5 Ways to use a Metronome

Jul 24, 2018 admin Music Comments Off on 5 Ways to use a Metronome

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Metronome is an instrument or tool that is useful for musicians in keeping record of time while playing any instrument or practicing their music sessions. It is a good way to keep th3 tempo perfect. It produces an audible sound at defined intervals which act as a reminder to match the timing of music with it.

It was originally developed to assist musicians in keeping record of time signatures and pace but with its developed uses it is now also used to practice the speed. Metronomes are also available with various options such as analogue, electronic or digital.

You can also use online metronome to get the job done. You can adjust the bpm and the beat.

Metronome makes you focus on rhythm

Metronome makes you focus on rhythm and elevate your music abilities. Rhythm, to be understood in layman’s term is that part on which you focus your grooves while dancing. Perfect rhythm is a pulse to any music. With bad synchronisation of rhythm everything sounds awry and unmatched.

A musician should understand its importance to keep him from any embarrassment. A common way by musicians of keeping record of timing is by tapping legs or counting in mind. But all these methods have their own drawbacks. These work of making a musicians focused on rhythm is done easily and swiftly by metronome.

Helps you mastering different sections

A good music is produced when language of its every section is perfect and it just perfectly synchronises with the tone and timing of music. Metronome is of great help in breaking down and slowing down a complicated piece of music composition and learning it gradually. This time keeper is of great help to beginners who while learning all the notes often subside the timing part of the composition.

It helps them to change the beat of something which they are unable to understand initially and then pace it slow or fast according to their own comfort.

Helps you to deal outside your comfort zone

These days whatever usually goes around becomes our comfort zone, and musicians are no different. Most of the music around comes off the standard 4/4 time signature. A musician usually familiarizes himself with this time signature and becomes habitual to it. Further it becomes difficult for a musician to adapt to any tempo outside his area of practice.

This is where a metronome comes in, practising on this makes you comfortable with other tempos as well by making you learn things gradually. This time keeper is great help for those who explore all the other horizons of freestyling music and others.

Begin with slow beats than speed it up

When you are just beginning with metronome initiate it in slow speed and familiarise yourself with time. After you are a little comfortable increase the pace and this practice will be of major help in identifying your problematic areas. If we do the time keeping work ourselves we might unintentionally make the pace slower to fit our speed but metronome clicks continuously help us in realising our problematic areas which musicians can work on and improvise.

A useful tip to practice on metronome is instead of starring with a song from the beginning, begin the song from middle and move outwards. To be more specific, after finishing a middle section of a song, add a section afterwards then when done with the former two sections, add a section before. It increases efficiency in learning and keeps the musicians more focused.

Understanding time signature is a prerequisite

Time signatures are the basis to work on metronome. These can be found after a clef and key signature. Time signature consists of two numbers in time signature, upper numbers indicates number of beats in a measure, lower number indicates value of the measure.  Most common time signature in western music is a simple time signature of 2/2 or 2/4. To differentiate between simple and compound time signature, while the former is easy to read, the latter expresses dotted values with a number.

Conclusion

We are living in an era where most of things are replaced by our smartphones and the same goes for metronome. A good and easily understandable digital metronome can be found on your smartphone app store with a  lot of varieties. A thing which is so easily available and yet could help you a lot in varieties of ways should be smartly use for betterment.

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