One’s a hat another is a butterfly, 
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Yep, one has a brim; the other has wings. 
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Actually closer to a trilby, fedora has a wider brim (I have one 
). 
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Well this is a good way to get me not to practice scales and arpeggios. I’m also going to come at any “always” statements. Lots of people with lots of different backgrounds here, some of which are years of playing music in environments that demand precise timing.
On the other hand one of the pros that got me to buy neuraldsp plugins is how nice the metronome is, and I use a metronome way more than a drum machine. Just not for literally everything I play, that would drive me nuts.
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my fave musician alive at this moment, pau (the drummer from the warning) gave a masterclass a while ago that you can watch on youtube. and she talks about how the band, and her, specifically had to face the reality that their time wasn’t very good. and they set about to fix it. anyhoo in the class she raves about a metronome/metronome app she got that includes a shaker that ticks off sixteenth notes in the background that the whole band uses. there’s a bunch of apps that have this feature, and i’m going to try one out (more out of curiosity than anything else).
edit: woops just noticed that @howard basically said the same thing above. of course he did. 
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I agree with the sentiment at the heart of this post, yes - rhythm is the most important element of what we do.
Respectfully disagree.
Agree.
I’ve taught for a long time, and played for a long time, and don’t go in for absolutism like this in teaching.
If your goal is to be a first call session player that hits a Pro Tools grid like a clock, then, maybe, yes. This.
But if you want to play music with other humans, practice and play like a human. Use metronomes. Play along to recordings (that, pre-digital click tracks and quantizing are often not at the same tempo throughout). Play to rad drum loops.
Play without any outside rhythm and try to keep the pulse on your own.
Play in time however you can.
I’m way into capturing live, musical sounds and not worrying over much on tempo.
But, again, I don’t have my goal as hitting-digital-recording-grids.
My goal is to rock.
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This^^^
Just groove. However this is achieved.
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Could be you’re right. Could be I was being over-sensitive, however I see nothing in the post indicating it was meant as a joke. It’s only 2 keystrokes to add a :).
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Yeah I shouldn’t have said “always” or should have been more clear that’s the ideal, not an absolute.
Also, playing with a drum machine or something else is definitely better than playing with nothing, but IMO won’t allow you to work on your internal time in as focused a way as using only a metronome.
And yes, both the guys that taught me this were pro players at the top of their game. If you’re just a hobbyist, or just playing in a dad-band/garage-band, that level of precision isn’t necessary as the audience won’t be able to tell anyway.
The exercises are more for a pro gun-for-hire bass player or session player, someone who has to audition, get hired, and gets paid. Or for someone who wants to be at that level. I should’ve been more explicit about that.
Also as part of this, I think, is not all drum players are great at time themselves, and if you’re dealing with a drummer who can’t keep time, having your own rock-solid time-feel will help you keep a band together.
An eye opening experiment I’ve done with a few different groups is to start a song at a tempo (drummer counts off to a click), and don’t use a metronome, then at the end of the song check your tempo to see where you ended at. It was amazing to me how often the tempo would be different at the end (usually slower) without us realizing it, or we would think it was off, but find out it was off quite a bit more than we thought.
If the band is choosing to change the tempo through the song, then that’s musical and great. But if it’s happening by accident, might be something to work on.
Ok, I edited the original post so hopefully certain people won’t find it so offensive. I think my original disclaimer at the end should’ve covered the bases, but I suppose some people may have been triggered/gotten emotional and didn’t get that far before writing a reply.
Still, I think some of the responses were overblown and inappropriate. Not every idea, technique, etc. is for everyone. It doesn’t have to be. It’s ok to realize something isn’t for you, but may be for others, and just go on with your day.
So yeah, I won’t be posting anything like that again on this forum soon, or probably ever. Obviously there are those who can’t handle different approaches or ideas. Writing all that out was a total waste of my time, and I don’t think I deserved some of the responses I got.
It’s ironic, though, that I was accused of being “narrow-minded” when in fact it was the person who said that who seemed to have a big problem with someone doing something differently or having a different approach than them. I also think saying it was a joke is a cop out because A) Jokes are funny and B) there was no indication it was a joke.
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The metronome exercise you proposed is an outstanding practice exercise but works just fine with drums.
Just make a simple four on the floor drum track. After a couple measures, start removing beats. Then a measure of no drums. Then start the drums again. When practicing this you should still be in time when the drums come back in.
Repeat the pattern, extending the measures of no drums to two, three, four, etc. When the drums come back in you should still be in time.
It would take me less than five minutes to program this drum track.
Josh has almost exactly this exercise in the course, too, with a backing track.
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Ok. But at that point, it’s basically the same thing as using a metronome, isn’t it? Just sounds like a kick drum instead of a click? An easier way might be to use a metronome app that can sound like a kick drum. I assume that exists, but maybe not?
Reduced to just that, yeah, but the advantage of the drums is if you want to add more you can, and IMO it wouldn’t detract from the value of the exercise in any way.
