In this week's blog we are continuing our series “Supercharge your practise” with the subject of tempo.
In this article we will examine why tempo is so important for all musicians and how we can improve our tempo every time we practise.
When we say tempo, it is referring to the speed of a piece of music. In a broader sense though, we can think of tempo as how accurately we can hear and maintain the speed of a piece of music.
Tempo is often a very overlooked element of an effective practise schedule. It is easy to gloss over and think “I can do that”. However, we should all make regular space in our practice to work on our time keeping and building our “internal metronome”.
Janek GwIzdala says “ Time and sound over everything”.
So why is timing so important?
It’s simple. The ability to maintain good timing and solid tempo is a central part of groove. Groove is what makes people move and dance to music. Groove makes music feel and sound good. Groove draws listeners into the music more.
Every musician needs to groove. Therefore, every musician needs to work on their tempo.
The simple way to work on your tempo every time you practise is to play as much as possible with a metronome or click (more on metronomes in a moment). If you’re doing a warm up or technical exercise, add a click at an appropriate tempo and you are automatically working on your tempo. You can do the same with parts of songs, licks and fills, and even improvised solos. You can use a click for most things.
A click isn’t always needed in practice and we are not trying to say “practise everything to a click”. There are exercises and practice activities where using a click is distracting and may even take away from what you are working on.
However, playing regularly with a metronome will help to improve your tempo.
How to practise with a metronome
There is no dark secret to playing with a metronome, once you understand the rhythms you are playing, working on them with a click will help you improve.
Step 1: The downbeat
To start using a metronome, use the click as the reference of the down beat of the music you are playing. If you’re playing in 4/4 think of the metronome playing the beats 1, 2, 3, 4. Get really, really comfortable with this.
Step 2: Take away beats
Once you’re comfortable with hearing all of the downbeats as outlined above, take 2 of them away. Some apps will let you silence the counts on these beats, but another simple method you can do is 1/2 the tempo on the metronome without halving your actual playing speed. You should now hear beats 1 and 3.
You can take this a step further too by halving the tempo again and just listening to beat 1 in each bar.
Step 3: Take away bars
For this step, you will need an app that allows you to program in a bar of click followed by a bar of no click (or silence). Starting with 1 bar on and 1 bar off, this exercise can be extended to help you develop consistency in your tempo even when you can’t hear the click.
Step 4: Move the click
This last step is both fun and challenging. Set the click in the same way as step one, but rather than hearing the click as a downbeat, this time you have to change the subdivision of the click in relation to you playing. Start with off best quavers and then as your confidence and accuracy grows you can try other variations such as off semiquavers or off best quaver triplet partials. This isn’t easy and takes some time and practice, but the consistency and accuracy of your tempo will improve greatly through such exercises.
Which metronome?
One question we get asked a lot at The Drum Hub is “which metronome should I use?” The simple answer is “the one that works for you”. A physical metronome that swings and ticks does the same thing that an app or drum machine will do - it keeps consistent time.
Apps are incredibly convenient these days and most devices will allow you to download and set up an app very easily. You can also use web page based apps too. The most important thing is to start using something and try different options available to you. You will eventually find something that you personally enjoy playing with.
We have compiled a short list of apps that we like below.
App list (in no particular order)
MetroTimer
Gap Click
SBL Groove Trainer
Tempo
Polynome
Easy monitoring
Using a metronome and tempo is one really easy method of tracking progression. As you work on the different elements of your practise routine, making a note of any tempos worked at is a simple way to see that you are improving. It’s not that playing everything as fast as possible is the only goal, rather that as confidence in an exercise or piece increases we can quantify the increase by using tempo.
Final thoughts
The metronome is a powerful tool to help develop a musician's sense of time and consistent tempo. Tempo is a central component of groove and every musician wants to groove! Working on your tempo is easy and can be done in many different ways as we have discussed above. What's really important with tempo is that you start working on it regularly and consistently, that is how it will improve.
Let us know how you use a metronome in your practise or let us know your favourite apps and other tools in the comments below.
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