I just had the pleasure of performing in the rhythm section for a guitar recital. There were many different groups that the instructor put together for this and it was big fun! The bassist and I had CDs sent to us as well as sheet music. Needless to say, there was a lot of music to learn. All-in-all, we performed seventeen songs with the students.
I did my best to get the grooves and feels the way they were on the recordings. It was my goal to make these young students as comfortable as possible. For some of them, this was their first time on stage. I made sure to have my metronome with me for the gig as well as the rehearsal. The instructor had the tempos indicated on every tune. Some tempos were not the tempo on the recording, so I had to make sure to keep that in mind as I learned the songs. I didn’t want to become too comfortable with only one tempo.
At the gig, I would get the music ready for the next song and set the metronome at the marked tempo. I would listen to it as one group moved off the stage and the next group moved into position. Sometimes, this would take a bit of time. Every set-up was different and took some re-adjusting for the sound engineer. It was like he had to work with seventeen different bands in the space of two hours! I used that time to get the next tune in my head. I would look over the music and tap on my leg to the click of my metronome. By the time the group was ready, I was well into the groove!
The sound engineer set a delay on some tunes based on a tap-tempo feature of his effects unit. He would do this at the beginning of the tune and then check it a few times. He actually commented that the delay was still in time near the end of every song. That was a nice comment and it felt good. I didn’t play to my metronome, and yet, because I practice with a click I was able to keep the tempo very consistent for the students. My hope is that this helped them relax and simply have a great time!
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