Wednesday, June 20, 2007
What's important in a Groove Track? Tempo!

Let's say you have a kalimba song you want to record and you want to make a groove track to go with it. The most important thing to do is to get the groove track's tempo right. Start with a simple drum track, like a bass drum beating on "1", "2", "3", "4".

Now, try to play the kalimba piece along with the drum track. Unless you are totally lucky, the drums track is either too fast or too slow.

Change the tempo until you can play with the drum track without feeling too slow or too fast. There may be a range of 5-10 bpm where it feels good - I've been told to use the fastest tempo that doesn't feel too fast. Other times, I feel that even changing by 1 bpm makes the music too fast or too slow. Just be open and be sensitive.

AND, when you find the tempo that works, WRITE IT DOWN, or include it in the name of the WAV file you save.

;