Practice Habits: How to Use a Metronome

Used properly, practicing with a metronome or rhythm track has the power to absolutely transform your playing!

Table of Contents

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Prerequisites

LOVE of music and the discipline to study and practice the right things the right way.

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Lesson Goal

To learn how to use a metronome or rhythm track for discovering and solving a problem in your conception, perception, technique, or rhythm.

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When to Know if a Metronome will Help

If you’re playing the right notes, but your music just doesn’t seem to flow, you almost certainly have one or all of the following three issues:

1. You don’t have a clear conception (aural, analytical, visuospatial, kinesthetic) of how you want the music to sound and feel.
2. Your conception or perception of the rhythm is distorted somehow. For example, you might mistakenly think a note is “here” within the meter, but it really belongs somewhere else.
3. A hitch, tension, or awkwardness in your physical execution is upsetting your intended timing.

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How the Metronome Helps

Playing along with regular pulse or rhythm gives you immediate feedback by letting you know:

1. If you are synchronized with the underlying pulse and tempo of the piece.
2. If you are playing the notes where in the meter you intend to play them.
3. If and where your timing goes off due to sloppy or faulty choreography.

Once you expose the problem area, you can then solve the problem using the other study and practice habits you already know.

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Mechanical or Electronic Metronome?

A fundamental shortcoming of mechanical metronomes is that they generate a series of undifferentiated clicks. In other words, all the clicks sound alike. In other other words, a mechanical metronome does not know what meter is and cannot tell you where “the 1” is.

The great news is that electronic time references can be set to various meters with clicks that emphasizes “the 1”. Quick advice: Download a free metronome app on your smartphone and use it!

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Expert Ways to Use a Metronome

There are at least seven ways to supplement playing with a metronome or rhythm track that will help you deeply internalize the rhythm…

1. Count the Meter Out Loud… for example: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &…
2. Scat the Rhythm… meaning vocalizing the rhythm of what you are playing. babbadabbadbabbabad…
3. Sway your Body or Bob your Head or Tap your Feet or do all three.
4. Combine it with Slow Playing… I guarantee that you can always find a tempo slow enough to play accurately. Always!
5. Combine with Fast Playing… faster than you ever expect to perform, a great way to expose a technical insecurity.
6. Play One Hand at a Time and clap time on your lap with your non-playing hand.

A Word of Caution

1. Don’t get “metronome-happy”. For some kinds of music, there is such a thing as playing too straight! While it is okay to play with the metronome in order to diagnose and solve a problem, the metronome and counting are just training wheels that should be abandoned as soon as you understand what you are playing and start to work on developing your interpretation.
2. Music as-written can never represent the full expression of music as-performed. Playing with “good time” is measured by the coherence of fully formed musical ideas, not by the exact alignment of isolated events on rigid timeline. Such coherence comes from the unified expression of the entire musical phrase, not from machine-like precision.
3. Natural-sounding music breathes and ebbs and flows with each phrase, always sensitive to the larger artistic context.
4. Record yourself... always… and listen to the playback immediately. This is the best way to know if your musical intentions were met… and if what you think you heard and felt while you were playing is actually what happened. Also, a great way to check if you played with good time is to stand up and see if you can Stroll, Swagger, March, or Dance to the playback.

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Takeaways

The metronome, used appropriately, can be a valuable teaching aid, but do not let it become a tyrant. Use it as needed to diagnose a blind spot with rhythm or to solve a technical problem, but do not become a slave to the ticker. The reason to be able to play accurately in time is so that you can go beyond robotic precision in order to play musically and artistically!

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Gentle Reminder: The quality of your performance is absolutely determined by the quality of your study and practice habits. In other words, the gift is not talent. The gift is love. If you love what your are doing, the discipline will follow!

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