Tips for improving timing

[Mark_Andertons]

I think timing is actually the most important element of technique. Mine's not perfect but I wanted to share with you a tip and I'd love to hear anyone elses to help me improve my timing!

When I was a music student my teacher use to have my practise to a metronome that only sounded the semibreeve while you do scales/arpeggios in crotchets

i.e you play: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR
metronome: ONE, Silence, silence, silence, ONE, Silence, silence, silence

That way you have to really get your timing right without the metronome to help (which it won't when you're playing on your own) but the metronome is a measuring stick of how good your timing is.

Helps to start relatively fast tempos 150BPM or so and get slower as you get better (the slower the tempo the harder this exercise is).

If you're still struggling then set the metronome to click on the ONE and TWO (minims) until you can nail that.

Give it a try and see how good your timing really is!

Who else has tips to improve timing?

[ZMech]

Yup, it's a fun exercise video this, posted a link the other day to a Wooten tutorial video that goes through this kind of idea:
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR9to6lbqTY&feature=player_embedded"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR9to6lbqTY&feature=player_embedded[/url]

One comment though, is that 160 is a much better choice than 150 simply as it's divisible by 4 (and 16 for that matter, giving you once every 4 bars).

[Mark_Andertons]

[quote name='ZMech' timestamp='1338762823' post='1679094']
Yup, it's a fun exercise video this, posted a link the other day to a Wooten tutorial video that goes through this kind of idea:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR9to6lbqTY&feature=player_embedded[/media]

One comment though, is that 160 is a much better choice than 150 simply as it's divisible by 4 (and 16 for that matter, giving you once every 4 bars).
[/quote]

Love VW's definition of 'no fills'

Great find with the video though that's exactly what I was talking about. Nice to hear that even he's not perfect when he gets it down to 40!

[paul_5]

Try this one, set the 'nome to a fairly slow tempo - you're playing semiquavers here and accuracy is more important than speed.
[IMG]http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd471/paul_510/Metronome.png[/IMG]

The idea is to mentally subdivide the crotchet metronome beats into 4 and accent different semiquavers.

It's notated as just one bar per subdivision, but that's just for ease of exporting the graphics file. Spend a bit of time on each one to really get this exercise into your head. It's a bit confusing at first, but worth persevering with.

[Mark_Andertons]

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1338803065' post='1679305']
Try this one, set the 'nome to a fairly slow tempo - you're playing semiquavers here and accuracy is more important than speed.
[IMG]http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd471/paul_510/Metronome.png[/IMG]

The idea is to mentally subdivide the crotchet metronome beats into 4 and accent different semiquavers.

It's notated as just one bar per subdivision, but that's just for ease of exporting the graphics file. Spend a bit of time on each one to really get this exercise into your head. It's a bit confusing at first, but worth persevering with.
[/quote]

Like that! Will try that in today's workout

[jakebeamish]

another metronome based exercise:

1) Set your metronome to 50 - 60bpm, and imagine each 'tock' to be the first beat in the bar.

2) Take a scale (or arpeggio) that you want to become a little more familiar with - in this case I'll use a chromatic scale starting on C.

3) Playing two notes per bar, play chromatically from C up to Ab and back down again. It should work out that you just played 8 bars of 2 beats per bar.

4) Double it. Play four notes per bar. To keep it an 8 bar run, play all the way up to E an octave above and down again.

5) Play three notes a bar. From C up to C an octave above.

6) Double that. Six notes per bar, going all the way up to the C two octaves above.

7) Now try fives. Play five notes per bar, going from C to G an octave above.

By ensuring you only play 8 bars of each timing exercise, and you only go up the scale so high, you can guarantee you're going to finish on the first beat of the bar on bottom C - this means you can string runs together without stopping and get a real feel for different 'speeds'.
Try going from 2 per bar through 3, 4, 5, all the way up to 6 notes per bar and back down again.