do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

[DankStar]

I thought a song I'm working on was all one tempo, but when I go to sequence the drums and get the bpm, it's hovering between 175 and 179. not huge changes, but still. thinking back, I've had a lot of tunes do this. I can't tell if real CDs exhibit this or not. do your songs have slight changes in tempo like this (I'm not talking a definite drastic tempo change)? just curious. I can't think of too many songs I've done where one tempo worked through the whole thing.

 

[Metalman_666]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

I think in general when many musicians just practice with bands the tempo may shift a few BPM here and there. It takes a long time before you can independently play at a constant tempo, but put a bunch of people in a room to play together and assuming they've practiced they should all be able to stick to one tempo together, even if it shifts slightly.

That said click tracks are used in the studio to make sure everyone stays on the same tempo when drums/guitar/bass are recorded separately, so I wouldn't think mastered CDs that are released have any drastic tempo shifts that aren't intentional.

 

[\m/(00)\m/]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

^ yeah
my band uses click tracks and loops when we play. When we are able to use in ear monitors the whole band has the metronome in our ears...it's really good, and cause you to stay on time of course!

 

[GoDrex]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

I've only done it one time on a song where one riff in relation to another felt better to me at a slightly slower tempo. I used a drum program and lowered the BPM a little for those parts.

 

[sosomething]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

Only on purpose.

I write to a click set on a continuous 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, +infinity type of setting, so I'm psychologically freed from the constraints of time signature, but immovably chained to the anchor of set bpm.

The nice thing is that it makes it easy to deliberately mix up the tempos I write in for a record, keeping things from sounding repetitive.

Ultimately I find more dynamics can be wrought from playing with the beats themselves - moving to cut time or switching from a divisible-by-2 sig to a divisible-by-3 can make the song "shift gears" or feel like it's sped up while still maintaining perfect time.

 

[DankStar]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

interesting stuff boyz.

when I was in a band, I deliberately made songs that were one tempo, for ease of click programming and getting songs down between all the members without worrying about everyone being able to feel the subtle time changes.

at home, I'll make up a tune on my guitar, and think it's all one bpm, but often find that I can't stick to one bpm for all the riffs without having some parts just feel sligthly too slow or fast.

I don't play with time signatures too much, but I appreciate the dudes that can. It goes out of my realm of my K.I.S.S. mentality.

 

[ksmith63]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

I write everything in one tempo but can often switch up time signatures. I don't write to a metronome so sometimes I unintentionally speed up or slow down some....just have to figure out the best tempo for the song and record it to a click.

 

[GoDrex]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

the bpm, it's hovering between 175 and 179.

why so fast? is it's super speed metal?

 

[DankStar]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

why so fast? is it's super speed metal?

nah, I can't play super complicated stuff these days. it's sort of a punky hard rockin' thing. it's not as fast as the bpms would allude to if that makes any sense.

 

[NevermindUs]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

nah, I can't play super complicated stuff these days. it's sort of a punky hard rockin' thing. it's not as fast as the bpms would allude to if that makes any sense.

my songs are alot like that. are tempos always seem really fast, but since alot of notes swing like dotted eigths and quarters, they dont seem as fast to us

 

[DankStar]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

my songs are alot like that. are tempos always seem really fast, but since alot of notes swing like dotted eigths and quarters, they dont seem as fast to us

I'll check you guys out then!

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

Yeah, I usually hover between 72 and 120 on any given song. Really gives it that "swing."

:jester:

Cheers,
Hunter

 

[DankStar]

Re: do your tempos hover within a range in a song?

/\ /\ swinger /\ /\