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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Update on my Time article
Update on my Time article
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barbequebob
3690 posts
Mar 13, 2023
10:13 AM
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Here's a link to an updated version about Time And Why Is It So Important For Harp Players To Learn About It:
Time
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Mar 13, 2023 10:14 AM
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Lou
138 posts
Mar 14, 2023
7:45 AM
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Damm, I didn't have the time to read all that :)
Just kidding ! Great article, my time or sense of the need for good time didn't happen right away I played sax, guitar & harp and it wasn't until I started playing Mandolin that and singing that I really started to focus on timing. Or it was probably the time when we had had a keyboard/sax player who toured with Tower of Power play with us & I was having a "great time" playing the harp knowing something was off & He turned & gave me a look that would kill ! I instantly quit playing and felt about an inch tall.
Now days my favorite quote to use on an unruley" drummer is "shut the F-up & hit on the 2 & the 4 !"
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barbequebob
3691 posts
Mar 14, 2023
9:10 AM
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@Lou--Far too many harp players completely ignore the importance of having good time and often STUPIDLY think it's only the job of the bass and drummer and almost always assume that all drummers and bass players have good time and EVERY pro, regardless of what instrument they happen to play, or what genre they play, will all tell you that there's absolutely ZERO truth to any such statements like that at all.
Time isn't anything anyone learns in a matter of days, weeks, or months but it requires plenty of woodshedding and the one HUGE side benefit of getting your time straight is that at the same time, it will greatly improve your listening skills as well.
Lou, I can tell you from experience, in a pro situation, if you mess up the time, oftentimes you will get fired for that, and deservedly so. When I started out with some old school pros, I screwed up the time, and the next thing I knew, there was a drumstick whizzing pretty close to my head, courtesy of the drummer, and the next thing he said to me was, "If you ever mess up that goddamned groove again, I ain't gonna miss!!!!" That got me into working on it diligently from that point on.
Most every classical musician that I've ever met, even if they've been playing for 20-30+ years, whenever they practice, they still always are practicing with a metronome.
Most jammers won't understand why every pro says "Tt's all about the groove," because too often, the only thing that they're paying attention to is the solo but the truth is, if you have a band where most or all of the musicians have lousy time, it won't matter how good you think the solos are because if the time isn;t good, the band will NEVER be tight and will NEVER be grooving, which means that the time is the responsibility of EVERY musician on the bandstand.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
425 posts
Mar 15, 2023
5:48 AM
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I think it would be very helpful as a teaching aid to include very simple examples (sound files) of on, ahead and behind the beat -- each one even just 1 minute long with just metronome and simple playing (even same playing on each). I suspect a computer could do this using the same playing, and just placing it over the metronome differently. Heck, even a similar sound sample of poor timing could be useful.
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barbequebob
3692 posts
Mar 15, 2023
8:47 AM
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There actually is a drumming book that there may be some copies left on Amazon written by Fred Dinkins called It's About Time and though there aren't any examples of actual blues drumming, however, what he does have are examples of a wide variety of grooves taken in three different tempos where in the book, he gives you the number of beats on the metronome and describes being on top of the beat (right dead on the money with the metronome and for a lack of a better way to describe it, I would call it real time), then one example of it played as he called it as being on top of the beat, which most musicians I know usually call it playing ahead of the beat, as well as an example of as he calls it playing in back of the beat, or as most musicians I know usually refer it to playing behind the beat. The bluesiest sounding of all of these grooves is when the music is played behind the beat.
Metronomes, as I've slowly realized throughout the years, really can't be properly programmed to click behind or ahead of the beat properly because truthfully, there are far too many different delineations of how far ahead or behind are. A lot of this stuff is really subtle and just getting the time straight with the metronome will eventually teach you to listen for it because at the same time that it upgrades your playing skills, it adds the benefit of upgrading your listening skills by teaching you to pay attention to the very subtle things, the kind of stuff that too many jammers who've never worked on their time often wrongly believe that they're too small, too boring, and too unimportant to pay attention to but in the end, the subtle stuff like that has a HUGE effect on how a groove plays out in the end.
For both playing blues, jazz, and as well as learning how to play behind the beat, an old black pro musician gave me an important tip that I never forgot that in the end, made it easier for me to adapt and learn how to play that way and that's with both the vocals and whatever instrument you play, phrase largely off the 3 and the 4 AKA the back beat and then it becomes a helluva lot easier to play behind the beat because the more you do it, the more naturally it will become second nature. If you're phrasing mainly off the 1 and the 3, it almost always forces you to play ahead of the beat, and if you're playing blues, most black music genres, and jazz, everything will feel awkward, horribly rushed, and feel like everything's being played way too fast all the time, and then what you're playing is more in a rock or country music groove more than anything (there are tho, some country artists who play behind the beat, but it's a very tiny minority).
I've tried on numerous occasions to get in touch with the author of that book, Fred Dinkins, to allow me to download some of those examples, which would be a great teaching tool indeed but I've yet to hear back from him (hopefully he's still with us).
The music that's the farthest behind the beat actually isn't blues, but old school reggae, like Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Toots And The Maytals, and in fact, it's so far behind, that if you pushed even farther behind the beat, it would actually wind up being FAR ahead to the beat following. In blues, the 50's Chicago blues musicians, from Muddy, Wold, LW, BW, SBW, JImmy Reed, all played way behind the beat and whenever you hear a rock musician play that stuff, it always feels too fast even if it's still at the same setting when measured up against a metronome because much of the time, a rock musician will more likely be playing the groove either on top of the beat or more often, ahead of it.
Teton John, when I had contacted Fred Dinkins, it was basically what you mentioned that I had in mind to use as examples that one can learn from.
