Does that mean you`re a one man band? Are you the artist?

 

Last edited: Apr 17, 2021

I'm neither, I see what I do as exploring music, learning as I go. Up to this point I've been starting with ideas, maybe a riff on guitar, a melody, whatever, playing along with the click, then adding other instruments. But I'm beginning to see the disparity between the timing of the guitar parts and the synth/percussive parts, arps etc. I don't want to play perfectly in time with my guitar, in the band situation I was used to pushing the beat, playing behind it - whatever felt right, which is harder to feel when playing with such regimented time from a click. I find that it's sometimes necessary to edit notes from my guitar to the beat so it fits with everything else and I don't like that. I remember back in the '80s when band drummers were beginning to be asked to play to a click, usually by keyboard players so they could use arps and such like live and they really didn't like it, I seem to recall - long time ago and I'm old!

 

Time dilations and compressions are a fundamental part in the expressiveness of a musician, whether they are voluntary (provided by the composer) or involuntary. Anyone who has ever recorded live bands will have realized that musicians tend to go faster on the riff and slower on the verses. I don't consider all this a mistake on their side, on the contrary this is part of the vibe of a song.
Recreating these time fluctuations with the daw is not that difficult, someone has already given some good advice here.
My workflow (to deliberate add tempo drifting in a song) is to animate -via keyframe- the bpm on the blank timeline, then record the performance by providing the click of the daw (with speed fluctuations) to the musicians