And as you get more advanced, with a (real) drum machine or plugin you can also add tempo and time signature changes mid-“song” to the exercise at will. It’s just a more flexible tool.
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Hi @GingerBug
I wasn’t being serious. I rarely am. 12 years in the military, means everything is funny to me, and nothing is ever worth really getting your knickers in a twist about. Metronome Nazi is within the same meme realm as Grammar Nazi i.e anyone who only want’s something done a certain way.
I think @Gio’s post sums it all up very eloquently. There are lot’s of different ways to approach learning anything. Being overly prescriptive is not useful.
I despise the metronome because I was forced as a child to learn a musical instrument and practice every day with a metronome. That hatred for learning music meant I didn’t pick up another musical instrument until I was 49. All those wasted years. Still, I’m here now playing music with my friends and having an absolute blast.
I’m not on here as much as I used to be because:
A. I started my own business and it’s been really busy.
b. I joined a cover band at the beginning of the year and now spend all my free time working on our every expanding set list.
I respectfully disagree. Imagine you’re at wedding listening to a cover band, if the bassist has poor timing you’ll definitely notice. Improving timing is as I see it a lifelong pursuit with no end. The metronome is not a ‘pro’ level tool. It’s just another tool to use to work on timing.
I think you got the responses you received not because of the good content but in the way in which it was presented.
You are halfway through the Beginner course and have been playing for a short period of time I think. I still consider myself a beginner even after 4 years of playing.
There are members on here who’ve got over 50 years on bass. So rather than saying to them you MUST use a metronome and nothing else.
You could have said ‘here’s an idea for using a metronome you might like’. I suspect you’d have got a very different reaction.
Somewhere in the excellent B2B course you’ll find a lesson in which Josh runs through this very same exercise. There’s even a backing track I think.
As well as my drum pedal I use a drum app on my phone which does as @howard suggested when he said you could make this in a DAW. It slowly takes away information and forces you keep time with silence and then comes back in so you can check how you’re doing.
There’s nothing new under the sun. This is one of the nicest parts of the internet IMHO.
So my free advice is please don’t take things personally, if people disagree with you that’s OK. Maybe just frame your future posts in a less dogmatic manner and all will be well.
I’m about to have some dinner and then off to band practice with my deadbeat dad rock band that you were so very disparaging about
We aren’t making any money and it’s the most fun I’ve had in years.
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So…musician.
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Hi @Barney . Thanks for your thoughtful message. I appreciate it. I apologize for being over-sensitive and over-reacting.
I definitely hear you on why you hate the metronome. I’m sure you’re not alone in being traumatized in youth by a music teacher of some kind. I’m lucky in that I didn’t have an experience like that.
I hear you too about the language in my post. I just banged it out and posted. I should’ve read it over more before doing so. I definitely didn’t mean to come across as “you have to do it this way or you suck” but it for sure was written that way. I’ve since tried to fix it.
I also didn’t mean to be disparaging about dad bands. Any band I’m in would be by definition a dad band. I’m not actually a dad, but I’m more than old enough to be one. I’m also a hobbyist, not a pro.
But just for clarification, I’m not a beginner bass player. I’ve been learning and playing bass for years. I’m taking Josh’s course because although I took some lessons here and there from a few different teachers, I’m mostly self-taught/learned from YouTube videos. So I’ve developed bad habits in my form (flying fingers, not alternate picking, etc.), so I’m going through the course to go back to basics and force myself to learn things the right way this time around.
It didn’t/doesn’t bother me that people disagree with me. What bothered me was the vehemence and length of the disagreements, when all I was trying to do was help by presenting a practicing exercise maybe some on here hadn’t been exposed to before. I certainly never had until I learned it from two teachers of mine when I was taking bass lessons.
But I get how the wording of my post could have rubbed people the wrong way. I was honestly just presenting it the way it was presented to me. I didn’t bother me because I was paying the dude to teach me and I’ve learned to take what I can learn from from a teacher and ignore the rest. But I get that a forum is a very different environment, and I should’ve presented it another way. Also people thinking/assuming I’m a bass noob probably didn’t help in how it was received. Lessons learned and all that.
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You say that now, wait till you start making $50 a gig “plus” tips and all of the bar food you can have, you’ll be over the moon, 
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That’s the “fun” part, @Al1885. The money part still blows. Believe me, I’ve lived that movie!
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For a few months I got paid $20 a rehearsal to play with an adult band class at the music school I worked at. So I guess “technically” I’m a professional bass player. Definitely the most I’ve gotten paid for music so far. Before that my only “pro” experience was getting paid $15 to play Taps at Memorial Day parades (on trumpet, not bass, lol).
That adult class was a lot of fun actually, because we played a bunch of covers from all types of genres. Due to the nature of the class, I wasn’t required/expected to play the recorded bass lines. Instead, I got to improvise my own bass lines from lead sheets, which was loads of fun. The teacher of that class was a phenomenal drummer, and I learned a lot from him.
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I’ve had a gig or 2 where the money flowed the opposite direction it was supposed to because of my beer tab!
OOPS.
Blues Brothers much?
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