Metronomes…
Filed under: Blogging, Musician's Corner
For those of you out there who would consider themselves musicians or aspiring musicians, I wanted to point out a cool website I came across, Metronome Online. I teach music lessons for a few different instruments and one thing I am an avid advocate of is practicing with a metronome.
Be warned though…
Practicing with a metronome is a pride killer when it comes to rhythm. It is 100%, completely, redunantly unforgiving. It will NOT show you mercy, it will NOT stroke your ego and it will NOT tell you what a great job you are doing.
Metronome Practicing Tips:
- Choose the tune / scale you are going to practice
- Find the tempo of the tune / scale that you are wanting to master it at
- Adjust the tempo until it is MUCH SLOWER than you would ever play it. (When you play the tune / riff / scale at an abnormally slow pace, you will find that you didn’t really know the riffs or tunes or scales as well as you thought you did.
- After playing at this painfully slow tempo, kick it up 1 notch. And continue doing this until you have mastered the tune / riff / scale
- Note: Never set the tempo up to a fast speed when you haven’t mastered it at a slower tempo.
But for those of you who have never practiced with a metronome only because you’ve never had one, now there is no excuse.
What experiences have you had with practicing with a metronome, or playing with a click track for that matter?
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June 13th, 2007 at 1:01 am
I am a firm believer in metronomes. I don’t believe anyone should practice without one, of course, especially drummers.
I also believe singers should practice singing along to a metronome. I believe it helps them with Rhythm of words, timing, phrasing, and helps develop your internal clock. Metronomes FTW!
I’m looking forward to when we can begin using click tracks, well, loops rather at ENT. We certainly have timing issue and I believe this will help the whole team, choir and band grow musically.
In San Antonio, we played to a loop for every single song we played. It helped gel the band and orchestra together. There was never an excuse for speeding up or slowing down.
For Special Choir songs, we sould use tracks that would have music on one side of maybe instruments that weren’t available in the orchestra, and then we would also have a voice track instructing what changes were occurring next and giving a click or count. Very useful with songs that had numerous tempo changes.
I think it’s great and the way to go.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:05 am
yo! that metronome sight is hype though. very cool.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Metronomes…sigh… I HATE them. HATEHATEHATE!!! But I agree with Adam and Sam that they are absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to be a serious, or even semi-serious musician. I have been using metronomes since I started piano lessons at age 5.
In college, I spent a good 3 or more hours a day in hot, stuffy rooms that were approximately the size of the cubicle I’m currently sitting in. (They also smelled funny.) Most of that time was spent with a metronome on, either practicing with it, or banging my head against the wall with every click… I went through many, many 9-volt batteries in those days.
It definitely can be, as Adam said, a pride killer! But I guess that’s how we grow, right?