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For those of you who have read all of my lessons, you know that I am a proponent of the metronome. I feel that a metronome ordrum machine can help you to measure your growth while practicing. For example, if you can perfectly sight read a Bach Cello Suite at 65 beats per minute (bpm), but you start to make mistakes at 70 bpm, you now have a measurable goal to achieve. Through diligent practicing and focus, you can work your way up to 70 bpm. Your next challenge would be 80 bpm. So you see, metronomes are great for helping you gauge your practices so that you have quantifiable results.

Metronomes will not, however, improve your inner clock.

Before you start writing me an email telling me how I am the spawn of satan for daring to imply that metronomes will not help your sense of time, please give me a chance to explain.

While metronomes will give you an awareness of time and meter, they cannot do it all. As a session bassists I knew many musicians who could play perfectly with a click track. These guys could make the click track groove and breathe. However, if we ever jammed without a click, some of them were all over the place with their timing. I quickly learned that they grew such a reliance on the click that they had no inner clock.

Your inner clock is the sense of time and feel that you have inside you. It is the ability to perform without a click or metronome and still stay in time and have a solid rhythmic feel. If you always rely on an external device to give you a rhythmic pulse, you will never gain the confidence and strong time feel that is required when you perform sans click. Luckily, I have some exercises that help you develop your inner clock into a precise rhythmic device.

During my years as an instructor at BIT I found many students had very weak inner clocks. The first exercises that I created to help them improve there timing used a drum machine. The concept is simple, but the execution can be rather frustrating. Start by programming a 2-bar drum groove where the first measure is a simple groove with the bass drum on beats one and three and the snare drum on beats two and four. You can also record a simple 8th-note high hat part for that first measure. The second measure should be completely silent. Do not record any parts for that last measure. So what you end up having is one measure of groove and one measure of silence. When you play the drum machine part it will alternate between a measure with drums and a measure of nothing.

Now that you have your drum part, you need to strap on your bass and go to work. Start by playing an open E on every quarter note. It will be easy to do when the first measure of the drum machine is playing because you can look in with the drum groove, but when the second measure of silence is playing, you need to keep playing the quarter notes. If your inner clock is strong, you will be playing on beat one of the next measure right when the drum groove comes back in.

Do not get frustrated if this takes some time. Stick with it and try to hear the drum machine in your head when the silent measure is playing. When you can perform the open E quarter notes perfectly, it is time to step up the challenge. Over the same drum loop, try playing a simple one-octave C Major Scale using only quarter notes. Play the scale ascending and descending and try to keep your playing rhythmically consistent as you play over the 2-bar drum pattern. Once this gets easy, try playing the same scale, but use 8th-notes. Next try play some of the scale exercises that I outlined in Lesson 10.

If you can get through all of the exercises above and you are staying in perfect time over the drum machine pattern, you are ready to graduate to the next level. Try some of these variations:

1) Use the same drum loop, but play a 2-bar groove. Focus on staying in time, while note sounding stiff or mechanical.

2) Use the same drum loop and try playing a solo. Many players are good at locking in rhythmically when they are playing a bass groove, but fall apart when they solo.

3) Try programming different rhythmic 2-bar grooves. Try a Latin groove, a Jazz swing, a Funk pattern, etc. The key is to always leave the second measure perfectly silent.

4) For those of you who want extra credit points, try recording a one-bar groove, but leave two measures silent!

5) If you are into odd meter grooves, program a 2-bar pattern in 5/4 or 7/4. That ought to give you some worry lines!

6) For those of you who are in bands, bring your drum machine to practice and pump it through the PA. Have everyone in the band play a vamp over the 2-bar drum loop and see how it goes. It will be a challenge, but it will make your entire band sound better when your inner clocks are synchronized!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson. If you do not have a drum machine, you can tape record your metronome, but mute it every other bar. That will work too. If I get a positive response from you all, I will write another lesson with another series of exercises that will improve your inner clock.

As always, feel free to email me with your questions!