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playing with metronome and counting notes

Started by fod, February 27, 2002, 01:19 AM

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fod


Hi
Although I play drums for more than 2 years I started play with metronome only yesterday :) so I have few questions, and it were nice if you could answer them.

Firstly, as I'm playing with metronome I can't hear it so I go offbeat very soon. I mean after that I hear it but then I playing exactly with it seems there are no metronome at all and I can't keep the beat :( So, maybe I must count notes while I'm playing? Or after some time I'll feel rythm better? By the way, must I count while I'm playing with my band, I mean it's harder and not so interesting follow other musicians then.

And secondly: how count bpm's? For example let's say on the tab below hi-hat goes 120 bpm
H|x---x---x---x---
S|--o---o---o---o-
B|o----o--o---oo--
but snare goes without hi-hat, so snare+hi-hat is 240 bmp or something, I don't know how to say it. Besides, how should I count: 1 2 3 4 on hi-hat, or add "and" besides numbers? And even if I counted "1&2&3&4&" bass goes without number and it's hard to count when bass goes so... I don't that it is possible count 2 time faster, am I wrong? That's all for this time, thanks.

Bart Elliott

I hope that I'm understanding your question correctly.

When working with a metronome, you can set it so that it clicks the downbeats or pulses of the time signature you are playing in. With the drum tab that you wrote out in the post, it seems that you would set the metronome to click with the HiHat, as you stated, 120 bpm, which would be two clicks every second. The 120 beats per minute (bpm) would be set to the quarter note.

In 4/4 or Common Time, which is what this drum tab is in, you would count 1 2 3 4, coinciding with the HiHat. To allow your counting to line-up with the Snare part, you would count eighth-notes (as you already stated):

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

or

1 te 2 te 3 te 4 te

To count so that all the parts are included (HiHat, Snare and Kick drum) you would count sixteenth-notes:

1 e & u 2 e & u 3 e & u 4 e & u

or

1 ta te ta 2 ta te ta 3 ta te ta 4 ta te ta

The bold show where the metronome click would be. Some metronomes provide a way to add eighth-notes and/or sixteenth-notes to the clicks ... so that it would click on every subdivision ... not just the pulse or downbeats.  If you metronome does not do this, you would then have to do what you already mentioned which is to speed the metronome up to twice the tempo marking (240 bpm) to cover the eighth-notes which are played by the Snare drum. To have enough clicks to also cover the Kick drum, you would have to double the tempo again so that it's now at 480 bpm. Metronomes typically do NOT go this high. So, the only thing left for you to do is SLOW the entire groove down ... which you should be doing anyway when it's a new beat.

Try playing the groove so that the HiHat (quarter-note) is at 60 bpm. This would mean that you could set it to 120 bpm for the Snare, or 240 bpm for the Kick.

Just remember to work it out slowly and be able to count and/or sing what it is you are wanting to play. Once you get the groove down, you can speed it back up 120 bpm ... or whatever tempo you are wanting.