Metronomes

[J.C. Bryant]

I've stayed in the background for years but now I'm confused and need some advice and/or help.

I've got a Boss DB 90 and love it but in trying to tap it with CD tunes I am confused. I will tap the beat to a song and the beat will clearly show, say 120 bpm, but it is way faster than when I play a song at 120. What's up?

Could it be that many CD tunes are 16th notes and not 8ths.

the more I get into it the more confused I am.

I was thinking that every beat was a quarter not and that most tabs are 8ths. But when I tap them out there seem to be more notes than two for every beat.

Thanks.

[mando.player]

What are you basing the beat on? The chop? If so you may only be catching only half the beats. Does the tune seem twice as fast?

[Mark Robertson-Tessi]

Different people use different conventions for the pulse. When specifying a tempo, you must also specify what note value has that tempo. So saying 120bpm is not enough. Is that quarter note=120, or half note =120? Or something else? Trad and bluegrass tunes can also be notated in different note values, so that doesn't help either.

But, I think the majority of the time, fiddle tunes, etc. will be generally written in mostly eighth notes. When this is the case, if you tap once for every two notes, you get the bpm for the quarter note. If you tap once for every four notes of the tune, you get the bpm for the half note. They will of course differ by a factor of two.

Sounds like you are tapping half notes, and getting 120. When you go to play the tune, you need to play four notes per click. If you play two notes per tap, you will be much slower. Twice as slow, to be precise.

Alternatively, try tapping every two eighth notes. You'll get something around 240. When you play with that bpm setting on the metronome, now you play two notes per click. Try playing four per click, and, well, you'll have a tough time at that...

In the end, with both ways you'll be playing the same speed: half note=120, quarternote=240.

Cheers
Mark RT

[Laurence Firth]

its also true that a tune might be 120 bpm and in have a time signature of 4/4 meaning that there are 4 beats to a measure and each beat gets a quarter note. but that doesn't mean that each measure is made up of quarter notes. any measure could be a mix of any note values as long as the total adds up to 4 quarter notes per measure.

[Mike Bunting]

John McGann's Technique Page (http://www.johnmcgann.com/techtips.html)
Scroll down to his tips on using the metronome.

[J.C. Bryant]

Hey, Thanks to all you responders.
I must have been timing as half notes, thinking they were quarter notes.
Anyway, I seemed about half as fast as the tunes.
I'll do better in days to come.

Blessings on you all.