Has anyone experienced this? While playing a tune at a session, someone indicates to you that you're speeding up.
Sometimes this is the case, so you slow down.
But what if the opposite is happening...
They say you're speeding up, but the truth is
someone else or maybe even everyone else is slowing down.
I hope you're not doing all this speeding up and slowing down within a set of tunes. That'll make you as popular as a bottom burp in a spacesuit. If you don't trust your own innate sense of tempo, sit next to someone whose innate sense you do trust and listen to 'em hard while you're playing.
hmmm...I think we are seeing a relativistic phenomenon here. I recommend a reading of the first few chapters of Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It won't help your playing skills, but it will make you see why your subjective time is different to everyone else's. If you are playing reels at or close to the speed of light, that is.
I think if you are playing in public, you have to make the group sound "right" for the people listening. Civilians might not be able to tell a D from an F#, but they sure as hell can notice when you play a bad rhythm, so to prevent a train wreck, I'll be benevolent and make the corrections in my playing to get us back on track.
I think your choice is to make the corrections continue to plow ahead with the "I'm right and you're off" attitude and be correct, but sound like hell.
now that's when I'm on a paying gig where I'm putting somebody's money in my back pocket to be entertaining for a few hours.
When I'm playing with my buddies in a jam session for fun, I might try and see what the cause of the trouble actually was. Sometimes the tempo was just to high to begin with, sometimes they just had some equipment trouble or some distraction like a dog running through the room and couldn't get on track. But I'll try and call the next tune to play into their strengths.
except if I'm trying to screw with somebody, then I'll just keep counting them off fast as a scalded cat.
I've heard slowing down often. It's bloody annoying. Speeding up is bad enough, but slowing down is draining.
A lot of it comes from someone playing behind the beat. It was mentioned on the gutarist and jigs thread. With strummers and drummers It usually comes from moving your arm on the beat, with the delay being the distance your arm is away from the thing that makes the noise. Such offenders are stupid and/or deaf. I've heard banjo players do it too. It's a shorter delay, merely the difference between moving the pic and the string leaving the end of the pic. But with something like a banjo it really drags the rhythm. Inexcusable.
What tends to happen unless you can blank it is a general slowing down. The offender isn't actually playing slower, but you hold back to match them and they still lag behind and before you know it, the set is lost.
And if you are able to blank them, compared to them, your playi ng will have the appearance of trying to speed it up, even though iy might actually be slowing down.
The whole situation is hopeless. Just refuse to play with them uless they get their act together
Good analogy Nate. I tried wake boarding once. I'm a a pretty good snow boarder and it looked similar, so I had a go. I found it absolutely knackering, I thought my arms were gonna get pulled out of my shoulders. Until I realised why. On a snow board you control your speed by turning and the subtle angles of the edge of the board to the snow. But on a wake board your speed is the speed of the boat. I was instinctively trying to slow down, but the boat wasn't.
You would like to think that people who drag the tunes would be in as much pain as someone trying to snowboard on a wakeboard. But it's we that feel the pain
Poor guitar players often pick up on some little momentary rhythmical subtlety in the melody-playing that might suggest, incorrectly, a slowing-down to them, then expand this into a slowing-down of the whole bloody tune. They're just not listening and they don't get the music. This happened every time Pinch of Snuff was played at one pub I used to go to and everyone playing seemed blissfully unaware of what was happening, though it sounded distressingly-awful to anyone listening. Get one or two co-conspirators to recognise the problem and decide that you're going to bludgeon your way through the silly sod's quirks. Or sack him.
but you know, I think playing really slow is just as hard as playing really fast, in a group anyway.
I had to reign in my bass player a few years ago over how slow he would count off certain ballads. I recorded us once and clocked him at a clear 42 beats per minute. 42! I have to be sedated to play that slow in public!
but its a real challenge to feel that slow tempo together. If it falls apart, it falls apart fast like somebody popped a water balloon.
Michael is right. Slow playing is a challenge, but it is wrong to sidestep the challenge by playing too fast. I can think of a few tunes we play that we habitually start too fast. You can end up missing out all those little details that makes a good tune a great tune, just because you're going hell for leather. I p*ss myself off regularly that way. But I can't stand anyone trying to alter the tempo mid-set just because they think in their wisdom it's the wrong speed. If the tempo isn't ideally to your liking you can still try to make the best of the situation. Altering the tempo mid-set is making the worst of it.
