Today is Tuesday. Over the 8 day span from this past Sunday to the Sunday before that, I played in 7 different sessions. That's a lot. Technically one of them was a tune learning session, but it was still playing music with others in a group setting. Not to mention that since I moved to Oregon two years ago I've probably logged over 500 hours of session playing, and that's likely a conservative estimate.
All this time playing Irish tunes at pubs and cafés has been great for increasing my repertoire, exposing me to session speeds, and gaining experience playing with others. At the same time, I'm starting to think that it may have had a negative impact on my rhythm and timing. Something is off and I think it's because I've been relying too much on group tempo instead of working on developing my own internal sense of rhythm. Or it could be that all this time spent adjusting to the fluctuating speeds of a session environment has caused my own sense of time to erode.
I also think that going to all these sessions may have forced me to play at speeds faster than I was ready to, hoping that my fingers would eventually catch up. I've often had to sacrifice playing cleanly to in order keep up with the session speed, glazing over trouble spots and being in a constant state of speed up/skip notes, speed up/skip notes, just to hang on.
I do spend a fair amount of time playing and practicing tunes at home, but I've mostly been doing this by playing along with recordings or drum machine tracks. When you're playing along with a click or backing track it's difficult to notice any rhythm or timing issues you might have because the constant beat keeps you in place like training wheels on a bicycle.
I am going to address this head on by working more diligently with a metronome - using it as a tool and not as a crux. One example is setting the metronome to click once per bar, or once every other bar, or once every 4th bar so that you're not constantly being kept in place by a click. You have to start by getting the feel of playing along with the metronome at say 80 bpm. Then set it to 20 bpm but still play as if it were 80 bpm so that the clicks only happen every other measure. Once a tune is in sync, like Lark in the Morning played at 72 bpm over an 18 bpm metronome, try transitioning to another jig like Willie Coleman's without missing a beat! (I mention this specific example because I was able to do this successfully today just before beginning to write this post).
Another idea is to use Soundslice to create practice versions of tunes where the sound of the melody is interspersed with silent measures where you have to play on your own for a while before the music comes back on in time. Yet another idea is to set up a play along track at a low volume. Start playing along with the track, then keep playing as you walk to another part of the house where you can't quite hear the play along track anymore. Play a little while out of ear shot then walk back into the room where the backing track is playing and see if you are in sync.
And do all this while being mindful of ergonomic movement without stress, having proper posture, and maintaining a relaxed feel while playing. Tension in your shoulders and hands can cause adrenaline to spike, which makes you rush. I think my main problem is speeding up. I've ordered Bruce Arnold's The Big Metronome book, so I'm hoping that has some exercises that I can adapt as well!
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