Natural Individual Tempo

[sax4blues]

The bulk of my playing over the years has been in church worship bands. Part of that experience is playing the same songs with many different people. What I've observed is leading players, typically keyboard, with distinct base or what I'm calling natural tempo. For some every song has a slower more deliberate feel, the other side every song upbeat, both in tempo and style. What I've also observed is these leaders generally can not be moved off their inner tempo, either dragging or rushing against the rest of the band.

Rushing and/or dragging is often discussed as a deliberate lack of skill or awareness, which surely is true. But I also wonder about just the natural inner clock of an individual. I've also noticed this in complete works of bands where many songs, even across multiple albums, will stay in a very narrow tempo range, beyond just the nature of the genre.

 

[klasaine]

I do think that folks gravitate to their own 'comfortable' tempo(s) when they write but if they insist upon forcing it when clearly bass and drums are somewhere else - then they're not listening and do not understand how to "be in a band".

I'm pretty unwavering on stuff like this. Not listening and adapting to what's going on around you, especially tempo, is the Cardinal Sin.

 

[brindlepicker]

I took piano lessons from about 1st grade to 6th and the old piano teacher told mom I should be a drummer since I had such good timing. Then I thought maybe the teacher wanted to get rid of me.