Metronomes have very little to do with making music. That's a job for human beings. You need to find out what makes us tick, that's all. Leave the crutches for the musical cripples.
I am not interested in what's harder or easier either, I would just like for the lead players to play with (or in) the same rhythm and timing. That makes it easier for myself or anyone else who is trying to play accompaniment.
I suspect that the problem which occurred at Monday night's session was due to the fact that the lead players were sitting at opposite ends of the circle with myself halfway between them.
In case anyone didn't read my earlier comment about Monday night's session, one of the lead players was a fraction of a beat behind the others. The result was that the tune which I was hearing in my right ear was a fraction of a second behind the notes which I was hearing in my left ear. I finally gave up in exasperation and quit playing to let them accompany themselves without any help from me.
I could hear everyone else clearly (too clearly) because I had the volume turned down low enough.
I'm lucky with mine too, none of my regular mates do it. It's just occasionally when someone else comes in. It's never a problem really. They get told to shut up and that's the end of it.
I often experience the slowing down syndrome. And I think Michael is right, people playing behind the beat aren't necessarily playing slower, but it has a dragging effect on the music, which slows everybody down, because you're all trying to listen to each other and play together.
I really hate feeling like I'm pushing a set along to try to combat the slowing down. It's like trying to swim upstream - it's way too much work to even maintain, and it really takes the enjoyment out of playing, because it stops being effortless.
Conversely, I have played with a few players that lift somehow differently than I do, and that tends to speed me up - so I have to consciously focus on my own tempo - especially if I started the set.
Hey fauxcelt: It's hard to do with a piano, of course, but I generally will offer up my seat so the melody players can be near each other. I've been in the situation you describe (a fiddler totally out of time, and a clueless bodrahn player), and I, too, finally gave up.
It wasn't a session situation, but I had a rather painful experience a couple of years ago when I was invited to sub for the regular piano player in a Klezmer/Contra Dance fusion band (there were Freygish & other odd versions of stuff like Liberty, etc...). The tempos just seemed to drag, no matter what I did, and I felt pretty terrible; as the sole member of the "rhythm section" for a string band for about 20 years, I felt like I should have been able to fix the problem, and I love that kind of music and really wanted to do a bang-up job. I actually tried to recruit a piano/fiddle playing friend who was dancing with her husband to sit in on a few so I could determine if the problem was me. The guy running the band didn't seem to mind too much, as we were barely making gas money, anyway.
During heartfelt discussions on the ride home with a couple of the regular members, it turns out that the regular piano player is notorious for speeding up, and so the bass player has just gotten used to trying to slow things down. That's the best explanation that we could come up with.
So I guess that it all just comes down to the people involved, and listening, as always. Ramble over!
I'm following this topic with great interest. My latest observation has been that, while we may be happily locked in rhythm during a set, we *all* are shifting in speed but adjusting to one another.
Last weekend I was doing some recording with drummer who comes from a non-ITM tradition. Moreover, he is very experienced in studio recording and multi-tracking. After working with him on a tune for a little while, he suggested that he would lay down a drum track and that I would record over it. I had never done that before. He recorded the track , while listening to a click track on his headphones. He was right on the click. Then I recorded my track , listening to him on my headphones.
We immediately noticed that my playing would diverge from his after a little while, shifting slightly higher in speed. It wasn't much but very noticeable. I was in shock since this was not apparent when we played together live or when I play with others at the session. My inability to lock onto his playing in this recording environment was distressing. It took quite a few trials to improve. It's still not quite right.
My conclusions were:
1. Recording in such a manner takes certain skills - ones which are not cultivated in a session environment. They need special practice. I occasionally practice with a metronome but not very often
2. Musicians can listen to one another and make speed adjustments to a degree greater than I would have believed.
This is not to say that we should vary speed all over the place. Of course not. But I am convinced that even on good days our session doesn't have (metronomically) constant speed within any set.
The only cases where I've noticed people slowing down is when they cannot keep up with the speed of a tune. When people can play fast, they tend to speed up , if they change the tempo at all.
Well, three cheers for your music not being a metronome. Your drummer man doesn't understand this, (though it's not his fault).
I used to play a lot with a rock drummer. The way we'd record was to play live in the studio with amps etc and record everything as a guide track. Then the drummer would lay down his part with the guide track in his headphones. The guide track would be dumped and his part then tweaked for anything too far off with the computer. Then we'd lay down the rest to that. It's bloody laborious, but it works.
