The Steel Guitar Forum

Rubato!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato

Everything has an Italian name.

Ray sorry for the confusion, I was trying to get people to read the post, perk their interest. Had you have read the content of the posting also, maybe it would have been more clear and you would not feel as though you had to add your 1 cent worth of crap to yet another posting, only meant to hurt others. I just wish you would go away and leave us alone, you would be a happier person, I know we all would be.

Thanks for the support from everyone else it is what make music interesting and enjoyable for me as a player and a singer and as a listener. Pulling and pushing against the melody and or the timing lights my fire.

I know I am using different words here than might be the norm, but as a teacher one may have to through a lot of mud against the wall hoping that some will stick. New players need all of the "mud" they can get, maybe this will be the "light bulb" they were waiting for.

Larry Behm

Chopin. (Thanks Frank).
In the definition of rubato the term capriccio is used. This is where the form caprice comes from. These were classical pieces written intently to allow the performer to use his own variance of tempo at will. In Paganini's case, it was sometimes as fast as you can! The majority of other classical works were intended for the conductor to act as metronome for the orchestra, and all to play at his meter (following the composers instructions).

Oddly enough, with the advent of MIDI and drum machines and sequencers in the early 80's, the music created using this new technology lost its human feel to the rigorous quantization of rhythms and strict adherence to a metronomic click. This created a wave of robotic sounding music which is still to this day evident in much of popular music. Drum machines later had humanize features to make them sound more...you guessed it: human!

Remember when pop recordings had subtle (or not so subtle) mistakes in them because they were recorded live? They might be done in one take with the entire ensemble ala Sinatra, so there was a real pressure to know your parts and not miss your cues.

A real human drummer (or any other musician for that matter) with a good sense of rubato is one element that makes a tune sound human, and ultimately better because they aren't robotic and predictable.

Larry - Nice post, I understood your meaning clearly.
How about this - "Less is More"

Great advise Larry. Thanks for posting. It's the type of thing we know when we hear, but often forget to do , come show time. For me , part of it is being able to relax.....

I am not by any means an acclomplished Steel player, Its funny that this subject came up,
At yesterdays show it happened to me , and it was all very new for me to recognize it as something
that does work when the drummer tempo was not anywhere close to where the song should have been ,
another words he kept the temp-o to slow, and I would kinda get lost while the lingering notes were sustaining longer than they should have and to me it made perfect music,
That is most definitly a secret you learn, But apparently its no secret at all.
I thought I was the only goofball in the world that could make this happen, and son of a gun here it is on Bobs forum and everbodies doin it but me. haha-dang

A wise man once said: If you tell someone something they already know. . . you're boring them. (Tell them twice and we call it nagging)

Larry, you have reminded us that the most interesting musicians, the ones we really enjoy, are the ones who's music is not predictable.

Great thread!
Craig

Good job Larry:-):-):-):-)

I was thinking more about this and messing around on the Steel last night and, Maaan, it is hard to get off the clock on a Shuffle!
Even a slow one like Blue Jade is hard to get it off the beats.
Any kind of Lloyd Green ascending/descending chickin-pickin' runs... it's hard to break it into un-equally timed chicken-picks.

Do you guys have any good examples of where you are getting it off the beat?

Pete this a harder for me to do also as I am constantly listening to the beat and trying to play in time. But with a triple here or there or a single note run here or there it gives just a little twist, might turn a head or two and cause someone to say, "did he just play what I thought he played". Now the fun begins.

Larry Behm

Larry, I think what you're discribing is something that has always struck me about the way Willie Nelson sings...his phrasing, it's one of the things that makes him stand out from the crowd...

Another phrasing thing I work on that gets pretty subtle is playing a phrase with exactly the same notes and timing and trying to get more expression out of it. Some bands demand "parts". So I'm playing the exact same thing every night. It can be very interesting digging into the subtleties of phrasing without actually changing the part. That is what classical players live by.

Larry:

this s the best post I have seen on the forum in ages

This exact thing is what made JIMMY DAY Mr Country Soul! He was an absolute master at this. Long live his music. I sure miss him. Larry, thanks for the thread. It's a great reminder.

Jim in Missouri

Speeding up and slowing down together is one thing that great bands do, ones who have toured a lot with each other. One of the most telling symptoms of being a average rock band is, how robotically they play blues. And some of the great ones... whew. "Whipping Post" off the Fillmore album is speeding up and slowing down so much it could be a trainwreck if... you weren't the Allman Brothers. "Pulse" is a whole different beast than "beat."

JR Ross wrote:Larry is RIGHT ON ON THIS..I have found myself doing this a lot more in my later years of playing... It's like a Blues player SQUEEZING every note out of a certain passage ..Sometimes I don't even go to the 4 chord and hang on the 1.. Its hard to explain but after 50 years of playin I'm doin a lot more of this type of playin..Believe me it works..It's following the practice that "Less is More".. The older we get the more we realize that this is the way to play...Trust me ..It works...

Great description JR , would the song CRAZY be a good example ?

Good job, Larry I purposely raise my right hand as high as my head sometimes, so I won't continue playing. If my hand is near the strings, I have to pick something, but by raising my right hand, it stops me. Habits are hard to break aren't they? Larry

Craig. Absolutly Crazy would be a great example. Another example is when my band plays the intro to ' That ain't my truck" by Rhet Aikins and the chords to the guitar players lead in are F , A# and C... I just hit my lowest strings say 10 , 8 , and 6 on first fret and sustain a big fat f chord during the first half of the intro.. Then I finish off with the steel lick part of the intro..It makes intro so much fatter this way..

Larry is exactly right. Good phrasing separates the mechanical execution of notes from art. Larry was just trying to be helpful as usual and share his knowledge and experience. If someone doesn't agree then don't play that way. Some folks must feel that if the information doesn't come from them then it must be irrelevant. The better players always seem to be open to ideas and appreciate the skill of others.

I shot the sheriff, but i did not shoot the deputy. The emphasis on I