Haven't Seen You Lately

So my favorite Drain song to listen to is Haven't Seen You Lately. I've also always liked playing it because it is both challenging AND came naturally to me. The hands are simple, but the bass drum plays the bass guitar line. I'm still not sure if this is the way that EH used to play it...or something that I made up. Anyway, it used to be that 4 out of 5 times I could nail the song...but in recent weeks I've lost the bass drum part. This didn't make any sense to me because it had always come naturally. How do you practice something that is second nature...something that you never had to learn in the first place? RS asked if it was too fast. I didn't think so, but I sat down this weekend to try to fix the thing.

An interesting thing about this song is that it is on both albums...two different versions. It is one speed on the first album (slower) and another on the second (faster). And since the second album was recorded, we've begun to play it even faster. I have a rehearsal recording of the fastest tempo. I guess that I hadn't realized, but I think that in recent weeks and months...we've even started playing it FASTER.

So I sat down and first played the slow recording...then the faster...then the fastest...over three days.

Boom. Fixed.

So I think that...yes...we've been playing it too fast. And it isn't that I can't play it that fast...but if we are going to do that I need to practice...if for no other reason than to build endurance.

But a side lesson is that almost always J wants to play things faster than we should. There's a certain swing to several of the songs that gets totally lost when you play them too fast. I'm not sure why he wants to play things so fast. I should work to keep the tempos back a bit.