Musicians listening to one another and making subtle speed adjustments Is called torque. In engineering it's rotational force. All the best music and musicians apply torque, both forward and reverse and the trick is to feel that force, to listen hard for it.
Michael - I like your "torque" term. Having an engineering helps me relate to it well. It's really a great feeling when you are playing and make a connection with the others to the degree where the music can sway and all go with it, pushing, pulling and making it breathe.
I would have recorded live with the drummer but it was not practical given that he played a full drum set and I..... a wee mandolin. For audio reasons it required multi-tracking - at least in the room we were working.
Recording yourself is always revealing of something. I think it's an invaluable tool
A friend tells me that I go from gently tapping my foot to stomping it while we play, when the tempo starts to drag, slow down, or someone's off the beat. I never noticed it before, and now I can't help but chuckle when it happens.
He introduces me to new faces like that. "If you're not in tune he makes this funny face here [example] and if you're not on the beat you'll notice he starts stomping his foot to the beat..."
I'm really a nice guy, but that slowing-down-stuck-in-the-mud thing kills me, and out-of-tune instruments make it feel like someone is sticking a hot butter knife in my ribs.
What Michael calls torque in music is a function of our humanity. Music never is, never was and never will be metronomic. Not real music anyway. We are not machines. Those myriad little adjustments we all make when we're playing with other people are what make music catch fire and capture the imagination. You don't hear them as overt manifestations of tempo or rhythm but they're there, driving the whole thing, bringing it to life. Bach and Mozart and Palestrina never had metronomes. I suppose they were all crap then.
"All the best music and musicians apply torque, both forward and reverse and the trick is to feel that force, to listen hard for it." Great description of the tremendous energy that links people in both music and in dancing when things are going well. It can be hard to achieve though and I suspect some people struggle to feel it. But it's one of life's peak experiences when it's there. I also watch the feet of the fiddler who led the tune out - if she's unhappy with the tempo the stomping feet will let you know!
"I've never recorded anything and heard something that I didn't already hear while I recorded it."
I may have not said it right. I did hear the slight mismatch while recording. It was just too hard for me to stay locked and feel like I was doing the music justice at the same time.
I've really enjoyed all the ways people have described what really goes on when good music happens. Infinitesimal adjustments in tempo, speed, swing and even pitch (within reason on this one) to one another are constantly made by all the competent and attentive musicians from beginning to end in any tune or set. Any individual who claims to know in midstream of a driving set for certain that something "must" slow down or " must" speed up isn't really listening as well as they ought to. Sometimes it's best to let things unfold without
any guiding force other than the music itself.
Tomw, since it was difficult for me to move my electronic keyboard, the melody players re-arranged themselves so they could hear each other clearly. If I had remembered to bring my extension cord with me, I could easily have moved to a different place in the circle during the re-arranging.
Accidental tempo changes bother me too. It's downright embarrassing. I totally agree, the source is very often from mistakes made by people that have willingly trained themselves to mindlessly strum away and get caught up in the mechanics of strumming. They are completely detached from the music, but there they are right in the middle mucking things up. It is a problem I've never been able to fix with coaching. It is like trying to explain to someone severely color blind what the color green does for you.
I can accept that when playing in a social setting most of the time. But when you actually want to take some freedom utilize a bit of rubato for phrasing, the same tempo pirates are suddenly bewildered and confused and end up two or three bars away form you in either direction. Those injecting all the constant change ups suddenly can't cope with a sensible change? That rubs.
I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Has anyone experienced this? While playing a tune at a session, someone indicates to you that you're speeding up.
Sometimes this is the case, so you slow down.
But what if the opposite is happening...
They say you're speeding up, but the truth is
someone else or maybe even everyone else is slowing down.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by halfwaythere
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I hope you're not doing all this speeding up and slowing down within a set of tunes. That'll make you as popular as a bottom burp in a spacesuit. If you don't trust your own innate sense of tempo, sit next to someone whose innate sense you do trust and listen to 'em hard while you're playing.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
'They say you're speeding up, but the truth is
someone else or maybe even everyone else is slowing down'.
Are you sure this really happens? My experience with sessions is that either stay steady or speed up.
