. For those of you that haven’t read it, go do so now. The short answer is everyone.
When you play in a band, you have to work with the other musicians in the group as a team; you sink or swim together. No single person is in full control of the time, so you all have to adhere to the unified sense of time that is established for the band.
Not only does working with a timekeeper prepare you to play with a band, it will actually help you to improve the way you work with other musicians. As you practice, you have to make yourself fit with the time that is established by your timekeeper. In order to do this, you absolutely must be listening to where the beat is. This develops your ability to remain aware of outside musical influences and also be able to react to them in real-time.
On a large scale, this means that you will be able to play with your band, but when you examine this idea in detail it leads you towards playing tighter as a group. If everyone is listening to each other and constantly adjusting to stay as close together rhythmically as possible, the seams that join the different parts together will begin to disappear; the music becomes a unified whole instead of separate parts.
It all comes down to listening and making tiny compensations in time. This is how great players who have never performed together can sound tighter than the average amateur band; the greats know how to listen to each other and adjust.
5. It Prepares You to Record
When I first got into recording music, I found it to be one of the most stressful parts of writing and playing music. Every aspect of what you play falls under extreme scrutiny; the slightest mistakes can be isolated, magnified, and put on display for everyone to hear. If you want to know how good you really are at playing your guitar, recording music is a true trial by fire.
Nowhere does this ring truer than with time. For the majority of music that is recording today, click tracks are used to keep time. Everyone in the band must essentially record their parts along to a metronome and if you can’t play your parts in time everyone will know it. With today’s digital audio workstations, you could certainly play the parts over and over until you get a good take, but if you are paying for studio time by the hour, you will want to minimize the number of takes needed to get what you want.
Practicing with a timekeeper will help prepare you for the trials and tribulations of recording music. If you are used to playing along to a click than the shock of going into a studio to record is reduced somewhat – there are several other issues that arise, but I’ll cover those another time.
6. It Builds Your Inner Sense of Time
Whether you are slowing down, speeding up, or both, the root cause of the problem is that you aren’t retaining a solid inner sense of time. Although time sense can be affected by your environment (live performance), most people haven’t created any real sense of time even in relaxed situations.
This is where the timekeeper comes in. The regular use of a timekeeper will help you to build your inner time, almost like an inner metronome. Your body becomes used to the rhythmic organization of time that we use with music and you will intuitively be able to feel the beat.
For most people, this doesn’t happen automatically even if you are working with a metronome. Even those that do develop a strong sense of rhythm without dedicated work, it takes years to develop. If you want to develop a rock solid inner metronome as quickly as possible, you will need to work with exercises that are particularly designed to do just that.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know why you should practice with a timekeeper, I’m going to talk about the different kinds of timekeepers that are available, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each one.
