James Lee Stanley

I had a young songwriter ask me how to choose the best tempo for the song and I thought that was a good question and a good topic for today’s column.

Choosing a tempo is critical to the success of the song in terms of listeners getting it. As a songwriter who writes primarily with the guitar, I frequently have a feel that sort of starts the process off and then I tend to keep the song at that tempo.

But it’s a great experiment to change your tempos around when you are practicing. I already told you how I practice with a drum machine and I put the songs at very different tempos from where I usually play them. Too fast or too slow, and then force myself to play in that pocket. This is great practice for improving your timing chops.

But taking a song that is already known or like the above example, a song you’ve written, deliberately change the tempo. If it is a fast rocker, slow it down, see what happens. Change the time signature and see what happens.

My pal, John Batdorf (www.johnbatdorfmusic.com) and I did an album called All Wood and Stones (www.allwoodandstones.com) and did that very thing. We took well known classic Rolling Stones (www.rollingstones.com) songs and completely rearranged them.

The rocker Under My Thumb became a waltz. We moved it from 4/4 time to ¾ time. It completely changed the perception of the song. We took the raucous Let’s Spend the Night Together and made it a mid tempo shuffle. Check it out. It should give you some ideas for changing and possibly improving the songs you’ve written.

Now if you have a new song and you are trying to find the right tempo, there are several things to consider.

First how wordy is it. If there are a lot of words then a slower tempo might serve the lyrics better. Alternatively, if it’s really rhythmic and wordy, it might seem like an avalanche of lyrics if you did it really fast.

Ask yourself what your vision of the song and/or the recording is and try to serve that. Tempo frequently sets mood, so ask yourself if you want it to be slow and moody or fast and celebratory. There’s an old blues song by Jesse Fuller called San Francisco Bay Blues (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkumuirtwbo) and while the lyrics are sad, poor me I lost her lyrics, the melody and the tempo are uplifting and fun.

It all depends on what you want to do with the song, and further, how can you best perform the song?

You want to put the song into a tempo that allows your particular gifts to shine while at the same time serving the lyric and emotional content of the song.

I remember writing a song called Afternoon Rain for my first recording for RCA/Wooden Nickel. When I wrote it I was a little blasted and the tempo just fit, but later when I tried to play it, I couldn’t find the place where it sat comfortably. I finally got one of those strobe tuners and kept track of the different tempos until I found the place again where the song worked, and I wrote down that tempo.

It might have been my limitations as a guitar player at the time that caused part of the problem, because now I can pretty much play any song at any tempo and make it work—it may not be the way it was intended, but I can make it work.

On my new CD, New Traces of the Old Road, I do a Dylan song entitled, Most Likely You Go Your Way, And I’ll Go Mine. Dylan’s version was a cacaphonous, horn infused party of drunken revelers. I decided to take the tempo and some of the feel of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, (www.algreenmusic.com) and make that the framework for the song. It came out entirely different than his version, and many folks seem to seriously enjoy what I did to it.

In the final analysis, there is no right or wrong tempo. You play the song at various speeds until you find the place that works for you. If it feels good, trust yourself. Do it there.