Gig tempo and the drummers restraint

paul_c2

All the above advice is far better than our approach, which is to rehearse it, once familiar, as fast as possible. Then a few weeks before the gig, do the piece over and over again, about 20% slower than ideal, to compensate for the drummer being nervous and doing it 20% too fast.

Danny1969

octatonic said:

Danny1969 said:

For "real" drum editing Protools is unbeatable, I wouldn't do it now but I used to use Beat Detective so much I got real quick at it and could make a pretty hopeless drummer sound spot on within a couple of hours. I'm sure you can do much the same in other DAWS but drum editing in PT is very quick and the fill \ smoothing is quite transparent 

For me it is a case of being a last resort.

When I did an album with Darby Todd, for instance, I didn't time correct a single note because he was such an amazing drummer I just didn't need to.
Sure there were notes that didn't precisely align to the grid but the performances were so good that it wouldn't have made them sound better to have them conform.

You've probably recorded a higher standard of drummer than me .... I've literally recorded some terrible drummers and basically had to edit the shit out of the takes to the point it was all Beat Detective and Slate Trigger. 

In the live area though I've been fortunate enough to work with some superb drummers ... Mitch Glover, Steve Duffy, Jack Stephens, Dave Baker, Boyd Haywood .... all the guys have been great

ESBlonde

PolarityMan said:

Yeah the fills sound good. its jsut the 1 of the next bar is really often early. Its not even like the kick fits in the context of the fill either, ie/ a gradual speed up with the kick in the "right" place in context of the last say 3 or 4 sixteenths..its more like ..."killer fill, killer fill...fuck where did that kick come from?"

Get him to listen to Bev Beven (ELO) live, he really pulls back after fills or middle eights etc. to a noticable amount, but then re-establishes a rock solid tempo straight away. The songs don't suffer as a result and the tempo/beat is very good. It's a technique he might employ himself if he feels ELO are worthy of emulation for tempo.

midiglitch

I've got an app called 'liveBPM' which uses your phone's mic to listen to the tempo and the plots tempo against time to give graphs like the one Oct posted earlier.  Quite insightful, and quite a useful feedback tool.

guitarfishbay

guitarfishbay said:

Ok if the 1 is too early that's a problem, but in principle I don't really mind a song pushing and pulling at all.

If this pic works, this is a map for one of our songs to take account for fills and different sections.  It's a bit pointless without hearing the song, which isn't ready yet, but you get the idea

Turns out the pic didn't work, so I uploaded it to imgur

Brad

Other than using a click, what I find helps is if the drummer (or any instrumentalist for that matter, depending on who starts the tune) sings a couple of lines in their head, say of a verse or chorus before the count in of the song. If he/she can sing it as they play it, even better. I've experienced it helping reign in the tempo myself with tunes I had a habit of starting too quickly. 

Cirrus

When we're doing DIY preproduction with my band, we'll quite often have a daw set up in the room and play to a tempo map, adjusting it on the fly based on how it feels to play in the room - maybe try speeding that last chorus up 2bpm, or leaving a chord hanging over a single bar that's a few bpm slower etc... it's quite fun to actually play it and adjust that way.

Live, our drummer uses a Tama with a steady tempo, but on some songs where a single steady tempo seems to rob the song of ebb and flow, we've loaded the tempo mapped click onto his sampler so he can play along with it live.

paulphoenix

Brad said:

Other than using a click, what I find helps is if the drummer (or any instrumentalist for that matter, depending on who starts the tune) sings a couple of lines in their head, say of a verse or chorus before the count in of the song. If he/she can sing it as they play it, even better. I've experienced it helping reign in the tempo myself with tunes I had a habit of starting too quickly. 

great suggestion @Brad and thanks to all for your help and suggestions . 

I have put a metronome app on my phone for the songs i start, and i'll be speaking to the drummer about how he feels using the same and/or the singing first lines approach to help us reign in and control the song tempo's. 

When we're bashing out covers at light speed then we're not doing the song justice and not doing ourselves any favours by getting to the end of a set early! 

There are some songs in our set that need/sound better with a little giddy-up - with the operative word being "little",