No, I think you’re right… I probably saw or heard this sometime around Earl’s death this spring, and just misremembered.
Foldback is the term used for speakers aimed toward the musicians so they can hear each other. You knew that and were just razzing me.
This is an interesting study. Time estimation became more accurate as the tested duration increased up to 16 minutes.
http://prism.bham.ac.uk/pdf_files/Lews_Miall_PhilTrans_2009.pdf
To be fair, if the error is randomly distributed, you could have percussionists keep time inspite of this error on each beat.
At least where I live, everyone simply refers to them as monitors.
This is true, but that’s the best study I could find. I hope the percussionists can keep time with a metronome going. 
My point was that even within a framework with auditory feedback, there is error. I would think that without a constant reminded of where the beats are, the beats would drift even more, although they may sync up more closely when averaged over a long period of time.
Which is pretty funny because where I live they are just called foldbacks.
I was skeptical when you said you knew the guy, but now that you say you heard it from some guy who believes the fact is widely known, I’m convinced!
:rolleyes:
“How do you know when a drummer is at your door?”
“The knocking speeds up.”
And he doesn’t know when to come in.
[QUOTE=]
“How do you know when a drummer is at your door?”
“The knocking speeds up.”
[/QUOTE]
“The knocking drags and he doesn’t know when to come in.”
Honestly, I wasn’t razzing you. I thought that “feedback” monitors would be a bizarre usage, but who knows?
I certainly can appreciate monitors–or their absence. I have played harpsichord with orchestras in one of the largest concert halls in NYC, and it was extremely unpleasant.
The Meyerson symphony center in Dallas, where the DSO plays, is extremely difficult to play in. You often simply can’t hear the people on the other side of the stage, and, even when you can, there’s often a big sound delay. People who are closer to you on stage are easy to hear, but someone on the opposite side can be very difficult or impossible to hear.
It’s no big deal when the entire orchestra is playing, but if it’s just you and some people on the other side of the stage playing together in a quiet passage, it’s just ridiculous.
the melvins have two drummers playing in sync, so not very hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uADoQoDfcNU
This very skill has become part of our popular culture in the UK through being regularly tested on a popular radio show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnaXXpbGOsA
For my own part, I once left the metronome going on my electric piano. I was out at the shops for nearly forty minutes and when I came back,* it was still going*.
Cool question. My modest contributions based on the thread as it has developed so far:
- Many instrumental musicians believe that singers are the weak link in terms of rhythmic stability. Here’s a joke (original, as far as I know) that a group of musicians I was hanging out with came up with:
Q: How does a singer count out 8 beats?
A:
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Sev.
En.
Eight.
It’s a little hard to transfer the joke from spoken English to written, but I think it’s clear.
Second observation: I believe the ability to tell the passage of time (for example, to know what time it is) is separate from the ability to keep to a beat. I have always had an excellent sense of time and, when younger, could almost always accurately guess the time to within a few minutes. I thought everyone could do this? However, the ability has faded with age (I am 54). I have read, somewhere, that this is normal. My sense of time is still fairly good, but no where near as accurate as it was when I was 20.
Self test: what time is it now? I’m going to say…6:20 pm. ::Looks at watch:: HAH. It’s 7:10 pm.
Oh well.
I play bass and I think I keep the beat quite well with a band.
I usually have stereos playing in My workroom and when I for example go to the kitchen to get a drink, I can’t hear the music, but it still keeps playing in My head. When I go back a minute later, I’m always off. If I like the song, I’m ahead, if I don’t, I’m always dragging. The speed of the song doesn’t seem to matter.
I’ve heard it thusly:
How does a singer count a 7/8 beat?
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Sev.
En.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Sev.
En.
A lot of bands have multiple percussionists. Playing in sync with each other is not unusual. In fact, a group of musicians wouldn’t work if they couldn’t play in time to each other. Read the second paragraph of the OP to get what we’re trying to get at. If the two Melvins drummers were playing without the ability to hear each other, the other members of the band, or any external time keeping source (whether audio or visual or whatnot), that would be the sort of thing we’re wondering about.
It’s funny how singers get the butt-end of rhythm jokes; it’s of course because the metrical responsibility is on the instrumentalists, who seem to be the most catty.
That being said :), I will always remember a recital performance in music school. On stage, mind you, the singer got off a beat. While we got into CYA mode musically, the crazy bitch started wildly beating time at me so the audience would know it was I who was the real culprit.
In high school, when I played piano for the musical production of Pippin, there was this one (thankfully short) song (“Welcome Home, Son”) that was in 11/8 and 5/4, with maybe one bar of 4/4 thrown in there. Lucikly, we had a very stripped down “orchestra” (bass, piano, drums, guitar), and on that song it was just the piano playing. The song was a complete tightrope walk, and there were two different casts, so two different singers with two completely different ways of phrasing the music. Nobody ever came close to getting it right, but it was fun trying to save the singers from themselves. Sometimes I had to throw in an extra beat or vamp over a chord, hoping the singer will get to the next notes. Other times, it was leaping ahead over notes or even measures to “catch” the singer. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed it.
Speaking of rhythmic tricks of the sort, this Harry Connick, Jr. video is one of my favorites. The French audience is clapping on the 1 & 3, which is kind of verboten in jazz/blues/rock music. So he sneakily inserts an extra beat a few bars after beginning his solo, and turns the clapping around to 2 & 4. I always get a kick out of that video. Clever quick thinking.