Maybe I'm wrong, or lack experience on this point, but that's my view for this moment.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Henk Bos
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
hmmm...I think we are seeing a relativistic phenomenon here. I recommend a reading of the first few chapters of Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It won't help your playing skills, but it will make you see why your subjective time is different to everyone else's. If you are playing reels at or close to the speed of light, that is.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Shepshed
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I think if you are playing in public, you have to make the group sound "right" for the people listening. Civilians might not be able to tell a D from an F#, but they sure as hell can notice when you play a bad rhythm, so to prevent a train wreck, I'll be benevolent and make the corrections in my playing to get us back on track.
I think your choice is to make the corrections continue to plow ahead with the "I'm right and you're off" attitude and be correct, but sound like hell.
now that's when I'm on a paying gig where I'm putting somebody's money in my back pocket to be entertaining for a few hours.
When I'm playing with my buddies in a jam session for fun, I might try and see what the cause of the trouble actually was. Sometimes the tempo was just to high to begin with, sometimes they just had some equipment trouble or some distraction like a dog running through the room and couldn't get on track. But I'll try and call the next tune to play into their strengths.
except if I'm trying to screw with somebody, then I'll just keep counting them off fast as a scalded cat.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I've heard slowing down often. It's bloody annoying. Speeding up is bad enough, but slowing down is draining.
A lot of it comes from someone playing behind the beat. It was mentioned on the gutarist and jigs thread. With strummers and drummers It usually comes from moving your arm on the beat, with the delay being the distance your arm is away from the thing that makes the noise. Such offenders are stupid and/or deaf. I've heard banjo players do it too. It's a shorter delay, merely the difference between moving the pic and the string leaving the end of the pic. But with something like a banjo it really drags the rhythm. Inexcusable.
What tends to happen unless you can blank it is a general slowing down. The offender isn't actually playing slower, but you hold back to match them and they still lag behind and before you know it, the set is lost.
And if you are able to blank them, compared to them, your playi ng will have the appearance of trying to speed it up, even though iy might actually be slowing down.
The whole situation is hopeless. Just refuse to play with them uless they get their act together
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
playing with somebody whos dragging is like pulling a boat anchor
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Good analogy Nate. I tried wake boarding once. I'm a a pretty good snow boarder and it looked similar, so I had a go. I found it absolutely knackering, I thought my arms were gonna get pulled out of my shoulders. Until I realised why. On a snow board you control your speed by turning and the subtle angles of the edge of the board to the snow. But on a wake board your speed is the speed of the boat. I was instinctively trying to slow down, but the boat wasn't.
You would like to think that people who drag the tunes would be in as much pain as someone trying to snowboard on a wakeboard. But it's we that feel the pain
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Poor guitar players often pick up on some little momentary rhythmical subtlety in the melody-playing that might suggest, incorrectly, a slowing-down to them, then expand this into a slowing-down of the whole bloody tune. They're just not listening and they don't get the music. This happened every time Pinch of Snuff was played at one pub I used to go to and everyone playing seemed blissfully unaware of what was happening, though it sounded distressingly-awful to anyone listening. Get one or two co-conspirators to recognise the problem and decide that you're going to bludgeon your way through the silly sod's quirks. Or sack him.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
but you know, I think playing really slow is just as hard as playing really fast, in a group anyway.
I had to reign in my bass player a few years ago over how slow he would count off certain ballads. I recorded us once and clocked him at a clear 42 beats per minute. 42! I have to be sedated to play that slow in public!
but its a real challenge to feel that slow tempo together. If it falls apart, it falls apart fast like somebody popped a water balloon.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I think playing slow is harder. But I'm not interested in what's harder or easier, Just get it right, no excuses
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
"Poor guitar players often pick up on some little momentary rhythmical subtlety "
slurring into the beat.
If I wasn't actually trying to learn this music and was just sitting down a trying to casually play along, I'm pretty sure that would get me.
I'd probably turn the beat around and start feeling the downbeat early.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
maybe playing slow is harder because it isn't any fun
I know for me I'd rather go to the dentist than play a funeral durge
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Nate Ryan
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Michael is right. Slow playing is a challenge, but it is wrong to sidestep the challenge by playing too fast. I can think of a few tunes we play that we habitually start too fast. You can end up missing out all those little details that makes a good tune a great tune, just because you're going hell for leather. I p*ss myself off regularly that way. But I can't stand anyone trying to alter the tempo mid-set just because they think in their wisdom it's the wrong speed. If the tempo isn't ideally to your liking you can still try to make the best of the situation. Altering the tempo mid-set is making the worst of it.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
haha bring a metronome to be sure...
