The Baby Scratch: Strengthening Timing
As your timing starts to improve, what you hear starts to change. Your ears become sharper, and you begin to hear when you are early or late, instead of assuming you are on time.
As that listening improves, you start to hear more of what is happening inside the beat. Instead of only focusing on 1, 2, 3, and 4, you begin to hear the eighth notes of the hi-hat filling the space between the kick and the snare. The beat no longer sounds empty. It sounds complete.
Once you can hear the eighth notes in between the pulse, some timing problems become more noticeable. You can hear when eighth notes or sixteenth notes are being rushed or dragged, even if you are not actively counting them. You are no longer just feeling the beat. You are listening to the entire beat, including the notes and the rests.
At that point, the goal becomes noticing and correcting stroke placement when it drifts.
Why Timing Is Important
Timing is important because if your timing is off, everything you play will be off.
You can learn new rhythms, but if strokes are placed poorly in time, they will not sound right. Good ideas played with poor timing still sound wrong.
You begin to hear where notes land, where rests sit, and how the space inside the beat is filled. What you hear is what turns timing from guessing into something deliberate. Everything that follows comes from that.
Hearing More of the Beat
Instead of only hearing the main pulses, you begin to hear what fills the space between them. The eighth notes of the hi-hat become clear between the kick and the snare. Rests stop feeling like silence and start feeling like part of the rhythm.
You are not learning new information here. You are hearing more of what was already there.
Checking Timing While Playing
As the music plays and your hands move, timing is checked against the beat itself. Your focus shifts between different parts of the beat as it continues forward.
At times, your attention settles on the kicks to confirm that your strokes are grounded. At other moments, it shifts to the snares or to the hi-hats filling the space between those sounds. You are not changing what you play. You are changing what you are focusing on to check timing.
Being able to change where you focus allows you to make adjustments while you are playing. If a stroke arrives early, it pushes into the space before the beat. For example, a stroke meant for beat 1 enters the space leading into beat 1. If it arrives late, it misses the beat and falls behind where the rhythm is moving.
The same thing happens when a stroke is meant to land between beats. If a stroke arrives early, it pushes into space that should still be empty. If it arrives late, it falls behind where the rhythm is moving.
Why Playing Slow Improves Timing
Playing at half the tempo can be beneficial. It allows you to focus more on rhythm and timing, rather than executing the technique. It becomes easier to focus on the rhythm because the technique takes less effort to execute on time. Not all timing issues come from being unable to feel the beat. Sometimes the difficulty comes from executing a technique consistently.
Playing slow helps you internalize the rhythm. You get a better sense of how the rhythm fits with the beat. Slowing the rhythm down can allow you to start playing from memory and feel, instead of relying on reading the notes on the page.
Playing slow can be more difficult than playing fast because there is more empty space. That empty space places more emphasis on your timing and makes small errors easier to hear. When you return to the normal tempo, the beat often feels more comfortable, and you may notice improvement.
Below is the original transcript from the video.
Rhythm 1
Hey what’s up? It’s Ronin from Scratching Made Easy. In this lesson we are going to cover sixteenth notes, eighth notes, eighth rests and quarter notes. If you are not familiar with these terms, please check out previous videos. That way you will be familiar with what we’re about to cover do. You’ll find the link to the sheet music and everything discussed in this video in the description below. Alright let’s dive into number one. The tempo is at 85 beats per minute. Here we go!
Rhythm 2
As always, we want to make sure that we are playing in time. Don’t be discouraged if you are rushing the rests. With this rhythm, let’s concentrate on being as accurate as possible. If you find yourself rushing, slow down the tempo and make sure to count out loud. Okay, here we go.
Rhythm 3
With this next rhythm, let’s try to focus on not rushing the rests, while trying to play clean and even strokes. We’ve been doing this for a while, so you know that our strokes need to be clean and evenly spaced apart. We don’t want to sound sloppy. We want our sound to be clean and even. Let’s count off number three; here we go!
Rhythm 4
Remember that we should be honest with ourselves. Our goal should be playing the rhythms accurately. Mistakes are natural, but we want to eventually play without making any mistakes. If you are making a lot of mistakes, slow things down and work on the rhythms until you can play them consistently. Alright, let’s move on to the final rhythm. Here we go!
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FAQs
1. Why does hearing more of the beat matter for timing?
Hearing more of the beat matters for timing because notes, rests, and the space between the main pulses make stroke placement easier to recognize.
2. Why does shifting your listening focus help you check timing?
Shifting your listening focus helps you check timing because focusing on the kicks, snares, or hi-hats gives you different points in the beat to compare your strokes against.
3. Why does playing slowly help strengthen timing?
Playing slowly helps strengthen timing because the added space makes timing errors easier to hear and gives you more room to internalize how the rhythm fits with the beat.
Summary
The Baby Scratch strengthens timing by making stroke placement easier to hear against the notes, rests, and spaces inside the beat. Shifting your listening between the kicks, snares, and hi-hats gives you different reference points for hearing whether a stroke is early or late, while playing slowly creates more space to expose those timing errors and internalize how the rhythm fits with the beat.
About the Authors
Jason E. Bullock and M. Dwayne Bullock (DjRoninTokyo) are the creators of Scratching Made Easy and the authors of Scratching Made Easy Turntable Method Book 1: A Guide to Scratching. They created a scratch notation system that uses standard musical notation to apply fundamental music concepts to scratching.
Pt. 8 → Pt. 9
Continue to: How I Learned to Scratch on Beat - The Baby Scratch (Part 9)
