I’ve been working on metronome displacement exercises for the past couple of months (putting the click on beats 2, 3, or 4 instead of 1). I can finally play them comfortably, and one big benefit is learning how to recover when I inevitably drift off. My instinct was to correct by the next click, and that usually gets me back on track within a beat or two.
That said, I realized this might not translate perfectly to playing with other musicians. In a band setting, snapping back immediately could sound extremely awkward. You’d want to “slide” back into the groove more gradually — what I’ve seen described as playing slightly ahead of or behind the beat.
So here’s my question: are there specific exercises that train this idea of intentionally pushing or pulling the beat? The displaced-click metronome work seems related, but I’m curious if there are drills designed for developing that kind of feel on purpose.
Thanks!
—David
PS Apologies if this is somewhere in the course and I missed it!
You’re on the right track but I would probably not conflate playing behind or ahead of the beat with making a gradual, smooth correction.
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Playing ahead or behind is more of a consistent “feel” that can sound real nice, but it requires all the elements of the groove (so also the other players) to consistently play with the right feel. ie, if the Bass player plays “behind” that means you are always a little “ahead”. That’s a sound that can work on its own.
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You seem to be looking for some sort of “elasticity” in how you approach a click. You do not want to create a one time “jerk” in the beat to get back to locking in with the click, but you want to gradually correct.
So… for this… you need to work on your “slow” inner clock. That means for example setting a metronome to 40bpm and seeing if you can actually feel the space between those slow clicks.
You sort of have to train yourself to feel that space without “subdividing” it. If you can do that, you can also train yourself how to actually subdivide the long space between the main hits.
It’s sort of like having 2 clocks running at the same time. One always has the “macro time” in mind and the other one focuses on the “micro time”, the subdivisions. And they are always working at the same time.
Then, if you need to “correct” you actually correct over the length of 1 bar. And even better, you won’t lose the click that often because you have a more robust foundation to naturally keep you more or less playing in time.
It’s a lot, fee;l free to keep asking me about this because it is not something that can be 100% understood in one go. Kind of like "the force” haha.
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