Comments on: Building Your Internal Clock https://www.drumeo.com/beat/internal-clock/ The Drumeo Beat delivers drumming videos, tips, articles, news features, and interviews with your favorite drummers. Thu, 12 Jan 2023 18:43:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Jaan Wessman https://www.drumeo.com/beat/internal-clock/#comment-6661 Fri, 04 Mar 2016 08:37:00 +0000 http://www.drumeo.com/blog/?p=3163#comment-6661 Back when I was playing my regular theater gig a few years back, our musical director and I decided it would be a great thing if he gave me a cue via our in-ear monitors of the ideal tempo right before every musical number. The actors had gotten used to rehearsing with pre-recorded, 99% of the time MIDI programmed backing tracks, so this made perfect sense. And so, right before any musical act, our director would send me a feed of the click in perfect tempo to my in-ears, I’d quickly get comfortable with the tempo and would give him the thumbs up to turn the click off, I’d count the song off, and off we’d go.

Not long after we started working in this fashion, we began examining how well I’d kept the tempo. So after every song or a musical act, our MD would again turn on the click to see if we were anywhere near the ballpark, tempo-wise. And, lo and behold, most of the time we’d been playing steadily throughout! I’m not saying the tempo might have not wavered a bit here and there, but the general time was still remarkably solid throughout. Of course, I couldn’t have done this with just any musicians – the band was full of wonderful instrumentalists with a keen ear for tempo, dynamics, etc.. But it was still pretty damn rewarding to know the guy sitting on the drum chair was keeping it down nice and solid. 🙂

Been using the practice method Jared explains in the video above, and likewise can’t recommend it enough for drummers at all skill levels. It certainly worked for me!

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