Guitar Tips - TIME HAS COME TODAY!!
By: Mike O'Cull
There is no more basic element of music than time. Time is what holds the band together, time makes us dance, time gives even basic speech a musical quality (rap, anyone?). Time is also, unfortunately, the one area where aspiring musicians suffer the most and inflict the most harm on their audiences (outside of harmony vocals, that is.). That guy who always has to stop between chords and the band no one wants to dance to? Time bandits, both. In this, my first Tip Of The Month contribution, I will give you the simplest, most direct path to rhythmic righteousness and proper time travel.
What is that path, you ask? Why, it is the use of one of the most time-honored and true-tested practice devices to ever enter the practice room. I mean, of course, the humble metronome. You don't have to get the giant old-lady piano teacher kind that swings back and forth; the modern, compact digital kind will do nicely. Start at a setting of 60 to 80 bests per minute (bpm). That click you are hearing is a quarter note. It is worth one beat and is what you tap your foot to instinctively. Start by playing one note on each click of the metronome. Stay with it as best you can without slowing down or speeding up. Practice that until you can do it without thinking about it too much. When that gets easy, try to play a song along with the click, again without getting ahead or behind. This type of practicing to a perfect time source will help you internalize that quarter note so, no matter what your hands may be doing, your heart holds it together.
More advanced players can play their scales and exercises
to the metronome. Play them two notes per click (eighth
notes) and four notes per click (sixteenth notes), striving
for accuracy over velocity. Start out at a comfortable speed
and work up a couple bpm at a time until you can't keep
up. Keep a log of your tempos and over the course of a few
weeks you should see your numbers get higher and higher.
Make metronoming part of your daily practice routine for
a while and the results will surprise you. What once was
a butter knife will have turned into a razor blade. See
you in the shed!
Mike O'Cull
Mike O'Cull is a guitar instructor at Goodtime Music in Streamwood, 3 W. Streamwood Blvd, Streamwood, and can be reached at (630)-837-3733 if you're interested in lessons with him.