I’ve been recording myself a lot lately, and it’s a harsh master, shining a light on those areas of your playing that really need some attention.
If I strip away backing tracks and just use a metronome then timing issues can be really obvious.
Here’s three things I’ve been doing to try and improve using Justin’s ‘Time Trainer’ app.
The first one I think can help everyone at any stage, I think the last two are probably for intermediate players who can already play simple things to a metronome or backing track.
Really highlighting the first beat. Metronomes often accentuate beat one but in the heat of playing it’s not always obvious. I have found that if I’m playing something complex then it’s possible I skip a beat and don’t really notice until I listen back to a recording.
You can adjust the sounds for the beats using the settings page. Here I use a very different sound for the Primary - beat one. If I lose beat one now, it’s really obvious.
Clicks on just beats 2 and 4. I don’t think there’s a setting for this (someone pleae correct me if I’m wrong) - I vaguely remember Justin saying something about reworking the app and it would be good to add this if it’s not there. So what I do is set the metronome to half the tempo I am playing at and when I hear the first beat I count ‘4’. It will normally take a bar or two to feel the rhythm with no click on the 1 or 3. I initially found this very challenging, but it’s getting easier over time.
Using ‘Bar Breaks’. There is an option using the ‘Trainer’ section for Bar Breaks. You can choose to mute the metronome for some bars and play others. Obviously the challenge is to keep in time and when the metronome comes back in hopefully you are exactly on the beat. Again, this is challenging - BLIMers try and improvise a 12 bar solo to just a click with bar breaks - not an easy task!
The setting I use below gives me 2 bars of clicks at the beginning and then mutes every other bar.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about using the metronome in a more advanced way!
This reminds me of a funny situation, while I was doing Justin’s Strumming Dynamics Course, with the goal of the “disappearing metronome” when one is perfectly on the beat. I strummed for a whole while, but could still hear the metronome clicking and suddenly, as if by magic, I couldn’t hear the clicks anymore, thought, wow, this really happens, I’m right on point… . I then realized, that I set it on 3 minutes or so and it just stopped clicking .
That funny Andrea! Yes, it’s easy to relegate the humble metronome to a “beginners” tool, but it has so much to offer. There are some great guitarists such as Tommy Emmanuelle who use it all the time and swear by (at?) it.
Yes, the metronome is a really helpful tool and I use it a lot, always saw it as a friend not an enemy. Although, I have to admit, it’s a very “honest” friend who tells us nothing but the truth, without hiding bitter truth !
Great post Paul with some good practice ideas. Agree. Rhythm is king; and I think it becomes the central element at the intermediate level.
One other intermediate level rhythm exercise I find very helpful is changing accents across consecutive bars from say, for example, 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 in 4/4, or 1 to 2 to 3 in triplets. Can throw you right off at the start - which is the whole point - but very beneficial I reckon, as it helps alot with hand synchronisation and finger independence across various rhythms.
Start with a simple sequence on one string. Then try it across multiple string sequences, where the permutations are endless, and where it can get quite challenging.
Same here…I’ve been using the metronome with clicks only on beats 1 & 3 and it’s helping me keep more consistent time. I’ve discovered I have a tendency to rush songs along.
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