Mike Outram ~ The Electric Campfire

Here’s a little metronome-based exercise I use to work on accuracy of note placement and awareness of time and rhythm within groove-based music. Woo, let the party begin…

A Word of Warning: Some view exercises with metronomes as cold and unmusical. And I’d agree. Just like scales, arpeggios, intervals, strings and cables are unmusical. They’re just things that might help you make some music; like brushes and paint are to a painter. What music is the exercise going to help you play or imagine? And it’s only an idea; a thing to try on a wet afternoon. You might think it’s total bollocks and utterly pointless. And I might agree. Just learn some Frank Zappa solos instead. Buuut, if you’re getting saucy looks from band mates every time you play a solo break, or you have that horrible floating sensation when your solos go awry, or if you’re at a loose end…

The dinner is on, the house is tidy, there’s an eerie stillness in the air…

Here’s the idea: The usual way of using a metronome is to have it click on every beat, or beats 1 and 3, or 2 and 4 [in 4/4]. This means that the metronome is generating the beat and you have to align your time to it. Placing the click on a subdivision of the beat means that you have to generate the beat. It’s harder to do, so I think getting good at it makes your time stronger.

Let’s say you want to practice a triplet/compound feel. The places within that feel that you could put the click [that's not on the beat] are the 2^nd and 3^rd quavers. [If you prefer to think of 'triplets' just substitute wherever I've written 'quaver' with 'triplet']

So, In one bar of 3/8 that’d be here:

or here:

Here’s how to do it with the click on the last quaver: Start the click at 60 bpm and count three even quavers in the space of one click. That’s the rate at which the quavers sound. Now hear the click as the last quaver and put your downbeat on the next quaver. Feel it as going ‘and, one’ with the ‘and’ co-inciding with the metronome click.

Now play a repeated dotted crotchet on the beat [you're playing on the 'one' while the metronome is clicking on the 3rd quaver] Keep it steady. Good? Try playing a scale. Still good? You have to feel where the pulse should be to keep feeling the metronome click as the last quaver. Continue to do this until you can keep the beat and you don’t switch the metronome around so that you’re playing with the clicks. Next try some other rhythms. Practice all these variations. Where you have a long note you can either play it for its full duration or play it as a quaver; do it both ways. [the top line shows the rhythms to practice; the bottom line is where the metronome click is]

Now improvise. Stay within the triplet feel, always focusing on keeping the beat rock-solid and making sure everything sits exactly in that feel. If you lose awareness of the beat for a second you’ll rush or drag and the click will immediately feel different. It might shift to a straight 8^th feel; or, you’ll shift by a quaver and the click will be on the beat.

Other things to do:

• Put the click on the second quaver.
• Use 6/8. Now there are 4 places you can place the click [excluding the easier 1^st and 4^th quavers] Also, you could have the metronome click twice in one bar by using the 3^rd quaver of beats one and two.
• Use 9/8
• Use 12/8
• Use an odd-time feel e.g, 7/8 and practice with the click in all locations.
• Use a different beat subdivision. E.g., semiquavers. Use the less familiar 2^nd and 4^th semiquavers and their locations with whatever bar length you use.
• Try using an odd grouping as the beat subdivision. E.g., play in 4/4 but using groups of 5 as the beat subdivision and place the metronome click on one of these subdivisions.

Other thoughts that pop up [These are just vague ideas. I might practice things that are related to them or try to use the ideas to compose things. Or I might just abandon them as bad ideas. But anyway here are a few bad ideas - if there weren't enough already]

• Play in time but free pulse – like you’re improvising bar-lines. I think whenever I play in situations where I have to play free music, I focus most on melody and hearing the harmony. But I’m also at liberty to be free with rhythm.

• Rhythms like triplets, semiquavers and so on are regular demarcations of time but there is no gradation of time; the measurement is a construct. Within the limit of a particular rhythm there might be pushes and pulls that cause it to feel or sound a certain way. Also, is it possible to play stuff over the time but have it take its own time? I’ve played in some groups where we’ll have a groove going on in the drums and the rest of the band float over this in their own time. Also, playing certain kinds of pieces, the phrase you’re playing can unfold in its own time. [Just rambling out loud, all obvious stuff maybe. Guess I was thinking about groove-based music to start with] So, combining these ideas, another thing to try is playing in a groove but allowing phrases to have their own rhythmic independence from the groove.

Right, time for biscuits… Feel free to share any rhythmic related ideas/thoughts/gibberish below or perhaps share your favourite rhythmically interesting music. Why do you like it? What is going on? I’m off to make a Spotify playlist of some of my favourite rhythmic stuff. Seem to remember Dave Marks doing something like that a while ago.

Er, bye then.

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