What's up Fender fiends!?!? I'm in a bit of a pickle. I've recently gotten back into playing after a long period of inactivity and laziness. I previously played for many years and I was a pretty decent guitar player, not great mind you but reasonably "good". I sort of lost the spark, got busy with life (getting married, working, buying a house yada yada yada) and I really didn't play seriously for years except for the occasional noodling session. But I started to feel the itch and, to paraphrase the movie title, Michael got his groove back! I've noticed that my hands are still serviceable for the time being. I can still pick pretty good and I still have a pretty nice touch. But my rhythm and timing sense have really gone to $@!&! I'm all over the place, speeding up, slowing down and just generally off beat. Playing a nice solo or good lead work is important but I want to be a good musician and bandleader and without rhythm I'll basically be the proverbial one legged man in an $@! kicking contest. I'm hoping that you wise old sages have some advice to help me get this facet of my playing back up to snuff.

I have a metronome and I've been playing along to it but I was wondering if you guys have any ideas for specific routines or certain things I should work on? I mainly play classic rock and blues if that helps.

With much appreciation,
Mike

Ditch the metronome Mike. It's not important at the moment.
Get a few records on, relax and play along. Best way I've ever found. Relax relax relax. Get your groove on, get into the music. Then try playing along.
If you can adjust the balance on the stereo to give you more drums than anything else, that'll help.

And like Frankie says, Relax.

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No no and no

Hi Mike: congrats on getting back to playing.

Playing with a metronome is good (very good), and another thing that can help is to record yourself doing it and then play it back for a listen. Sometimes when you thought you were on the beat listening back reveals errors in ways you maybe can't detect whilst playing. It's a helpful extra pointer.

Also, from what you say I'm guessing you are finding yourself drifting when playing along to music, or may with a band. That's a classic problem that players have when they are out of practice. It comes from listening too hard to themselves and not hard enough to what everyone else is doing.

That's mostly just a practice issue. As you get more confident with your own part of the song you can spare more concentration for everything else that's going on and lock in with it better. But again, recording and listening back is useful, because it can alert you to bits where you thought you were in the groove but maybe weren't, and so prompt you to tighten things up.

Focused practice is what you need, and the good news is that in time it'll very likely sort itself out. With the metronome you are setting out in the right direction, so that's great.

Good luck - C

EDIT: Hahaha - I see Nick is saying the exact opposite about the metronome! Well there ya go: you have diverse views to choose from.

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nikininja I agree, I'm probably overthinking everything. Frankie is so right!

Ceri Recording is a fantastic idea. Actually recording is what made me realize I was way off in the first place. I've been using Audacity to record some scratch demos of some song ideas and I've found myself way off rhythm, unable to keep time.

Thanks

I find playing to jam tracks on YouTube to be very helpful.

There are some very good backing track sites all over the net and some of them are excellent.There are some that contain only blues tracks in various tempos and all keys and there are others that play all classic rock with the guitar tracks removed so that you can play along without having to compete with another guitar player.

I'm sorry but I can't recall the web addresses of these sites but I'm sure that there will be others writing in with good suggestions.It's great that you're rediscovering the guitar after a hiatus of a few years-good luck with it.

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I use my Boss RC-3 Looper to record my playing and then hear it. Helps a lot and you can play some rhythm drums that help you find your timing.

Cheers

David

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No no and no

Use Audacity to play some drum loops of your favorite beats and play along jam at different tempos. You'll get your timing back. If you use vst plugs with Audacity there is a free one called Gloop also Loopy Llama are good loop pedals plugins. I know there are many loop plugins, but these two can be setup just like stomp box loopers and can use the least triggers. I have two momentary midi switches that I use to control mine (cheap). Loop pedals demand timing or it craps. This setup works really well and cost much less (free) than a looper, given you already interface with Audio and midi with your computer.

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Could you possibly email that to my band's drummer please? Thanks.

How can you tell there's a drummer at your door? The knocking speeds up.

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The Boss loopers are really good for practising phrasing, soloing, riffs, whatever over your own playing, with or without drum tracks.

I have the little RC2 and it's done wonders for my playing in the past. The only downside is the price.

Timing is an important part of music,though while you're playing in a band with others it can be frustrating if someone can't keep time....but don't think your timing has to be perfect,because if you think that you'll drive yourself crazy at times....like the guitar player,and I use that title loosely,who told a very good bass player that I know,"you're a couple of miliseconds late"!!!! what a load of b/s that is.
I've known many pros over the years who have told me you go with the flow as long as the beat just doesn't totally fall apart.
A friend of mine played with Waylon Jennings for 10-15 years,with one of the tightest live bands on tour at that time.....he said that if you had started a metronome at the beginning of the song,it wouldn't be in sync with the end of the song....he called it "the human factor".

The only one who really has to go through, whatever happens, is the drummer.

Cheers

David

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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

Yeah,and our drummer really listens to the changing moods of our jams,he can go with it and keep everything together,if not for him we would have some trainwrecks for sure.