R A

[Bell Banjos]

Hello everyone. My name is Terry. I'm a rusher. This is my first time at Rusher's Anonymous. OK....here's the deal...  when I play in public my adrenaline gets the best of me. I'm learning to do two things ... 1] Take a second before I play and get it together 2] If I'm going too fast and HAVE to slow down, I disguise the "slow down" by emphasizing the down beats as sort of a distraction hoping nobody notices I'm slowing down. They don't, they get into it, clapping etc.. on these heavy downbeats. What do you veterans do when you loose the groove to speed?

[Tim Twiss]

What a great topic.

[Tim Twiss]

Rushing...it's the Bad Breath of music.

Hard to talk about with friends.

Sometimes you can't even tell.

[Greg Adams]

I too need to visit Ruhser's Anonymous at times. The thing I've been doing lately is developing a new relationship with the metronome. In the last year I've had the opportunity to play with a good number of professional musicians, one of whom is an amazing djembe player who also does beat box and vocal percussion. Because of his amazing precision, during our rehearsals he could tell me the phrases where I was increasing speed, resulting in pushing the rest of the ensemble to speed up as well as the dancers--no good for anyone. I discovered how/where this was happening, from tunes as basic as Kick up the Debble on a Holiday to some of the most complex like Far South Reel. In the last 6 months, I've been doing 90% of my practicing with a metronome. If I normally play a tune with quarter notes set at 100, I set the metronome to 200 to also account for the eighth note values. As a result, I am internalizing my pieces a bit better and feel as though I am controlling better my tendency to rush.

See you at the next RA meeting!

Greg 

[Strumelia]

Sorry to intrude on your sorry confessions, but.... I'm an anti-Rusher  !     =8-0

When I'm in an old-time session with a fiddler, it's fairly easy to keep the beat steady as the banjo player.  But when an assertive guitar player begins to rush the beat, there's not a lot I can do because of their resonant chord power- the fiddlers tend to follow the huge clunking chord blocks coming from the guitar.   I do notice this most frequently with guitar players.  Bass players come second in frequency.

Recently I formulated a defense plan...

I have never been a foot tapper when I play music.  I've often wanted to be one, and have tried numerous times over the years, but it seemed like patting my head and rubbing my tummy at the same time...sadly impossible for me.  Very frustrating!  If only I could stomp my foot loudly to the beat and overide pushy guitar players!

I'm happy to report a happy side effect of hanging out on this site-  I dragged a neglected tambourine out of my closet and put it on the floor upside down, put my foot in it and used my heel on the top edge of the rim making it jingle loudly.  I began to practice tapping my heel down on the tambo rim while I played a simple tune on my banjo.  It was really hard, but for some reason the fact that it was so assertive sounding must have made me fear sounding so blatantly out of rhythm.  Every little mistake was really amplified and sounded awful. 

My patient fiddler husband was willing to put up with this awful out of time tambo-stomping for a few weeks, until I began to get the hang of it.  I kept apologizing and he was very gracious and let me continue.  The loud jingle stomp was a very stern teacher for me, like receiving an electric shock every time I made a shameful mistake.   lol!

Now a few weeks later, I can dispense with the tambourine when I like and do the simple heel stomp pretty well in time to the music.  I'm getting better at it every week.  It adds a whole new lively dimension to our playing, and I really think it will help when we play with potential Rusher outsiders. 

A bonus side effect was that I did the tambourine foot thing very gingerly at a couple of public gigs we had - at a bar and on a street fair-  and the crowd really seems to enjoy the jinglestomper thing- they said so!  So... a new secret weapon added to the arsenal!   Rushers... beware the Tambo !     >;-)    

[Bell Banjos]

YES, Lisa!! Beware the tambo. First of all, you're right on the guitarists' rushing. Many of them don't realize that when they're playing 'pick-strum' that their bass note HAS to be on the beat and the strum should be JUST behind the off beat. Many drummers don't even get this. Mark Weems gets it. I learned this years ago from a master fiddler and exceptional pianist. He played in the 20's and 30's. This "Old" feel was built into him and I caught hell when I rushed or was out (even a little) of tune. In time I simplified this whole thing by trying to think like a drummer. 1 and 3 are on the beat, 2 and 4 are a millisecond after. The next time you turn on the radio, listen to the snare drum - most pop drummers are a little behind the beat - with the snare. As for the tapping of the foot, that's a great story. When I was a teenager, I played drums, piano, and guitar. My legs were part of the music but when I started to learn the fiddle at age 18 I could NOT for the life of me get my feet tapping. Well, eventually I did and when one of my brothers seriously took up the fiddle I seriously got on him and drilled it into him. I believe that when your foot is going, it's the link to the 'internal' beat, which, if you don't have, you're in trouble. So ten years later he's a great fiddler. I feel like when my hands are on the edge of a mistake, my feet are there to save me. Weird, huh? Any of these techinques are learned in the same manner - slow and steady.

[Strumelia]

Terry, sometimes I think our planet's orbit became dangerously skewed on its axis when it switched from 1 & 3 to 2 & 4...  it's a scary scary place!   =8-0    

lol!