Better than a metronome?

[Jody Kruskal]

I've been asking some of my students to play along to a metronome. Have you tried it?

 

Now that youtube has playback speed tools, does anyone have youtube suggestions for good sounding mellow backing track practice loops... like this for instance?

 

 

[Kelteglow]

Yes let's have some more its much better than a metronome.Bob

[RAc]

I don't have a tool suggestion but a word of caution: Whatever you pick, it better be something you can download and use offline. Rhythm tracks of any type you want to have precise timing which by definition doesn't work when a network (in particular the internet) is in between your device and the source.  The delays may be barely audible, but if they're there, they'll throw off your timing...

[Roger Hare]

6 hours ago, RAc said:

...use offline. Rhythm tracks of any type you want to have precise timing...

Yes, you need to be independent of the internet, though I hadn't thought of that.

 

I don't use a metronome (I don't own one). I occasionally use a crude 'metronome' which I wrote

using ABC - I just play it back (I use EasyABC) and Bob's yer uncle...

[RatFace]

22 hours ago, RAc said:

I don't have a tool suggestion but a word of caution: Whatever you pick, it better be something you can download and use offline. Rhythm tracks of any type you want to have precise timing which by definition doesn't work when a network (in particular the internet) is in between your device and the source.  The delays may be barely audible, but if they're there, they'll throw off your timing...

 

That won't be a significant problem. When you stream audio (and video) your computer will be downloading and buffering ahead of what you're actually watching/playing - so if you're playing an audio clip (e.g. via youtube), at any time your computer will have already downloaded the next X seconds (not sure how many, but it will be a significant number), enough to passing on any variability to your ears. Of course if you have a _terrible_ internet connection then it may stutter, but that's not really common these days, assuming you have an at least reasonable internet connection. Dropouts down to less than 1ms will be audio (e.g. as clicks), and timing glitches <1ms every few seconds would be irrelevant. If you don't hear dropouts or clicks, but can't play along to the online drum beat, there's either something wrong with the original recording, or your own inner metronome!

 

If using youtube to play drum tracks, this Chrome extension might be useful (other loopers are available!)

[RAc]

33 minutes ago, RatFace said:

 

That won't be a significant problem. When you stream audio (and video) your computer will be downloading and buffering ahead of what you're actually watching/playing - so if you're playing an audio clip (e.g. via youtube), at any time your computer will have already downloaded the next X seconds (not sure how many, but it will be a significant number), enough to passing on any variability to your ears. Of course if you have a _terrible_ internet connection then it may stutter, but that's not really common these days, assuming you have an at least reasonable internet connection. Dropouts down to less than 1ms will be audio (e.g. as clicks), and timing glitches <1ms every few seconds would be irrelevant. If you don't hear dropouts or clicks, but can't play along to the online drum beat, there's either something wrong with the original recording, or your own inner metronome!

 

If using youtube to play drum tracks, this Chrome extension might be useful (other loopers are available!)

 

Thanks Danny,

 

naturally I'm aware of the readahead streaming strategy. Still it happens quite frequently that videos I watch suffer from hickups - my connection isn't cutting edge, but it isn't terrible either. As far as I understand it (I'm sure your background gives you much more authority to comment though), there are several bottlenecks in bandwidth along the path from the server to my browser client, and the best bandwidth you can expect is the worst bottleneck.