Speeding up gradually (and catching yourself rushing the chorus, which I still do)
Last time we played along with a full recording, start to finish, and most of you told me the same thing afterward: you were fine for the verse and then the chorus hit and something happened to your hands. Suddenly you're ahead of the singer. Suddenly the drummer sounds like he's dragging, except he isn't, you are just gone.
I want to tell you that's a beginner thing you'll grow out of. I can't tell you that. I still do it. Forty-some years in and the chorus still gets my blood up a little and my strumming hand follows along. Heather has mentioned this to me more times than I can count. "You rushed it." Every time she is right.
So this lesson isn't about fixing rushing forever. It's about noticing it, and then building a practice habit that keeps it from running the show.
Why the chorus specifically
There's a real reason this happens and it's not a character flaw. Choruses are usually louder, busier, more chords per minute, more going on emotionally in the song. Your hand picks up on that energy and wants to match it with speed. It's the same reason people talk faster when they're excited. Nothing wrong with you. Just something to watch for.
The home fix: speeding up on purpose, in small steps
This is the flip side of everything we've done with the metronome so far. We've been holding a slow tempo steady. Today we're going to practice moving the tempo up in a controlled way, so your hands learn what "a little faster, still steady" feels like, instead of learning "faster" as a synonym for "loose."
Here's the routine:
- Pick one pattern you already know well. Doesn't need to be new. Your Travis pattern from a few weeks back is perfect for this.
- Set the metronome at a tempo where you can play it clean without thinking hard. Boring is fine. Boring is the point.
- Play four full rounds of the pattern at that tempo.
- Bump the metronome up by exactly 2 to 4 beats per minute. Not ten. Not "let's just see." Small.
- Play four more rounds.
- If it stayed clean, bump again. If it fell apart, drop back down five clicks and stay there a while longer before trying again.
Ten minutes of this, twice a week, does more for your internal sense of tempo than an hour of just playing along to songs you like. Songs you like are for joy. This is for training.
Marking your own chorus
If you're working on an actual song with a verse-chorus structure, do this: play through it with the metronome, and the moment you feel your hand start to lean forward — that little internal shove — just say "there" out loud, or tap your foot twice, anything to mark it. You're not fixing it yet. You're just building the habit of noticing it happen in real time. That noticing is most of the battle. You can't slow down a thing you don't know you're doing.
A story about noticing things you can't feel from the inside
Years back, when we still had the house, I was in the garage fighting an F barre chord, really fighting it, over and over, same four bars, probably for twenty minutes straight. My neighbor Jared heard this through the wall and got worried enough to come knock on the door and check I was okay. I wasn't hurt or anything, I told him. Just losing a fight with a chord.
The reason I bring that up here: Jared could hear something from outside that I could not hear from inside. I was so deep in the repetition that it didn't even register as strange or loud or frustrated-sounding to me anymore. It just felt like practicing. From the next room it sounded like a man in distress.
Rushing works the same way. From inside your own hands, speeding up feels like momentum, like things are finally clicking. From outside, with a metronome or a recording, it's obvious you've drifted. That's why I want you leaning on the click and not just your own sense of "this feels right." Your sense of right, when you're excited about a chorus, is not a reliable witness. Mine isn't either, and I've had forty years to fix it.
An opinion, since we're here
I feel like most players treat the metronome as something to graduate away from once they're "good enough." I'd push back on that. Even now, when I'm learning something new, I start with the click and I do not consider it optional or remedial. It's not a beginner tool you outgrow. It's closer to a level, the kind a builder uses — you don't stop needing it just because you got better at eyeballing a shelf. A metronome doesn't get impressed by your enthusiasm. That's exactly why it's useful.
Before next time
Pick one pattern, find your honest starting tempo, and practice the small-step speed-up a couple times this week. If you catch yourself rushing a chorus somewhere in real life — car radio, church, wherever — just notice it and let it go. That noticing is the whole assignment. 👍