When you find late the TEMPO just isn't right

When I write a song for the band, all the parts are played on keyboards to give the others an idea of the structure. I tend to be casual and more relaxed, and the songs come out at a tempo that sounds good to me. But when the band jumps in, changes stuff and adds their parts, sometimes it creates a need for something more aggressive. …and sometimes the thought doesn’t come up (like a mention by another band member or something), until the tracks are basically recorded.

I re-recorded two songs in this band with a faster tempo so far. And I don’t expect it will be the last. Just with the way a song is put together, and elements you add to it could change the feel enough to warrant a faster / slower tempo.

For me, I don’t think it’s a matter of the original tempo being “wrong” but just that a bit faster just seems to make it “better.” Also, it’s never more than just a few BPM’s increase.

I’ll play with the groove before I start laying down my rhythm tracks and therefore haven’t had any problems
with tempo - but as I recall, when working out original songs with bands in the past, most tempo issues that we had were when drummers would speed up and the song would lose it’s groove - or no longer felt like it was ‘in the pocket’. We had to retrack a few songs for this reason.

Sound advice! :slight_smile: