Rules regarding changing tempo mid-song?

[themattsmith]

I've recently started to record music and have no education or training in songwriting/music theory. Are there any rules regarding the tempo of a song?
Can you change the tempo at all? Only once? Back and forth many times?

[richiebee]

ALL rules in music are optional.

Songs can change tempo. Changes are more acceptable in some genres of music than others. The change should make sense.

In the context of tempo, I would recommend that you keep it simple. Otherwise you just confuse people, and they stop listening to your music!

Gradual tempo changes (upto about 5bpm) are practically unnoticable by a non-musician and can help project a song.

Sudden changes of a much more drastic nature can be very effective in the right song.

Doubling or halving the tempo makes life simple for the listener and can help them to continue to dance when the band has gone into a frenzy.

[thesilentdrummer]

It depends on the kind of music. For example, orchestral or choral music uses pushes and pulls very liberally (especially a Capella chamber choirs) to portray emotion. But since I am pretty sure thats not what you are talking about, usually solo-type pieces are good for liberal pushes and pulls. See billy Joel's "And So It Goes" for a real world example. However, in most full-band applications apart from what Richiebee said, one of the most common and useful tempo changes is to double or half the starting tempo. I believe Rush Halves "YYZ" in the middle of the song, and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" doubles the tempo for the fast part and guitar solos.

I would really avoid speedups of more than 5 BPM (that are not a double) over the course of the song. Songs tend to get out of control when the keep snowballing.

[EnSkorSang]

DO whatever the hell you want. If you think it sounds good jumping about all over, then do it! Its common in classical music (especially chopin) for tempo rubato to be applied, where the performer is given a slight freedom to adjust the tempo throughout the song as he feels necessary to help convey emotion...the very loose rule with this is if one bar is slowed down a little, another should be sped up to compensate. In pop music it isnt so common - but then try looking at some alternative bands and theres tempo changes all over the place! It matters not one bit what you do, so long as it sounds good.

[BillyShears]

If you ever find a rule, kill it - rules in music are for people who don't like to think for themselves. If it sounds good to you, then there's a chance someone else will perceive it as being good.

Your music should make you feel good first, if someone else likes it then that's a bonus.

[ExSaint1379]

Well the best tempo changes ever was Elliot Carter's Metric Modulation. It's much eaiser than other tempo changes (which is a good thing because his music is HARD) and it changes by werid amounts (but this is twenith century music), but in relatively simple music there's no need to worry about changing the tempo. If you ever want to double or half the tempo that is pretty easy for most musicians but if you write music where you are playing really fast and then change it by some werid number it would become very difficult. Now if there's a break in the music it wouldn't be. If you give them time to speed up then it's always alright (called accelerando) and time to slow down (ritardando) it's always fine. There are no specific rules though

[BillyShears]

My theory is that the brain will start to ignore things that are static, this includes time and volume. An example could be a guitar part that is doing basically the same thing throughout a song - if it increases and decreases volume slightly during different parts of the song it will sound a lot more interesting (2nd side of Led Zeppelin IV has good examples of this).

Early Beatles albums are good examples of where the track increases tempo as it approaches the chorus (for example) but because it is subtle you are not consciously aware that it is increasing but you interpret it as the groove is getting more excited (couldn't think of a better way of putting that). Unless you are doing dance music (2 words that never look right together) then you should have some variations in tempo - humans never play in perfect time anyway and a good example would be to listen to a quantized midi track and compare that to the audio version played by people - the midi track will feel like you're wearing a straight jacket.

If the tempo changes you're referring to are more extreme, then like everyone else has said - if it works, do it.

[ExSaint1379]

Originally Posted by BillyShears

My theory is that the brain will start to ignore things that are static, this includes time and volume. .

Good theory. If you take an intro to psych class they probaly will go over the research on this. In order to stop this happening, our eyes evolved to vibrate slightly every fraction of a second. In an experiment they attached paper like things to our eyes in front of us and in a few minutes people stop seeing them. Your brain blocks out anything that doesn't change at all. Smells, tastes, sound etc...

[BillyShears]

I'd be keen on knowing more about that ExSaint1379. Do you have a couple of good links to get me started?

[ExSaint1379]

Oh man My psych book doesn't quite work as a link. I'll look to find the experiments. Odd I remember the effect being titled Satiation yet when I look for that on wikipedia it brings me to some neuro chemical and when I look online it comes to some random definitions.