EP509 timing advice

[Jim H]

Help please. I am having a very difficult time playing along with backing tracks. I need some ideas/advice on playing the lesson after I have learned the piece. I have trouble and counting and reading and hearing the chord changes and playing at the same time, I have slowed the thing down but at some point the sound of the song is no longer there.
Strumming along with the chords or playing simple root/fifth bass is fine, but I have yet to play any of these lessons with the dedicated backing track. I have learned many good licks with Brian but am still unable to fit in licks with any consistency.

[sunjamr]

Hi Jim –
You are not the first person to raise this issue. You say you have trouble with playing the lesson after you have learned the piece. That kind of tells me you are learning the lessons in lick segments, rather than keeping the big picture in mind. And it suggests that maybe you are tackling fairly complex lessons with complex rhythm patterns. Maybe you are too focused on getting the fingering perfect, vs keeping the beat. Brian has said several times that as long as you keep the beat going, most people won’t notice if you hit a bad note. Perhaps you should go back and learn some of the earlier simpler lessons, and focus on staying with the beat from the very start. For example, EP282 is slow and easy, with a simple melody and jamtrack, so it’s easy to count the beat in your head (which you imply you know how to do).

Or another approach might be to play some of the lessons that don’t need a backing track, but play them along with a drum track or metronome. For example, EP088 is pretty simple, but can you play it with a drum track?

One final suggestion: The world famous Yamaha music courses require that students listen to the piece over and over many times per day before they ever sit down to start memorizing it. The idea is to get the whole composition perfectly imbedded in your memory first, so that you will immediately know if you get off tempo or play a bad note.

Sunjamr Steve

[Jim H]

Thanks sunjamr1
Im focusing on timing on ep282 and it is indeed a great piece to do just that I appreciate your input
Jim

[David G]

Hey Jim, a lesson that helped me play in time with a jam track years ago (first success at lead for me) was LEG022

Simple Lead Played in the Major Pentatonic Scale (Key of E) – LEG022

Start by playing along with Brian. Try getting just the first bar or two down in time with the track. Then add a bar, always starting from the beginning of the piece. Keep repeating until you are able to play up to the latest added bar until you get to the end of the piece. Once you can play along with Brian venture out and play along with the track-minus-guitar. Be persistent and always restart when you lose sync with the beat. Once you get one lesson down like this choose another simple one and work on it in the same manner. Hopefully you will find it gets easier to jam each time and the beat and chord changes seem to come more naturally.

I hope this helps in some way.

[charjo]

Hi Jim,
I can remember how difficult timing was in my early days. The thing that helped me the most was learning to tap my foot to the beat. Practice rhythms to the foot tap, ie. quarter notes, eighth notes, eighth note shuffle feel, triplet rhythms and 16th notes. Get in the habit of saying the rhythm out loud, ie 1 and uh for triplet, 1-e and-uh for 16th until the feel is natural for you.
If I found the counting challenging on one of Brian’s pieces I would print out the tab and mark where the beat fell, especially phrases where the timing was really complex.
Practice some of these things to a metronome or even better a drum backing track. You can find drum backing tracks on YouTube. Learn to identify the beat within the drum track. Often there will be emphasis on beat 2 and 4.
John

[Jim H]

Thanks John, I appreciate you input and am now taking more care and using a metronome and counting and tapping my foot. All things I have done in the past, but tend let slide over time.
Jim

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