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by chansherly212
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Metronomes have very little to do with making music. That's a job for human beings. You need to find out what makes us tick, that's all. Leave the crutches for the musical cripples.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I am not interested in what's harder or easier either, I would just like for the lead players to play with (or in) the same rhythm and timing. That makes it easier for myself or anyone else who is trying to play accompaniment.
I suspect that the problem which occurred at Monday night's session was due to the fact that the lead players were sitting at opposite ends of the circle with myself halfway between them.
In case anyone didn't read my earlier comment about Monday night's session, one of the lead players was a fraction of a beat behind the others. The result was that the tune which I was hearing in my right ear was a fraction of a second behind the notes which I was hearing in my left ear. I finally gave up in exasperation and quit playing to let them accompany themselves without any help from me.
I could hear everyone else clearly (too clearly) because I had the volume turned down low enough.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Must be hard, people slowing down, since it seems to happen a lot from what I'm reading here. Guess I'm lucky with my current bunch of session mates.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Henk Bos
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I'm lucky with mine too, none of my regular mates do it. It's just occasionally when someone else comes in. It's never a problem really. They get told to shut up and that's the end of it.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I often experience the slowing down syndrome. And I think Michael is right, people playing behind the beat aren't necessarily playing slower, but it has a dragging effect on the music, which slows everybody down, because you're all trying to listen to each other and play together.
I really hate feeling like I'm pushing a set along to try to combat the slowing down. It's like trying to swim upstream - it's way too much work to even maintain, and it really takes the enjoyment out of playing, because it stops being effortless.
Conversely, I have played with a few players that lift somehow differently than I do, and that tends to speed me up - so I have to consciously focus on my own tempo - especially if I started the set.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Reverend
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Hey fauxcelt: It's hard to do with a piano, of course, but I generally will offer up my seat so the melody players can be near each other. I've been in the situation you describe (a fiddler totally out of time, and a clueless bodrahn player), and I, too, finally gave up.
It wasn't a session situation, but I had a rather painful experience a couple of years ago when I was invited to sub for the regular piano player in a Klezmer/Contra Dance fusion band (there were Freygish & other odd versions of stuff like Liberty, etc...). The tempos just seemed to drag, no matter what I did, and I felt pretty terrible; as the sole member of the "rhythm section" for a string band for about 20 years, I felt like I should have been able to fix the problem, and I love that kind of music and really wanted to do a bang-up job. I actually tried to recruit a piano/fiddle playing friend who was dancing with her husband to sit in on a few so I could determine if the problem was me. The guy running the band didn't seem to mind too much, as we were barely making gas money, anyway.
During heartfelt discussions on the ride home with a couple of the regular members, it turns out that the regular piano player is notorious for speeding up, and so the bass player has just gotten used to trying to slow things down. That's the best explanation that we could come up with.
So I guess that it all just comes down to the people involved, and listening, as always. Ramble over!
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by tomw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I'm following this topic with great interest. My latest observation has been that, while we may be happily locked in rhythm during a set, we *all* are shifting in speed but adjusting to one another.
Last weekend I was doing some recording with drummer who comes from a non-ITM tradition. Moreover, he is very experienced in studio recording and multi-tracking. After working with him on a tune for a little while, he suggested that he would lay down a drum track and that I would record over it. I had never done that before. He recorded the track , while listening to a click track on his headphones. He was right on the click. Then I recorded my track , listening to him on my headphones.
We immediately noticed that my playing would diverge from his after a little while, shifting slightly higher in speed. It wasn't much but very noticeable. I was in shock since this was not apparent when we played together live or when I play with others at the session. My inability to lock onto his playing in this recording environment was distressing. It took quite a few trials to improve. It's still not quite right.
My conclusions were:
1. Recording in such a manner takes certain skills - ones which are not cultivated in a session environment. They need special practice. I occasionally practice with a metronome but not very often
2. Musicians can listen to one another and make speed adjustments to a degree greater than I would have believed.
This is not to say that we should vary speed all over the place. Of course not. But I am convinced that even on good days our session doesn't have (metronomically) constant speed within any set.
The only cases where I've noticed people slowing down is when they cannot keep up with the speed of a tune. When people can play fast, they tend to speed up , if they change the tempo at all.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by improziv
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Well, three cheers for your music not being a metronome. Your drummer man doesn't understand this, (though it's not his fault).
