Metronome and practice speed

Why use a metronome? You've no doubt heard that professional musicians (especially the ones with good technique) do use or have used, metronomes.

Why is this? How exactly to you practice with them?

This article is aimed at players who have a more than basic grasp of their instrument. In other words, I'm assuming that you are not still struggling to play a tight rhythm part, but that perhaps you would like to improve your single note technique.

Now a days you are as likely to use a drum machine, computer sequencer or sampler and drum loop, as a wind up metronome. Personally I think there are advantages to using a drum machine or sequencer over the traditional tick tock or beep beep type metronomes. This is because you have a time signature with a drum beat (usually 4/4). I think that practising in the context of a time signature can be very helpful. You can get electronic metronome which accents the first beat of the bar, but I don't think this is quite as good as having something that sounds like a drum beat behind you. Its personal taste though in the end.

Using a sampled drum loop is not ideal for three reasons.

1) although you can change the speed of a loop, you can't easily keep track of it in beats per minute, and changing the tempo is a little more fiddley than just moving the tempo up a bit as you would on a sequencer.

2) Most drum loop samples don't have a continuous loud hi hat or rim on every 16th note (which is what I'd recommend you have for practising technique).

3) many drum loop samples are not metronomic, in other words they may have a strong push or pull; anticipating or retarding the beat. Although this can create a nice groove, its not ideal as reference point to work on technique.

That brings us to one of the main and important uses of a metronome or sequencer: improving your technique.

So you want to play those fast accurate runs you hear you favourite player doing.

Using a sequencer/metronome is the quickest most efficient way to get there.

The importance of speed.

I would advise you that it is of paramount importance that you work with the correct sequencer/metronome speed.

Choosing the correct speed and the reason why.

In my experience (20 years playing and 15 years teaching), the correct metronome speed to practice at, is one where you can do what ever you are practising 80 to 90 percent right; though with a fair bit of effort needed to do it.

So for example, say you are practising a repetitive descending 9 note sequence. You need to choose a metronome speed where you can play this exercise 80 to 90 percent perfect. This means that some of the time, you do play it nearly perfectly in terms of timing cleanness and accuracy, and the rest of the time its not far from correct. Though it is important that you choose a speed where you have to try quite hard to play it this correctly. Its not going to do you much good if its too easy.

There are two reasons for this.

1) If you practice at a speed where you play what ever it is you are practising say, only 50 percent correctly, ie there are a lot of mistakes happening, you are in grave danger of practising your mistakes.

2) The other problem about practising at a speed which is too high, is that you never build in any strength to your technique.

Having said this about getting the speed right for your regular practice routine, it is a good idea to occasionally practice at a really slow speed just to make sure its all still tight when you play slowly.

Slow is Fast - its an old saying but there's a lot of truth in it. If you practice at the correct metronome speed ie: a speed where you can play 80 to 90 percent correct with effort, and you stick with this speed until it becomes very easy to play accurately at that speed, you'll find that you've built in quite a bit of strength into your technique at that speed. If you've built in some strength, you'll find that you'll be able to play at twice the speed for short bursts, and it will remain accurate.

If however, you have practised at too high a speed, and therefore not built in a any strength, you find that with only a small increase in speed, it will all fall apart.

Once you've spent enough time at your current metronome speed and it is really getting very easy to play very accurately nearly every time, you can increase the speed.

I don't recommend that you just move up by 1 beat per minute intervals. Try bumping it up 10 bpm and see if you can play 80 to 90 percent correct. If you've built in enough strength at your previous speed, you should find that you can jump up quite a bit when you are ready for a new speed.

Consistency.

Its a good idea to practice most things at the same speed. You don't want 10 different speeds for 10 different exercises. Your goal is to be able to play most things at the same speed, and that you gradually increase this speed for everything.

There will however obviously be some very difficult things that you'll have to do at a slower speed.

When you actually play or jam over CD and tapes or loops however, use a variety of tempos.

For working on pure technique, I've found that having a personal benchmark tempo is important also psychologically. It allows you to keep tack of where you are. You can say: well in January I was at 100 bpm now its July and I'm at 110 or what ever.

The 16th note tick

I mentioned earlier that I'd recommend you use a drum beat with a 16th note tick. What a mean is for example a basic 4/4 drum pattern (ie bass drum on beat 1, snare on beat 4) with a hi hat or even better a rim shot on every 16th note. Its the 16th notes that I suggest you play to. So if your drum beat is playing at 100 bpm, and the rim shot is playing all the 16th notes, those are the notes you should be trying to match. The closer and more accurately you can get your notes onto the 16th notes the rim shot is playing, the more accurate your playing will be and the more strength you'll have built into it. Hence the sooner you'll be able to increase your speed.

Why all the emphasis on speed?

In my opinion speed as a thing in itself is not a particularly important aspect of a person's playing. Some people do play very fast, whether all these notes are valid or necessary is another question. In my opinion there are some players who play very fast who do have a lot to say with what they play (John Coltrane comes to mind as an example of someone who often played fast yet artistically and emotionally reached levels most other great players can only aspire to), while there are others who seem to seek only to impress by playing fast, the actual musical and emotional content being very little if any. On the other hand there are players who never or rarely play fast who are capable of great artistic and emotional expression with only a few notes. So my point is, I'm not trying to push fast playing here.

However, even if you want to play at moderate and slow speeds most of the time, you should be capable of playing at least a third to a half again faster than your actual performance. This is because its not a good idea to be pushing your technical limits during an actual performance. If something goes wrong, you have a bad day or what ever, the whole thing could fall apart. Also you don't want to be having to "try hard" technically, this will take concentration away from where it should be which should be on what you play, not how to get it right technically.

Mark Wingfield