I once had a student who told me he took a metronome back to the shop because it kept going out of time. This draws attention to how we might feel when using a metronome for the first time and are forced to adhere to a predetermined timeframe. The pure accuracy of a metronome is in a sense, unmusical by definition – who wants to hear the Bach cello suites performed in perfect metronomic time? I suspect just as many people would find an out of time performance every bit as objectionable.
As with so many things, the answer lies somewhere in between. It’s important to work towards a more carefully defined goal than simply playing in time as there is more to know and more to learn about how to make best use of a metronome in your practice. While it’s definitely worth discussing options with your teacher, here are three different ways of using a metronome that encourage you to employ your metronome in a supportive role to achieve specific tasks.
1. Work to the prescribed tempo
A metronome provides a very specific beat speed, which is useful, particularly if you are following the tempo marking provided by a composer or arranger. When you are looking at a piece of sheet music for the first time, it makes sense to play or sing through the piece at the tempo set out at the beginning. It’s fine to work without a metronome of course but definitely worth checking in just to make sure you don’t drift too far from the prescribed tempo. It’s also worth setting your metronome to articulate the subdivisions of each beat, this helps you to establish an internal pulse, count out longer notes more evenly and play rhythmic figures more accurately.
2. Learn to play fast(er)
When you are learning to play something technically complicated or unfamiliar, it is best to start slow, or even very slow. Through practicing under the target tempo, you can work out how to play a phrase very accurately, then, once the essential component parts are under the fingers, you can gradually increase the tempo. This helps maintain the integrity of the musical phrase. Fortunately, it’s easy to find a metronome app that will allow you to program in a gradual increase in tempo over a set number of bars. Employing this valuable technique will help you practice efficiently.
3. Making time
Typically, we look at the tempo marking, set our metronome to that figure, then play to that. In the examples already given, this makes perfect sense. However, it also means the metronome is doing all the work and in essence you are tagging along to an existing timeframe – following the time as it were. Let’s say you are practicing a walking Bass line and the tempo is 80 BPM. If you set your metronome to 40 BPM and think of the click as beats 2 and 4, then it becomes your job to make beats 1 and 3. This feels very different to “playing along” and is much closer to the feeling of working with other musicians.
There are many other ways to use a metronome effectively in your practice and playing with good time is a more subtle art than simply keeping time. Get yourself a metronome – of all the tools you need to improve your playing, this is one you really can’t do without. Through continued practice, a metronome will enable you to develop a steady sense of time, fit into a shared timeframe, subdivide accurately and help you to establish the feeling of an internal pulse that is fundamental to all music making.