Poll: Timekeeping... external or internal?

[Gaddabout]

Curiously, babies are born with a sense of meter, and specialize for the rhythms they hear from 9-12 months/

They have to be or they'd never be able to learn how to speak, right?

[Gaddabout]

Im almost always pushing choruses or laying back on certain sections, but its my internal clock that allows that to happen without drastically changing the tempo. Maybe Im wrong.

Everybody does that, even guys with great time, I think. The emotional response to leading into a big chorus for a drummer is to speed up. I'm sure there's some deep observation about human psychology that could be made from that, but I've yet to meet a drummer that hasn't had to work out time issues leading into a powerful chorus or refrain.

[drummerjeff]

I think how you word something is incredibly important, and when I hear the phrase "inner clock" it makes me cringe, I think time is kept in a relative way compared to what was played right before it and what we expect to come after it....so it's not so much that we are keeping good time with our clock but recognizing it was kept because it sounded/felt good...and we accomplish this good time by learning to understand the correct information from our senses....kinda like that toy from the 70s with the metal wheel that spun on two metal rods...if you moved just right you could make it spin faster and faster...if you did it long enough, you would learn how to make it go faster relative to how fast it was moving, but if you went too fast, it would screw up too... this was a timing game based on sensory input

also on a side note, I found Joe Crabtree's post very interesting(By the way Joe...huge fan)..he stated that when trying to keep time without motion he failed. I decided years ago that I was going to focus on ear info rather than motion info in my practice routine...so it would be interesting to have a talk sometime

[joecrabtree]

I think there are two issues here - what is accurate time and what sounds like it's in time.

If you're playing to a sequencer then they pretty much have to be the same. If you rush a backbeat somewhere but the next kick is perfectly placed the kick will sound late. If you weren't tied to the click then you'd probably compensate for the rushed backbeat by playing the kick slightly early. You'd be speeding up but it would still sound right.

Case in point - I just transcribed the first 30 bars of Actual Proof. I did it the way I usually do these days which is to drop it into cubase and adjust the tempo of each bar so the 1 of the next bar is in time. You wouldn't believe how much it jumps around bu still sounds great. Check out how fast that song is by the end compared to the start!

[Henry II]

I think there are two issues here - what is accurate time and what sounds like it's in time.

If you're playing to a sequencer then they pretty much have to be the same. If you rush a backbeat somewhere but the next kick is perfectly placed the kick will sound late. If you weren't tied to the click then you'd probably compensate for the rushed backbeat by playing the kick slightly early. You'd be speeding up but it would still sound right.

Case in point - I just transcribed the first 30 bars of Actual Proof. I did it the way I usually do these days which is to drop it into cubase and adjust the tempo of each bar so the 1 of the next bar is in time. You wouldn't believe how much it jumps around bu still sounds great. Check out how fast that song is by the end compared to the start!

I always felt the same way about Chameleon with HM on drums. It seems noticably faster at the end than in the beginning. I guess HH's syncopations can have that effect on a drummer. Hahaha!

[circh bustom]

Gaddabout, I'm not looking at it as a bad thing.

[john lamb]

A steady pulse doesn't mean that it doesnt breathe or move or change.

Especially with Western music. In certain Eastern styles, it is a religious affront to have the tempo 'breathe'. Its a matter of order vs chaos. (but I digress)

For music that really breathes, check out Gregorian chants... there are so many tempo changes and pauses that it is hard to tel where the pulse is... or even that there is a pulse at all.


The other really important thing I've found is that 'breathing' is relative. There is an absolute tempo, and playing at it will achieve a certain emotional effect. 'Putting tension on the time' (gosh thats a great phrase - thanks for sharing it) does exactly that... it pushes and pulls our response in the same way that listening to someone speed up or slow down while talking implies a certain emotional state... one that rubs off on us via "emotional contagion' (a technical term that demonstrates that nobody actually knows how!) Not having any tension on the time can feel very empty, in fact.

[john lamb]

I think most people fail to think that if a drummer can´t play to a click it´s because his inner clock: in most cases is about technique.
If you wanna see how strong someone´s inner clock is, have him/her sing, not play.

I totally agree with this and have long suspected that singing [in time] and playing drums require two very different functions in the brain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp90TPUos34

No offense, but I think this is the difference between playing music and playing the drums. My understanding of 'Playing the drums' is that it is a cognitive, literal approach to making sounds with the drum set and trying to get those sounds to match what you want them to be. Playing music, by contrast, is all about being present and allowing adjusting. As Victor Wooten puts it, 'feeling for' the click instead of 'listening to' it. I find that when I can approach playing the drums in the same way that I can with singing, then it flows easily. Just like Steve Ferrone talking about grooving - he is just singing and the drums play themselves.

[john lamb]

Im almost always pushing choruses or laying back on certain sections, but its my internal clock that allows that to happen without drastically changing the tempo. Maybe Im wrong.

Everybody does that, even guys with great time, I think. The emotional response to leading into a big chorus for a drummer is to speed up. I'm sure there's some deep observation about human psychology that could be made from that, but I've yet to meet a drummer that hasn't had to work out time issues leading into a powerful chorus or refrain.

While no link between timekeeping and heartbeat has been shown (despite lots of research into it) there is a pile of research correlating emotional state with tempo. Faster = sympathetic nervous system = fight or flight = excited/anxious/angry emotional states. Slower = parasympathetic = rest+digest = relaxed/comfortable/sad/content emotional states. A with the emotions themselves, it is all about context, so it is not the absolute speed but rather the speed relative to what the listener expects. Same things with volume, pauses articulation, every other aspect of music. This is suggested from research, and also fits very will with Gestalt view of cognition, and also the tension/release view of musical emotion.


It has also been shown that people have what are called 'preferred tempi'... that is each person has their own tempo that they prefer, and continue to prefer. Curiously, this tempo is more consistent with identical twins than fraternal. I'll bet that everyone here can guess the standard range.... 80-120 bpm with 100 being the epicenter of what most people prefer. We can only distinguish tempos between 30bpm and 300-400 bpm (without subdivision/grouping that is) but we really prefer stuff that is around 100. Research has suggested that people higher on the anxiety scale like faster tempi.

[Josiah]

^- that's interesting, but one has to ask which way the results are. Does the amped up person like faster music because they are amped up, or because the music gets them amped up and they like that. Would be impossible to isolate which direction it goes.



I highly doubt it is a uniform issue for all humans. People learn, think and process information differently. It makes sense the "internal clock" would vary just as much. Some drummers have talked about using larger movements for slower tempos. Some guys can pull out a groove pretty spot on for the desired tempo.

Being we are organic, it makes sense someones "natural" time will have organic attributes - breathing with the music, whatever. Some drummers have incredibly FEEL - but it is mechanically not in time because of this. VS Being in perfect mechanical time, which is a learned thing. You have to learn to NOT give into the emotion of the music, the tendency to rush or drag figures, etc

Given the (presumably umbrella fact) that nobody is born with inherently perfect mechanical time, it is a learned process, so the variations of that learning process probably coincide with the internal methods that individual uses to achieve the desired effect.

There are lots of people who "learned" to keep time physically, stomping out 4's on the hats for instance. They fall apart without that physical crutch. They developed a truly 'external' time keeping mechanism.

I think the real fascinating thing is beyond how, because it is what it is, but the finite differences within "in time". The same groove played by Vinnie will sound very different then say JR, even though both will be absolutely excellent in meter. Presumably due to incredibly minute differences in the timing of the notes, which we translate as "feel".

There is that grey area. Time is a bubble, some are right on top, some slightly ahead, some behind but all within what we consider "in time".