Got any tempo tricks?

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HapiCmpur

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Twenty years ago I wrote a sad song about lost love. (I was in high school at the time and had plenty of material to draw from.) I played that song as a slow ballad for several years and then forgot all about it. Two years ago I remembered the song and decided to record it, just for old time’s sake. One day, while I was playing around with the rhythm section, I got to clowning with it and played it back fast instead of slow. Wow! The song came to life. I ended up recording it as an up-tempo surf-era tune with sappy Beach Boy harmonies, and that lent an even sadder irony to the already depressing lyrics.

Anyway, the whole thing took me by surprise, and since then I’ve been thinking about the critical role of tempo in song writing and recording. Most of the time, of course, I do not get big flashes of sudden inspiration like I did in the above example. More typically, I find myself playing a song over and over again at different tempos, trying to decide if there’s really a noticeable difference between 120 and 123 bpm. (Pretty tedious, and not always productive.)

So I’m wondering if any of you other songwriters out there have tricks you’d be willing to discuss about how you select your tempos. Do you dance to your tunes at different speeds to see how they move you? Do you play different versions of the same song to your friends and ask for feedback? Do you try to match song tempos to natural body rhythms like heartbeats and breathing? What are your thoughts on tempo selection?
 
Hi Hap.
Welcome to HR.com.

Good thread starter. Should get some good feedback on this one.

For me; After I get the meldoy and some music to the song, I begin on the lyrics. It's usually at that point I determine my tempo. I've had a drum machine for about two years now and use it, dependently. Before I just set the tempo on the mood of the song using a metronome. I'm in favor of my drum machine to aid me now.

I've dinked around changing tempo with songs but I find the original is usually what I settle on.

I think everyone here must of written a song about a highschool love. :)
We should compile them all together and make a CD out of them.
 
Interesting topic.

I to, get trapped changing tempo's by one or two bpm. I listen to it the next day and wonder why it's so damn slow, and crank it up 10bpm.

What I usually do is jam the song for awhile without any tempo reference and then turn on a metronome, trying to keep the tempo in my head and match it up with the metronome before I lose perspective on what the 'right' tempo is as far as feel and proper execution (sometimes it's a compromise). Holy run on sentence.

Cool topic.
 
I find the biggest determinate of tempo rides on the singing. If it feels like the words I sing are dragging too much, then it's a good indication that the song is too slow. If I feel too stressed out trying to catch the tempo while singing, then the tempo is going too fast.

Another crucial factor for me is the groove of the song. I've had to make as little as +/- 2 bpm adjustments because the groove just didn't sit properly. Once I was in a band with a real good drummer and he knew this instinctively. I never questioned the tempos when we ran through the song set because he knew exactly at what points the feel was located. With a drum machine, you are locked in a linear tempo, which often hits and misses the groove. (This can be somewhat avoided by spacing out the drum track arrangement during those times when a tighter feel is required).

I've had to change the tempo several times to get the best compromise between straight tempo and groove, or "pocket" tempo.

Cy
 
"With a drum machine, you are locked in a linear tempo, which often hits and misses the groove. "

Excellent point.
 
Just this afternoon we cranked up a song we've been doing for ages from 110 to 120. Really brought it alive.

Interesting points re drum machines Cyrokk. By "spacing out the arrangement", I presume you just mean having less of those bashy noises going on so the live people can groove better?

I find the swing settings on the DR770 quite helpful, but then you gotta play to the machine's groove. The thing I'm experimenting with is recording stuff "live" from the machine - i.e. not using preset patterns in songs, but playing the pads direct onto a track on the recorder.

Of course we need a drummer!
 
Yeah, I think you got what I meant about spacing the arrangement. Basically, you have as little going on in the track as possible without giving up impact, like keeping the kick and snare hits at the crucial points, but the hi-hat playing only on the 1 and 3 instead of each quarter note. An alternate approach is to change from using the hi-hat to another cymbal sound, like the cymbal rim, because the delay time on the cymbal is longer than the hi-hat. These approaches give the listener a bit of breathing room to focus on the groove and it gives the live players a much more flexible space per frame to stretch out the notes.

Whether you can use this technique depends a lot on the song itself, as in some instances you can't drop any drum parts without creating too big a hole in the piece. Sometimes you have to get real creative, and other times you have to either forget it, or do some detailed tempo changing in the drum machine which can get pretty hairy.

I played with the swing settings on my machine as well. I didn't like it. The swing is still too automatic and it usually swings the wrong parts, making it sound like a rinky country song.

That's a good idea playing the pads, if you have good coordination, which I don't. What I am seriously thinking about doing, once my studio is finished and I have some cash (yeah right) is to buy a couple cymbals and a snare and try to play them myself. My drum machine has a great kick sound, which is a good thing since I could never pull off foot playing without a good 15 years of practice.

Cy
 
I still rely on my drum machine.
I use the kick and a snare, not a hithat, cymble crashes, toms, etc. Just a bit more than a metronome.

For me it saves a few steps in trying to find a tempo.
When I get passed the initial stage of writing a song, I begin using it, or the metronome. Dependingon which room I'm in.

Takes some of the guess work out of it for me.
 
For me, it's usually the lyrics that drive or determine the tempo. A lot of my songs are story songs so the music is meant to create certain feelings, kind of like a film score does. On other types of songs I almost always experiment with the tempo, just to see what it might sound like. Several times I've changed slow or moderately paced tunes to bluegrass tempos with success.
 
songwriter's answer

good thread, hapI.

I'm probably closest to what Cyrokk has added.

Even though I'm what you might call a singer-songwriter type, I still rely on the groove of a tune to determine it's tempo (to me; the melody, hook, beat and resulting mood are all "the groove"). That, and the lyrics.

In terms of lyrics, I just ask myself what's the most conducive tempo in which my words will be understood. Sometimes, a song needs to be faster for me to get the words out. Other times, I don't think a listener would be able to focus on wordplay or subtle phrase ephasis if the song were not sung slowly.
 
i just play it at whatever speed my mind seems to want it at at a given time. eventually, i find a certain speed more pleasing, and tend to stick with it. if i do drums, i do them from memory of the tempo and then work from there.
 
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