Metronome

A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον (métron, 'measure') and νέμω (némo, 'I manage', 'I lead'), is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats per minute (BPM). Musicians use the device to practice playing to a regular pulse. Metronomes typically include synchronized visual motion (e.g., swinging pendulum or blinking lights).Because its beat is perfectly steady, the metronome is an excellent practice tool for musicians. Practicing with a metronome is extremely useful for developing and maintaining rhythmic precision, for learning to keep consistent tempos, for countering tendencies to slow down or speed up in specific passages, and for developing evenness and accuracy in rapid passages. Most music teachers consider the metronome indispensable, and most professional musicians, in fact, continue to practice with a metronome throughout their careers.Often, the metronome by itself may not be enough to learn complex rhythms. However, its importance for all types of practicing and all genres cannot be understated. The infallibility of the machine is a blessing since it removes guesswork; thus, the player can use the metronome to learn to play evenly and to resist the temptation to take extra time when playing a difficult passage. The player must begin with the premise that the metronome is mathematically perfect and categorically correct. From there, s/he must make a personal commitment to play exactly together with this perfect 'chamber music partner.'Before a student can be persuaded to use a metronome, he or she has to know why it is important. The most obvious answer is to help keep rhythms even and clean. Another reason is to keep the meter consistent, placing beats in their proper positions in the music. Metronomes can also help a student to find and fix problems. The metronome quickly alerts the player to these problems by suddenly not clicking in time with the player's beats.The objection, sometimes heard, that using a metronome tends to make a player mechanical, is not founded on facts. Indeed, the students who play the most artistically are those who have been the most faithful in the use of their metronome when learning their pieces.The traits that distinguish Modern style : unyielding tempo, literal reading of dotting and other rhythmic details, and dissonances left unstressed. Modern style : light, impersonal, mechanical, literal, correct, deliberate, consistent, metronomic, and regular. Modernists look for discipline and line, while they disparage Romantic performance for its excessive rubato, its bluster, its self-indulgent posturing, and its sentimentality. Richard Taruskin calls Modernism 'refuge in order and precision, hostility to subjectivity, to the vagaries of personality.' It is characterized by formal clarity, emotional detachment, order, and precision.Modern style It does not usually inflect or shape notes, use agogic accent of placement, add gracing at all generously, or use rubato (tempos are metronomic and unyielding).Sol Babitz described it as 'sewing machine' style, thinking of the rigidly mechanical rhythmic approach, the four equally stressed 16ths, and the limited flexibility in tempo that often characterizes performances of historical repertoire heard in Modern style.Modern style is the principal performing protocol presently taught in conservatories all over the world.Musicians of a hundred years ago, hearing a cross-section of present-day classical performances, would likely be struck by this primary difference between their performance practice and ours: Our performance practice assumes that a predictably regular beat is conscientiously maintained throughout a movement. We compensate our lack of timing flexibility by a very highly developed sense of tone-color and dynamic which, however refined and polished it may be, tends to abstract and de-personalize the music-making, underscoring its 'absoluteness'.The principle of strict unity of beat within a movement has been part of our understanding and experience of classical music for so many decades now, that today's musicians and listeners can hardly imagine that less than a century ago the 'standard' classical repertoire was performed under significantly different assumptions. early nineteenth century . There was little interest in using the metronome to tick all the way through a piece of music. But this is how the device is used by conservatory students today.... this series of even, perfectly quantized, 16th notes, is no more evocative of samba, than a metronome would be. In fact, this representation neglects what makes up the samba essence in the first place – the swing!The metronome has no real musical value. I repeat, the metronome has no value whatsoever as an aid to any action or performance that is musical in intention. refer by analogy to the sister art of drawing. Graphic artists understand well enough the essential and generic difference that exists between mechanically-aided drawing on the one hand and freehand on the other. Similarly, musicians ought to distinguish between (1) the sort of timing that results from dull, slavish obedience to the ticking of a soulless machine, and (2) that noble swing and perfect control of pulsation which comes into our playing after years of practice in treating and training the sense of time as a free, creative human faculty. using the metronome as a constant guide to ramp up the speed or to keep the rhythm. This is one of the worst abuses of the metronome. If over used, it can lead to loss of your internal rhythm, loss of musicality, and bio-physical difficulties from over-exposure to rigid repetitionA good performance is so full of these minute retardations and accelerations that hardly two measures will occupy exactly the same time. It is notorious that to play with the metronome is to play mechanically – the reason being, of course, that we are then playing by the measure, or rather by the beat, instead of by the phrase. A keen musical instinct revolts at playing even a single measure with the metronome: mathematical exactitude gives us a dead body in place of the living musical organism with its ebb and flow of rhythmical energy. It may therefore be suggested, in conclusion, that the use of the metronome, even to determine the average rate of speed, is dangerous.What is musical rhythm? Perhaps it is the difference between a performance that is stiff and metronomic in