I used to play a lot with a rock drummer. The way we'd record was to play live in the studio with amps etc and record everything as a guide track. Then the drummer would lay down his part with the guide track in his headphones. The guide track would be dumped and his part then tweaked for anything too far off with the computer. Then we'd lay down the rest to that. It's bloody laborious, but it works.
Musicians listening to one another and making subtle speed adjustments Is called torque. In engineering it's rotational force. All the best music and musicians apply torque, both forward and reverse and the trick is to feel that force, to listen hard for it.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Michael - I like your "torque" term. Having an engineering helps me relate to it well. It's really a great feeling when you are playing and make a connection with the others to the degree where the music can sway and all go with it, pushing, pulling and making it breathe.
I would have recorded live with the drummer but it was not practical given that he played a full drum set and I..... a wee mandolin. For audio reasons it required multi-tracking - at least in the room we were working.
Recording yourself is always revealing of something. I think it's an invaluable tool
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by improziv
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I've never recorded anything and heard something that I didn't already hear while I recorded it.
Could you not have had your mandolin fed through the drummers cans as you both played?
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by llig leahcim
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
A friend tells me that I go from gently tapping my foot to stomping it while we play, when the tempo starts to drag, slow down, or someone's off the beat. I never noticed it before, and now I can't help but chuckle when it happens.
He introduces me to new faces like that. "If you're not in tune he makes this funny face here [example] and if you're not on the beat you'll notice he starts stomping his foot to the beat..."
I'm really a nice guy, but that slowing-down-stuck-in-the-mud thing kills me, and out-of-tune instruments make it feel like someone is sticking a hot butter knife in my ribs.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
What Michael calls torque in music is a function of our humanity. Music never is, never was and never will be metronomic. Not real music anyway. We are not machines. Those myriad little adjustments we all make when we're playing with other people are what make music catch fire and capture the imagination. You don't hear them as overt manifestations of tempo or rhythm but they're there, driving the whole thing, bringing it to life. Bach and Mozart and Palestrina never had metronomes. I suppose they were all crap then.
# Posted on July 30th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
"All the best music and musicians apply torque, both forward and reverse and the trick is to feel that force, to listen hard for it." Great description of the tremendous energy that links people in both music and in dancing when things are going well. It can be hard to achieve though and I suspect some people struggle to feel it. But it's one of life's peak experiences when it's there. I also watch the feet of the fiddler who led the tune out - if she's unhappy with the tempo the stomping feet will let you know!
# Posted on July 31st 2008 by clogstepping
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
"I've never recorded anything and heard something that I didn't already hear while I recorded it."
I may have not said it right. I did hear the slight mismatch while recording. It was just too hard for me to stay locked and feel like I was doing the music justice at the same time.
# Posted on July 31st 2008 by improziv
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
I've really enjoyed all the ways people have described what really goes on when good music happens. Infinitesimal adjustments in tempo, speed, swing and even pitch (within reason on this one) to one another are constantly made by all the competent and attentive musicians from beginning to end in any tune or set. Any individual who claims to know in midstream of a driving set for certain that something "must" slow down or " must" speed up isn't really listening as well as they ought to. Sometimes it's best to let things unfold without
any guiding force other than the music itself.
# Posted on July 31st 2008 by halfwaythere
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Tomw, since it was difficult for me to move my electronic keyboard, the melody players re-arranged themselves so they could hear each other clearly. If I had remembered to bring my extension cord with me, I could easily have moved to a different place in the circle during the re-arranging.
# Posted on July 31st 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: I'm not speeding up, you're slowing down...
Accidental tempo changes bother me too. It's downright embarrassing. I totally agree, the source is very often from mistakes made by people that have willingly trained themselves to mindlessly strum away and get caught up in the mechanics of strumming. They are completely detached from the music, but there they are right in the middle mucking things up. It is a problem I've never been able to fix with coaching. It is like trying to explain to someone severely color blind what the color green does for you.
I can accept that when playing in a social setting most of the time. But when you actually want to take some freedom utilize a bit of rubato for phrasing, the same tempo pirates are suddenly bewildered and confused and end up two or three bars away form you in either direction. Those injecting all the constant change ups suddenly can't cope with a sensible change? That rubs.
# Posted on July 31st 2008 by monkey440