JJ, Song: Hollow Years (Dream Theater)

Hi all,

JJ asked me recently how to improve his timing. I suggested to him what I've done when I younger and had lots of time in secondary school...

Playing along with a song.

This may seem kinda duh but it's extrememly important and often overlooked in my opinion. Sometimes we learn and song and start playing it by ourselves. While this is fine if you're only concern about getting certain techniques right, it doesn't force you to keep to the actualy rythym of the music. With the wealth of internet and personal computing, one can easily learn how to play a song without actually referring to the song itself. The result is often that one might get the general feel of the song but never really got it "spot on". I'll illustrate with the following example.

I asked JJ to play along with the song Hollow Years by Dream Theater which he already knows how to play and the result is as the videos below.


JJ playing Hollow Years (verse & chorus)


JJ playing Hollow Years (solo)

As you can see in the video, JJ did an excellent job playing the song, except that his playing is abit out of sync with the song at times. So I ask him to keep practising the song with the original track till he's able to execute the chords, notes & groove well.

This practice is even more important if you want to play the song in a band. There needs to a point of reference in a band setting and the cd or mp3 of the song is a good place to start. The idea is if everybody can follow closely to the cd/mp3 in their playing their instrument of choice, then it's just a matter of locking everybody together to the drummer to make the band sound tight. I would suggest that most audience subconsciously gravitates towards rythymic tightness of a band more than getting the right notes all the time.

So don't just practice hard, practice smart! With your cd that is...