its strict adherence to the beat, and a performance that flows with elasticity and flexibility that emanates from the music itself. A rhythmically musical performance seems to take its cues from stylistic considerations, tempo, phrasing, and harmonic structure, as well as form. Sometimes we may not be exactly sure what makes a piece sound rhythmically musical, but we know it when we hear it.It should not surprise us that some children do not know instinctively how to play musically. Many youngsters are surrounded by popular music that is rigid and inflexible in its rhythm, characterized by a relentless beat that is often synthesized or computerized. Even some CDs and MIDI disks especially designed for use with piano teaching materials can encourage students to be overly metronomic in their playing. In general, our students may not be familiar with the idea of subtle nuances of tempo, and may need help understanding this.To be an artist one must be able to play in perfect time – slow, fast, or anywhere between. Then one must be able to leave the time at will. This is not the same as having the time leave the player, and that is the effect if one is not able to play with the metronome.Time Feel, the subject of Chapter 7, is one of the great keys to musicality for rhythm section instruments. But being able to play behind or ahead of the pulse can also add expression to a melodic line. This, along with slight changes in dynamics, creates phrasing in music. The ability to hear the pulse and yet accelerate or decelerate slightly is a great way to incorporate human feeling into a musical performance. Of course, this is all relative to the tempo, and is best achieved relative to a steady tempo. In other words, the more definite your sense of pulse, the better your capability to manipulate it. This also works for the actions of ritardando and accelerando, as they are relative to a steady pulse and are best performed gradually rather than in sudden shifts'Rhythm is everywhere. Be sensitive to it, and stay aware of spontaneous occurrences that can spur rhythmic development. Listen all the time and use your imagination. Become a rhythm antenna.'Benny Wenda, a Lani man from the highlands, is a Papuan leader now in exile in the UK, and a singer. There are songs for everything, he says: songs for climbing a mountain, songs for the fireside, songs for gardening. 'Since people are interconnected with the land, women will sing to the seed of the sweet potato as they plant it, so the earth will be happy.' Meanwhile, men will sing to the soil until it softens enough to dig.' This technique is especially challenging in its application, because musicians today are so rigidly trained in metrical regularity. Yet, like the beating of the heart, the musical pulse needs to fluctuate in speed as the emotional content of the music fluctuates. Like the natural shifting accents in speech, musical accents need to shift according to the meaning being expressed. To feel perfect, music must be metrically imperfect.The cognitive partner of hesitation is anticipation: anticipation is created by building up assumption on assumption about what will happen. When the event which should occur fails to happen at the expected time, there exists a moment of disappointment. Disappointment, however, is soon transformed into a rush of pleasure when the anticipated event is consummated. The art is always in the timing.When the alignment of notes in the score suggests that they be performed strictly and simultaneously, they may be purposely jumbled or played in an irregular or a staggering manner to create a careless (sans souci) effect. This technique gives music a feeling of relaxed effortlessness A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον (métron, 'measure') and νέμω (némo, 'I manage', 'I lead'), is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats per minute (BPM). Musicians use the device to practice playing to a regular pulse. Metronomes typically include synchronized visual motion (e.g., swinging pendulum or blinking lights). A kind of metronome was among the inventions of Andalusian polymath Abbas ibn Firnas (810–887). In 1815, Johann Maelzel patented it as a tool for musicians, under the title 'Instrument/Machine for the Improvement of all Musical Performance, called Metronome'. Musicians practice with metronomes to improve their timing, especially the ability to stick to a tempo. Metronome practice helps internalize a clear sense of timing and tempo. Composers often use a metronome as a standard tempo reference—and may play or sing their work to the metronome to derive beats per minute if they want to indicate that in a composition. When interpreting emotion and other qualities in music, performers seldom play exactly on every beat. Typically, every beat of a musically expressive performance does not align exactly with each click of a metronome. This has led some musicians to criticize use of a metronome, because metronome time is different from musical time. Some go as far as to suggest that musicians should not use metronomes at all, and have leveled criticism at metronome markings as well. The word metronome first appeared in English c. 1815 and is Greek in origin: metron 'measure' and nomos 'regulating, law'. According to Lynn Townsend White, Jr., the Andalusian inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas (810–887), made an attempt at creating a metronome. Galileo Galilei first studied and discovered concepts involving the pendulum in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1696, Etienne Loulié first successfully used an adjustable pendulum to make the first mechanical metronome—however, his design produced no sound, and did not have an escapement to keep the pendulum in motion. To get the correct pulse with this kind of visual device, the musician watches the pendulum as if watching a conductor's baton. The more familiar mechanical musical chronometer was invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam in 1814. Through questionable practice, Johann Maelzel, incorporating Winkel's ideas, added a scale, called it a metronome and started manufacturing the metronome under his own name in 1816: 'Maelzel's Metronome.' The original text of Maelzel's patent in England (1815) can be downloaded. Ludwig van Beethoven was perhaps the first notable composer to indicate specific metronome markings in his music. This was done in 1817.