Hey all,
I'm doing some recording at home and arranged all the parts for a tune. It's a Jazzy Blues number along the lines of Robben Ford. I'm responsible for the drums, bass and guitars.
I'm trying to improve the feel of the tune and my understanding around who/what plays on the beat and who/what is behind. I understand that it can vary but I'm just wondering about what my be a good formula as a starting point?
My understanding is you need to have something straightening up the beat so that others can play behind. In this case I've got the bass straightening it up, and drums rhy and lead guitars behind.
What are peoples thoughts?
Comments
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
The best drummers can shift between laying back, pushing forward and staying on the beat.
I prefer recording drummers who can groove over a click, rather than sticking to it in a metronomic way.
When I play drums (my second instrument) I concentrate on staying on time.
Better drummers than me can do that and still mess with being ahead or behind.
I am much happier playing ahead/on/behind the beat on guitar, as the song suits but I have 3 times the experience on that instrument than I do on drums.
YMMV.
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Sometimes it ends up quite different from the way I first had it. And it's not that the initial line-up was necessarily "wrong" or bad - it's just not how the musicians heard it. When they are all happy it usually sounds good (as you'd hope) - and there's a feeling of everything coming into focus. It's quite subtle and we're talking about small numbers of milliseconds to make a significant difference - while at the same time, there can be quite a range of milliseconds over which it sounds "OK". As Paul Simon said:
"You can sit on the top of the beat
You can lean on the side of the beat
You can hang from the bottom of the beat
But you got to admit that the music is sweet"
Of course the whole process would be easier if they'd just hit their instrument against the beats of a count I put at the start of each track, but this often doesn't happen :-).
I've not used EZ drummer but in Logic Pro you can adjust the amount of swing which has a big effect on the feel of the drums.
Will post up a new version in a couple of days.
I've got a new version of this tune for you to listen to. It's a different arrangement. Once again I'm interested to hear you feedback about the groove.
Krantz, different perspective:
On your website, you talked about how your time wasn’t cutting it during the Steely Dan sessions. That’s pretty mind-boggling because most people consider your time to be incredibly strong. Can you explain what that’s about?
I’ve always had good time, but that’s when I realized the difference between having good time as sort of a jazz player and having good time as sort of an R&B player—there’s a different kind of placement. I’m generalizing wildly right now, but Donald [Fagen] and Walter’s [Becker] placement is centered in the beat. It’s in the middle of the beat. It’s not in front of the beat. It’s not behind the beat, although they experiment with that. They feel the time is in the center of the beat and so does their rhythm section. The guys they hire to play bass and drums also feel the center of the beat. That’s coming from an R&B place. I wasn’t there at that point—I couldn’t hear that, I couldn’t find that place. So it sounded like the band was in one time feel and I was in another and at that moment I realized, “I need to get this,” because I like the power that rhythmic ideas have when they are dead center like that. I wondered how it would work if my ideas—which are pretty radically different from their ideas rhythmically—were placed similarly, in that middle of the beat. I started working hard on that and I got it together. So, since then, my time has gotten better.
Out of interest, did you record the guitar and bass to a click or different drum beat before adding the current drums? It doesn't quite feel like they're following the same swing at the moment.
Will post it up when it's done. Working on this with a really great vocalist as part of an EP.