Top-Notch TIME
Music happens in time. Time to master that.
Have you ever played with other musicians and felt like it was hard to follow the beat or the groove?
Maybe you got thrown off when a drummer or bass player did a fancy fill, and you lost where you were in time.
Maybe you can play along with a metronome, but when you turn it off, you can't tell if you're in time or not.
It can be debilitating and embarrassing to struggle with our sense of musical time.
I've known players who turned down amazing opportunities to play with great musicians because they didn't want to be embarrassed by not being able to follow along.
They were worried that they'd lose track of where they were while playing.
Unless we specifically work on our sense of time, what most of us do by default is learn how to follow something else that gives us the time.
But the real goal is to have such a solid internal sense of time that we follow the pulse we feel in our own bodies.
That way, nothing can throw us off. As Victor Wooten says, "we want to wean ourselves off the metronome."
Even when working with a metronome, the metronome should simply confirm for us that we're on, not provide something to follow.
When I was in college, I studied with an amazing trumpet player. He was an absolute maniac about having good time.
I took what he taught me very seriously, and I learned how to think about musical time in a unique way.
After that, when I played shows, people often asked me how I developed such a solid sense of time. Guitarists notoriously have a bad sense of time, so it was a valid question.
The answer? It's from practicing exactly what I teach in my TIME course.
Over time, I developed and expanded the exercises that I learned, and I've now put all of it into my latest course called Top-Notch TIME.
This is one of my favorite and most effective curriculums I've put together yet!
Top-Notch TIME is a series of extremely clever time and metronome exercises that significantly enhance your mental and physical sense of time on the guitar.
It's taught in a straight-forward, step-by-step, hands-on way that anyone can learn by spending just a few minutes a day on it.
If you want to significantly enhance your sense of musical time, "improve your groove," and become the player that other people follow to stay in time, then I made this for you.
Join now and transform your sense of time with instant and lifetime access to this program.
If this is right for you, I look forward to seeing you in the course. If it's not, no worries at all—I wish you the best in all your guitar playing dreams just the same.Â
Cheers,
- Jared
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The Drum Myth
I can't tell you how often I've heard guitarists say, "I want to learn drums to improve my time."
But I've never heard anyone say, "My time was bad until I learned drums."
That's because it doesn't work!
Plenty of drummers have terrible time.
And lots of guitarists have amazing time who have never played drums.
Good time comes from working on time in a specific way, and it's not the obvious way that we assume it should be done.
It's counterintuitive, but once I learned this, it changed the game for me: practicing with a metronome in the conventional way can make our sense of time WORSE.
I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.
When we practice with a typical metronome, we certainly get better at following it at first, but improvement completely plateaus after being able to do that at a basic level.
But here's the real catch: By practicing in that way, what we don't realize is that we're also learning to RELY on the metronome, and relying on something for time is the exact opposite of having good time.
There are two types of time we can work on: Macro Time and Micro Time
Macro Time is how well you can keep a tempo—how EVEN your time is.
Micro Time is how locked in the feeling of every single subdivision is.
Some people intentionally work on Macro Time, but very rarely do they work on Micro Time.
But here's the secret. Good Micro Time is what leads to having good Macro Time.
It's ALL about working on Micro Time. That's the name of the game. It's truly amazing how it can transform and enhance anyone's sense of music time.
How do you master Micro Time (and therefore time in general)?
That is precisely what I teach and demonstrate in my course Top-Notch TIME.
Join now and transform your sense of time with instant and lifetime access to this program.
And this method doesn't have to take a big chunk of your practice routine. Not at all.
I still practice these same exercises myself, and I've only ever spent about five minutes at a time on them.
If you know me, you know I'm a little obsessed with practicing the things that increase my core level of musicianship.
I want to work on the stuff that makes everything else I ever play easier and more accessible.
I don't just want to learn how to play something, I want to become a better musician. That's what excites me!
Working on time is one of those things; one of the "superfoods" of music practice.
And when you think about it, since music unfolds in time, it makes sense to master and get complete control over how we feel it unfolding.
If this is right for you, I look forward to seeing you in the course. If it's not, no worries at all—I wish you the best in all your guitar playing dreams just the same.
- Jared
My Recording Story
My first studio recording experience was a flop.
What should have been half a day of recording turned into multiple days.
It was frustrating, discouraging, and expensive.
Why? My time wasn't locked in enough. I kept getting off. It didn't feel right.
Years later, I learned how to improve my time in a way that is surprisingly uncommon (surprising because it works so well).
My goal is to make it more common.
These days when I record it's a completely different story.
A couple years ago, I was in a recording session where the foundational guitar track needed to be laid down first.
We opted to not record to a click track to make it sound more natural and human.
It was an acoustic fingerpicking accompaniment part that layers would be recorded on top of later.
I recorded a few full takes, just me. Then the producer called me into the control room.
"Check this out," he said.
He played the intro and used a tap tempo function on a digital metronome to reveal the beats per minute.
Then he skipped to the end and did the same thing.
The tempo was exactly the same.
I'm not saying this to brag. I'm sharing this because I want to help other guitarists enhance their sense of musical time and have that same control.
With just a little bit of practice at a time, it's possible for anyone.
My course called Top-Notch TIME walks through precisely how to master your sense of time on the guitar.
The approach is sneaky but very powerful, and I think you'll love it if improving your sense of time is something you know you need to work on.
Join now and transform your sense of time with instant and lifetime access to this program.
I mentioned Victor Wooten earlier. He's bass player who's renowned for his amazing groove and sense of time. He epitomizes the idea of a bass player "holding it down."
Years after learning the time enhancing method that I teach in Top-Notch TIME, I found out that Victor Wooten practices time in the exact same way!
The secret is to learn how to rely on yourself for the time, not anything else.
And in Top-Notch TIME, I show you exactly how to do that.
If this is right for you, I look forward to seeing you in the course. If it's not, no worries at all—I wish you the best in all your guitar playing dreams just the same.
- Jared
Just 5 Minutes a Day
 I'm very excited about this course.
It only takes about five minutes a day, and you can start working on it immediately after signing up with instant access.
Guitarists are notorious for having bad time. If you've ever gotten thrown off by a drummer doing a complex fill, then you know what I mean.Â
In my late 20s, I played in an avant-garde prog-jazz-rock band called Operation ID. We played a lot of difficult syncopated rhythms. At shows, I would regularly get complimented for my precise time on the guitar. People asked me how I developed that ability. It was from the exercises that you'll learn inside Top-Notch TIME.
If time is a weakness for you, then I'm looking forward to helping it become one of your strengths!Â
If this is right for you, I look forward to seeing you in the course. If it's not, no worries at all—I wish you the best in all your guitar playing dreams just the same.
Kind regards,
Jared
