Help, how do I stay on time? Am I just musically retarded?

Help, how do I stay on time? Am I just musically retarded?

I can come over and physically assault you with a cymbal if that'll help.

practice with a metronome?

count aloud whilst playing

If you don't realize that you should use a metronome like literally every musician before you , then maybe you are retarded after all.

Certain teachers discourage metronome usage. Are they higher education retards?

Just play in so many off times that you inevitably just fall on time at any given point.

Maybe??

'certain teachers'
I am an examined music teacher, for real. No professiomnal musician in their right mind would say that.

Follow your heart. Literally play to your heartbeat

They discourage using it all the time. Turn it on until you stop accelerating and deaccelerating. Then play without it.

The idea is that you have your own internal metronome eventually

>have arrhythmic heartbeat
>be shit musician

Pay extra attention at what specific moments you're changing your tempo. Maybe you stop un a difficult transition or speed in a hard part. Just practice those parts with a metronome, don't do the whole thing

or a god tier jazz musician

I mean that there are strict "No Metronome!" people out there who hate them more than Hitler hated the Jews.

To be fair I'm just relaying anecdotal stories I've heard and read, but there does seem to be many teachers like that in the world

Yep, they are but they've used it at some point in their life so they're just hypocrites. I guess their point is they don't want you to be dependent of it at all.

Since they can't control your habits in a daily basis they just put it out of the equation by strictly forbidding it

learning how to subdivide while playing is the biggest struggle in music imo, but you gotta do it dude
basically you gotta keep thinking 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & (or 1 e & a 2 e & a etc for 16th notes) while playing to keep yourself in time.

this

i never had trouble keeping time but i trained autistically with a metronome all through like 2nd and 3rd grade

listen to rap, it's produced using drum machines that are more precise than any human ever will be, and tap along

Look up beat deafness.