Tempo

There are some songs that the band plays that are just really hard to get the correct starting tempo for. This is why the pros "get on the click." Basically, right before we start a song I sing it to myself in my head to get the tempo...then I count it off, usually with stick clicks. About a measure into the song I can tell whether I was close to the right tempo or way off. If I was way off (too fast or too slow) I try to transition the band to the right tempo over a couple of measures so that it isn't too obvious that we are changing tempo. It isn't always my fault. There are songs that others start, and they screw it up too sometimes...and then it is up to me to get it under control.

It's weird the games your brain can play on you. I can be 100% certain that I've got the right tempo and then realize it's wrong as soon as we start playing. A particular problem has been "Fucked Up and Wasted" and "Everybody's Happy Nowadays." I think I've got "Everybody's Happy" under control now. I know why that song was off. It was because it was really hard for me when I first learned it, so I over practiced and then assumed it was harder than it really was...so I was playing to fast. Now that it doesn't scare me as much (actually, over the last few weeks I've gotten pretty comfortable) I've stopped rushing. But "Fucked Up and Wasted" is a mystery to me. I think I hear it in my head correctly, but it is nearly always wrong. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow.

So today I decided to "get on the click" or to do so to the best of my abilities and technical capacity. I tried to figure out the beats per minute for all of our songs.

I started off trying to do it myself with a metronome, but then I found a free download called MixMeister that counts bpm. It didn't work too badly, except I found that it cut the tempo in half. If a song is really 168, the software said it was 84. I understand that for high bpm songs, but don't get why it would do that for under 208 (the max of typical metronomes). Anyway, it gave me a starting point. Of course, there are some songs that we don't play the same as the recording, so those will have to be adjusted.

I think that I've determined that Fucked Up and Wasted is about 168 bpm. If I get it nailed down that that is correct, I think it wouldn't be a terrible thing to have a lighted metronome with the sound off or an ear bud in to check on that song during the song transition. It would save me a big pain in the ass and make us sound better. Especially given that song tends to be our show ender.