There are so many free metronome apps on every smartphone available that most of the excuses harp players make are largely flushed down to toilet, but two apps, one that's free to try one made by Soundbrenner that was designed to go along with their musician's smartwatch that has a metronome, allows you to set the metronome up to what's referred to as a "drummer's metronome," where you can have it click, vibrate, or use something different, but mute the 1 and the 3 so that you only hear the 2 and the 4, which will make it easier to hear exactly where you are when trying to learn how to play ahead or behind the beat.
Tonal Energy is a paid app that costs $3.99 but it's well worth every penny as it's both a tuning app with an excellent metronome that also allows you to set it up for the "drummer's metronome" as well. I should note that I learned that little trick with a mechanical metronome from a helluva drummer friend of mine who would eventually be my regular drummer. A cheap mechanical metronome won't have that feature but a much more expensive one will, but the two smartphone apps I mentioned will do that at a far lower price and equally as well.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
426 posts
Mar 16, 2023
3:12 PM
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Here is a video with guitar showing on the beat and behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1k6RFxcSl0
A shorter example (again with guitar):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6Y68sGX0c
Last Edited by TetonJohn on Mar 16, 2023 3:12 PM
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barbequebob
3693 posts
Mar 17, 2023
8:27 AM
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@@TetonJohn -- after watching the video, that's basically behind the beat for a rock band with the lead players doing it but NOT the rhythm section because the backing track he's using is dead on top of the beat and in blues and black music in general, the entire band plays behind the beat, ESPECIALLY the rhythm section. When it's only the lead players, it does NOT have what the real feel of playing truly behind the beat sounds and feels like.
What I learned about playing behind the beat comes from actual gigging experience with a lot of the old blues musicians and they always had the entire band playing behind the beat, especially the drummer and bass player.
The video example doesn't really give you what a real behind the beat groove feels like, which is both jazzy and bluesy at the same time.
I'm glad you posted the video but it really doesn't demonstrate what real playing behind the beat is when it comes to THE GROOVE and when the backing track is played right on top of the beat, that sure ain't true behind the beat and definitely not bluesy or jazzy.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
427 posts
Mar 18, 2023
10:19 AM
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Bob, Interesting to get your take on those supposed examples. I was just hunting around for simple, clear, hearable examples -- I guess I'll keep hunting.
Earlier (or in your paper) you mentioned reggae being seriously behind the beat. First time I heard reggae and tried to dance to it, I just couldn't get it -- perhaps I was thrown by "behind the beat."
A year or so later, I really got into the reggae groove and started going regularly to the Reggae Lounge in NYC and watched the Jamaicans dance. Later I got one of the best compliments of my life when, after leaving the dance floor, a couple of Jamaicans asked if grew up in Jamaica! Maybe I was DANCING behind the beat! Eventually, I felt a shift from the old groove that seemed associated with the change of smell at the lounge, a shift to crack, that changed the vibe, musical and otherwise.
I moved out west eventually and saw a lot of white kids dancing very poorly to reggae, rock dancing, presumably on the beat -- energy vs. groove -- in spite of their dreadlocks.
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barbequebob
3694 posts
Mar 20, 2023
8:46 AM
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@TetonJohn -- part of the problem is basically cultural for most white people. There's the standing joke with most pro musicians, and this is especially true whenever I'm around a lot of African American musicians or white musicians who are TRULY tuned into something jammers pay little or no attention to and it's also too often the case with a lock of white rock musicians as a general rule and that if you're in a church with African American people as the overwhelming majority and you shut your eyes, it's too easy to tell who the white people are there because the African Americans will clap on the 2 and the 4 (the beats in any tune that uses 4/4 time) and a white person will almost always clap either on the 1 and the 3 or on all 4 beats. Unfortunately, that little "joke" is far too often the truth. Even the late jazzman Jackie McLean has even said that he usually can tell if a musician is a black man or a white man because a black musician will play behind the beat and much of the time a white musician will play ahead of it. Again, it all boils down to what real pro musicians always stressed to me that IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GROOVE.
Jammers with lousy time almost always think that people dance to a solo, but the real truth is that people dance to a GROOVE and a solo doesn't mean squat if the groove is played poorly, which means that ALL of the musicians HAVE to have good time in order for it to be tight, grooving, and danceable at ANY tempo and each member of the band that has lousy time will seriously weaken a band and in the pros, if you mess up the time, you have an 80-99% chance of getting fired and if you lost time, you'd absolutely deserve getting fired because it ain't like the low musical standards that jammers tend to get used to fast where something like that will be put up with and in every band, the two musicians in this order, under ZERO circumstances can you afford to have lousy time are the drummer and the bass player and from pro experience, for both of those two, the hands down number one reason for those two to be fired from a band is lousy time.
What you did you were dancing and dancing behind the beat was that you were actually in sync with the groove, or from a pro musician's standpoint, you were working WITH the groove whereas before, you were doing it like a jam hack with lousy time and unknowingly FIGHTING the groove.
In recording studios, especially when there's a major label involved, regardless of genre, much of the time, recordings are done in a series of overdubs, which has been the norm since the early 1960's where what they have recorded first the rhythm tracks with a reference vocal, and then everything else is overdubbed. Now why is this happening. It's been especially true when they began seeing a lot white music bands coming wasted out of their minds and traditionally, in many white music bands, the WEAKEST part of the band is almost always the rhythm section and so every little time screw up in a recording has absolutely ZERO place to hide and often times for an album, they have the rhythm section spend every single day for two weeks to make sure every groove is tight and nobody screws the time up (it's also the biggest reason why both drum machines and what's known as a click track, which is basically a metronome being played thru the drummer's headphone mix, were invented). Once everything else is done to their satisfaction, then if the reference vocal is good enough, they'll keep it or overdub a new performance altogether.
To put it bluntly, lousy time is also lousy musicianship.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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