Re: How can you play in the correct speed if you don't hear the drums first?

[Michael Clark <mcl451@airmail.net>]

A number of bands don't count.  They just begin.  The tempo becomes sort of
built in.  For live stuff, I prefer not to count the band in.  Just a
signal.  And begin.

M.


At 07:19 PM 2/13/01 -0800, you wrote:
>Matthias wrote:
>I never thought of this option. How can you play in the correct speed
>if you don't hear the drum first?
>
>
>For what it's worth Matthias, in a new wave band I led in the early
>eighties, Tao Chemical, we wanted to be able to start songs without count
>ins for maximum theatricality.   We practised
>starting the song without the guitarist and the bassist knowing what the
>tempo was (well, we knew what the relative tempo approach is)....just a
>visual cue from me about where the downbeat occurred.
>
>A great trick we developed to teach ourselves how to do this:    Make sure
>that what ever you are going to loop (your melodic part, that is) has a
>value of at least one eight note (if your meter is in 16th notes) but
>preferabbly a dotted eighth note or a quarter note.   Since you are
>controlling the "on" event, you hit the downbeat melodic or harmonic 
>figure
>as you hit 'play' on the drum machine and listen like hell!!!   What 
>happens
>is that you will hear at least the down beat and the next 'hihat' or
>hihat-esque sound if not 3 or 4 of these metric units before you have to
>play your next chord or melody note.  You then teach yourself how to get
>tempi from only two or three events.
>This is very jarring at first, but, believe it or not after you have done 
>it
>10 or 20 times at a few different tempi you get the hang of it and, most
>importantly, you quit being anxious about coming in with your next event
>(the anxiety that almost invariably causes human beings to  play ahead of
>the beat).   This is very effective in performance.  It comes across as 
>very
>organic even when one is playing to a sequenced track or a drum machine.
>
>Another good thing to do is to learn how to play behind the beat or ahead 
>of
>the beat with total impunity.  This is a longer discussion and if you or
>anyone else wants to hear it, I'll be happy to
>post a very cool trick I invented for teaching a rank beginner how to do
>this against a metronomic track.   Just let me know.   Right now,  I'm 
>about
>to clean install my whole friggin' system to prepare for a big
>production/writing gig that starts next week.   My system has been
>increasingly buggy and I can't afford for it to fuck up on me next week.  
>I
>may be off line for a day or two, consequently.    Wish me luck,    Rick
>Walker  (loop.pool)
>
>