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« Last post by mikf on Today at 01:17:43 PM »
Adam
If singers can’t stay in time you are in trouble when using a style backing. Take it from me adjusting tempo on the fly to stay in time will never work.
Singers may appear to speed up but the reason is seldom that they are actually singing faster, it’s because they don’t have the confidence or the training to wait on the beat. Especially in small gaps in the song. So they are not singing faster, they are jumping in ahead of the beat. You can’t fix that by adjusting tempo on the fly, and trying will just make you look like the idiot who is out of time. The singers need to fix that by learning to sing in time.
I have accompanied hundreds of not very good singers from my days when I played piano in pubs for sing song nights and know this problem intimately. On the piano, it’s not hard to adjust and make them look good, but on an arranger playing a style ..no chance. In fact at home my dad had a decent voice but just couldn’t sense the beat, that’s why he couldn’t dance either. He always complained that it was my job to follow him and he just couldn’t get it that he was always jumping ahead of the beat. It’s why karaoke tapes show the words at just the right time, but even then many just won’t wait. As an accompanist it’s a pleasure when the singer has great natural timing.
Frankly, my experience has been that if people don’t have that natural sense of timing it’s hard to teach them in a short time. And good luck with trying that because even if you do seem to get them to wait in practice, I can say with certainty that when the pressure comes on in public performance anxiety will cause them to start jumping in again.
If you can’t teach them to stay on the beat, I would abandon using a style and accompany them more in free time playing. Maybe just two handed piano, if that is within your capability. Then you can adjust and stay with them fairly easily.
Mike
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