Music staying in tempo with a group problem

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I'm a bass player - but have the same poor rhythmic ear - strange for a rhythm player I hear you ask! What you need is a good drummer - as a bass player you interpret rhythm into melody - sort of a bridge between the two - Drums and Bass being one instrument/sound.

Keeping in time is really hard, but can be done with constant practice and concentration - your student may be too young to achieve this yet. My suggestion would be to get him to play some thing so fast that it would not be physically possible to speed it up - then do something really slow, and gradually get something in the middle. In a band situation I would put him right next to the drummer, so he can physically feel the beat.

Stress to him that he needs to really concentrate on timing. If all else fails use one of the old techniques like crack him over the knuckles with a wooden ruler or baton when he starts to speed up.

Mind you, if he's having fun playing music, then just let him be - like I said it takes time to learn these things.

Thanks.

These days we are not allowed to hit students with things to teach them....

very tempting sometimes though!

i think people who have posted before me have good insights, so i'll try not to repeat them.
i just know from personal experience playing music (clarinet) by myself as well as in band situations, rhythm is something i could understand theoretically but not something i could understand when engaged in playing music alone or in a group. my inner "tap" is spastic and irregular, and not aligned with physical time but with how i respond to the feeling i get from the music. i also get easily overwhelmed in loud situations and tend to retreat into the quiet space in my head where my sense of place and time isn't dictated by external factors.
in marching band though, keeping time within the group was so easy. the transfer of theoretical time to physical time and spatial time was something that made it way more accessible to me, which is interesting because i have never found tapping my foot to be helpful (because my taps would drift out of time anyways).

maybe if he "marched" in place as he plays it would be helpful. maybe if you marched with him as you are conducting it would be more helpful. i also think placing him near to the rhythm section so he can feel the vibrations in his body is a really good suggestion.
one more possibility to consider is transcribing the time in visual terms directly on his sheet music. in sections of music i had more difficulty with i would measure each bar with a ruler and divide it precisely based on the time signature by drawing light lines through the music. i found that the spatial orientation helped me to be more cognizant, and if your student is a visual thinker he could find something like this helpful too.

He's not feeling the beat in his body. His counting is intellectual. You can practice feeling the beat in the body by listening to music and moving to the beat by shifting weight from one foot to the other (like dancing) or by walking/marching to the beat. Counting rhythms is anchored to the beat felt in the body. Playing with a group is feeling the group's beat in one's body.

Thanks Seaweed, Dr Pepper.

Yeh, he is not `feeling` it. I like the marching idea, and I think you are correct to say he is intellectualising it.

The problem though might come with syncopation while marching (although he can play two hands on the piano in counterpoint).
He is a lovely lad but is quite ungainly, he has a really flat-footed gait so I wonder if there is some kind of body coordination issue, he is not a dancer type.

I myself am learning to play guitar harmonica, sing and stomp my foot (Mississippi Hill Blues style), its reeeeally hard! to get these going together and I do have to simplify the parts so I dont keep tripping up.

How is his sense of rhythm when he plays solo? I remember you said he plays robotically.

There is such a thing as beat deafness, but I think people who really have that probably can't play music at all. He has to have some internal sense of rhythm to be able to play solo. As the saying goes, some people just march to their own beat.

I was thinking of Glenn Gould...he had no trouble playing in time with an orchestra, but he definitely had his own ideas about tempo and rhythm and phrasing. Here's an interesting paper about it:
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.07.13. ... rtens.html

People generally dislike his interpretations of composers other than Bach, but I find them brilliant and revelatory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT0ghoOGn78

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

Apparently Auditory arhythmia can be prevalent in aoume autistic people ( as mentiond above... thanks) due to over stimulation of noises in a loud group setting. there is also a much less common coplaint called beat deafness.

The boy is performing tommorow, to save hime wrecking his group performance again I have given him 2 slots playing 2 solo piano pieces which he is superb at I will be able to give him a distinction for these rather than a bare pass for the band stuff.

Sadly due to the fact that he has subsequently disengaged from his music studies... I think due to his sense of defeat at not being able to perform in time?.... sadly... he will gt a very low mark for his coursework which he has put no effort into..
I expect the performance to be applauded but expect questions to be asked about why his final mark will be so low!

i will try to explain this auditory problem with tempo but expect to be beat up about this by my line manager about why he did not achieve higher.!
.. even though I am giving him the best chance to show off his skills and succeed rather than be exposed to failure.

Difficult spot i have put myself in by playing to HIS strengths,
me and his piano teacher ( who was an experienced social worker) both suspect he is autistic but no one at school ever bothered to observe him though I spotted this 2-3 years ago.
I expect to recieve criticism for this even though I am doing the very best for this boy
unfortunately ...... my line manager drama (queen) teacher, has got it in for me at the moment and may well choose to not understand the problems with this boy....... and blame me.

I kind of feel I want to mention the word ` autism` to him... perhaps I can save him 30 years of confusion (like I had) when he could have been getting help.
However confidentiality obviously forbids and i am of course not professionaly qualified....... he`s got a tough road ahead finding this out for himself without guidance IF he actualy is autistic/aspie.

Well, I cannot help you, but when you find the solution please let me know, cause that's my problem too.

He should do like me and get obsessed with Chopin and other romantics. Follow your inner tempo!

Yes Whispers.... dance to your own beat.