Everything Drummers Hate About Metronomes | The Drum Department 🥁 (Ep.25) 

Well said 👍🏻👍🏻

Yes but it’s only used for practice. No classical pianist uses one for recording because it hinders expression. Same is true for drums but we just accept it for some silly reason.

Metronome is something like a soap that makes everything You play cleaner and smoother.

@@bbdeffect it’s not used only for practice… drummers need it all the time, pianists maybe less but if you are playing with other people in a band to record songs it must be used

@@bbdeffect it doesn’t hinder any expression, other people don’t hear it…

And yet, none of the great records were recorded to a click track.

@@bbdeffect michael jackson? Prince?

@@bbdeffect on 99,9 percent cases i hear that from either classical musicians or the ones who never mastered that skill

Good idea. Never thought about that. I just play over the original drum track.

@@joetroutt7425 it helps a me a lot. I used to try and match the song to the grid but if you're off a millisecond at the beginning by the end of the song it can be a quarter beat off. Banging out a cowbell is easier.

@@davidcenteau-depina6192 no what I mean is I use the original drum track as my metronome. Even if it's bad I'll adjust.

That's odd. You can play to live loops which is basically a click but in a musical context. It's a steady groove.

I played in church and the pastor sang and he could keep time but whenever we would have this particularly guest singer come in and sing he would just sing how he felt it and it was no where in time. I would just stop and let him sing a capella. Yes we had no band bc nobody knew how to play piano. Then one time we had a husband and wife come in and both played piano. The husband played with a real loose feel and his wife was classically trained. I couldn't follow him to save my life but his wife was like playing to a metronome. Unfortunately he played most of the time so it was excruciatingly difficult to lock in with him.

Playing in time is overrated. Listen to Hendrix stuff. Playing in sync with the band is what really matters.

I have never played to backing tracks but I do play to a click live. Do you hear the click during the backing track and if so does the audience also hear the click through the house mains? I've always wondered that.

​@@joetroutt7425 Speaking for most people here: Backing tracks (if done correctly) have an isolated track/ channel for just click, or sometimes will have voice prompts/ cues for each section "Verse", "Chorus", etc. We run simple stereo mp3s with Click L channel and Mono tracks in R only. If you're using multitrack DAW, then you can have stereo music, or separated tracks for monitor/FOH mixes in addition to the iso Click

I need that for my thrash beats when the back beat is stronger than the downbeat.

Yeah splitting our brain to play with the band and also with a click is a very thin line. It's like walking a tight rope.

I'm there with you. I have hearing problems and then need the click to be loud in my ears. Unfortunately I have had the sound guy or the guitar player turn up so loud that my click gets buried. Unless you're playing with backing tracks I wouldn't sweat it too much. Play by feel and enjoy the show.

"Better" depends on what you're practicing. 1/4 (or, more accurately, a single click sound) is fine if you're just working on staying in time (practicing rudiments, for example). A specific time signature (using 2 or 3 different click sounds) is great if you need to know where 1 is (practicing music). Uptempo Jazz can be practiced to a metronome clicking on 2 and 4. For linear funk, I'll have the metronome click on every 16th note. Starting tempo also depends on what you're practicing. I generally try to find a tempo where whatever I'm practicing is not quite clean enough, but not so fast that I can't get through it. Once I have that down, I'll speed it up 4 or 5 clicks, and also slow it down 4 or 5 clicks, if I feel I need to. The goal is to make sure you can play it in a wide range of tempi with no gaps in that range. For example, if I start at 80 bpm, I'll go 80, 85, 75, 90, 70, 95, 65, etc. This is especially important when working on foot technique.

Well my advice would be drumming (drilling) in microtime. Put on a click on 160 bpm. Don't be intimidated by the "high" number, but they are infact only 40 bpm. You can either practice this on the pad (Snare) or on the kit. However in the beginning I'd advise you to do this on the pad with hand to hand. If it get's to easy to nail each note then move the speed up a bit. However should you notice that it's still to difficult to nail them consistently with the same sound (dynamics) over a longer period of time (not just 16 bars) you should decrease the speed again. Furthermore there is another advantage to this method. It doesn't matter if you're gonna practice the super dreadful Rosana (Toto), Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers) or Highway to Hell (AC/DC). After you've done this you can either focus on applying different accents, moving around the kit or making your kick drum nice and even if you get my drift. If not I mean you play 4 on the flour (Kick), then you move all notes by 1/16th till you reach the end. (4/4 k--- k--- k--- k---; (to speed things up a bit I only write one bar from now on) -k-- --k- ---k kk-- -kk-- --kk k-k- -k-k kkk- -kkk k-kk kk-k kkk- kkkk ----)

My nephew played in a metal core band and they played with backing tracks. I went to see them and they were extremely tight. I was impressed. The drummer played with triggers so he could be heard better and it covered up his sloppy doublebass work. They're not together anymore but they played some big shows in my local town.

@@joetroutt7425 I would argue that triggers don’t “cover anything up” but they actually require you to play more accurate because it cuts through the overall mix 😂

@@Pericles777 that's what he told me. I have never played with them so idk.

Also i love the tama

As far as I'm concerned the click has no definite starting or stopping point. It's just the steady constant beep with no accented notes. Still leaves it up to me as the drummer to make sure the count is right.

Yeah it helped me from rushing my fills. Since then I can play triplets over a 4/4 bar alot tighter now.