by russell
A while back I posted a video of a studio performance of Paul Simon's "The Afterlife", and made some comments about how the different players were all articulating the time feel of the piece in different ways. I followed up on that in longer form with a couple of folks, and it was suggested that I post the longer version, if nothing else than as a break from epidemics and the SFJ.
So, a post about the art of playing time.
The critical skill in all aspects of music is listening. Not just listening, but hearing. Playing in tune, playing in time, blending in an ensemble, playing convincingly as a solo player – they all depend on hearing what is going on. And, in particular, hearing what you are playing. That's often the hardest, because you have an idea in your head of what it is you intend to play, and you assume that that is what is coming out of your voice or instrument.
Quite often, it's not.
So you have to train yourself to hear what it is that you are actually doing.
For time playing, there are two aspects of this. You have to learn to hear the time – the consistent forward march of beat after beat – independently of what you are actually playing. Because your playing may not be that accurate. And, you have to hear whether, and how, what you are playing lines up with that – initially, just to be accurate, but also because, at some point, when you advance beyond beginner and play with players who hear stuff like this, you want to be able to deliberately play ahead of the time, or behind the time, exactly on the time, or any combination thereof.
Humans have a natural ability to sense the passage of time, some more accurately than others. But for almost everyone, it's something that can, and probably must, be fine-tuned through practice.
So – what is the practice that leads to this? See you after the page break….