June 15, 2007
Relationship Between Delay and Tempo?

We've been giving out tips for different ways of recording the kalimba in the Thursday tips. We've mentioned doing "freeform recording," i.e., the music is free-standing in time and is not nailed down to a grid. And we've spent a good deal of time laying out how to make a "groove track" that we can use as a "time ruler" when we are building a song with the kalimba. Part of the question is: are you a good enough player that your music stands on its own, or do you need some help in maintaining the beat you want in your music?

There is another way that is somewhere in between the "freeform" and the rigid "time ruler" method. If you have ever played with digital delay, you know that the timing between when you play a note and when the echo of it comes back to you is very precise, and that length of time can be used to maintain your tempo. However, in order for that to work, the delay time and the tempo must be related in a specific way. I'll send a free Two Thumbs Up CD to the first person who explains the relationship between delay and tempo before I put it up on the web on June 22.

You can send the signal from the digital delay unit to a computer or digital recorder if you want to use the delay as a time ruler in your recording. You can also play live this way, going into an amplifier or a PA.

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