Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Do you feel students need to use a metronome? If so when?

For the last part, which I've highlighted, am I right in understanding that you are talking about speeding up from 60 to 90, notch by notch, in one sitting on the same day? I can see that that wouldn't work well, for the reason you've stated.

I'm also imagining starting slowly and speeding up to happen over days of practising, and that this practising will include other things. Practising slowly is for the sake of doing things right and having the time to do so. Therefore the technical issues should also be ironed out during your slow practice, in sections. If you are a student taking lessons then hopefully your teacher will point out what you need to work on, and how (physical and strategy). If not you have to figure this out on your own. If you do that, then the technical question you've mentioned is being taken care of. (?) Working only on speeding up would not work very well.

Thanks for all the links! That was a lot of reading this morning.

I addressed the metronome on the context of smoothing out the playing, but speed building as others have said is a slow process.

Whenever you play, it is important to be relaxed. So when you determine the speed that you can play the piece at relaxed and without error, of course, you then increase slowly no more than 5 increments at a time. At the point that you begin to make errors, you have drop the speed to level of having no errors. Speed building has nothing to with the fingers, but the brain nd the brain learns slowly over time.

Generally, you have to be able to play at 20 increments higher than the speed you want to play at to allow - you - your brain to be relaxed and you are able to play without errors.

The time involved is not specific but generally, it takes a month or 2 at 60 to 70, 70 to 80, etc up to 120. for instance. But at speeds of 120 to 200, Presto, it can take 6 months or more, of course, depending on the complexity of the piece, easy for Mary a little lamb and very difficult to play Chopin's Ballade No. 4 at 200. So the higher the speed the longer it takes to increase the speed in small increments.

I have to admit that I had a couple of things in mind when I asked this question:


What I've heard from more than one teacher as that they do NOT want their students playing with the metronome running, as a general rule. In fact, I did that for a while and it was a dismal failure because I just ignored it (as was pointed out to me one day). Rather, the idea was to use the metronome some of the time to get an idea of the tempo of something, to work with it maybe when not playing the music, or checking yourself after playing a bit.

Part of the idea was for a student to get a feeling for pulse and meter, rather than relying on an external device, and I think also the danger of "playing metronomically". There were times, however, where in certain situations playing with the metronome was called for.

I also hear people talking the other side of it - they don't want to play with the the metronome because it might cause them to become robotic and unable to be musically expressive.

That may be so for some people, but I think it is used as an excuse by people who find playing with a metronome difficult and want to avoid learning to do so.

At least for some people a metronome can be a step along the way to learning to play with others.

Well, no.

If your requirement is to make no errors, then you have to simplify.

You can do that through dropping the speed.

You can simplify many other ways as well. You can go HS, you can skeletonize, you can chunk, you can drop notes, you can loop, etc.

One thing I do frequently is to play a difficult passage at tempo, but reducing it to a small piece, or reducing the changes of notes.

For example. Here's a piece from the brass players world. Sorry about that, I know this is a piano forum, but... we're all musicians here. It's not a virtuoso solo piece, it's simply a difficult piece from the standard band repertoire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgjAY55k1g

Rolling Thunder is a classic circus tempo march, normally played at 160. It's a bit demanding for us trombone players - while I don't expect to ever make a mistake sightreading a Sousa march, this is a different challenge that took considerable effort to play at tempo. The trumpet player is pressing a valve down half an inch, I'm moving a heavy slide a couple of feet.

Playing this one at 80 and incrementing a beat at a time, or steps of 5 or 10 will never get you to tempo. Sorry, I've seen people work for years and not get there. I just had a conversation with a good musician who's worked on lip trills out of Arban with the incremental method for 40 years, and didn't succeed.

Well, there's a caveat here too, I guess. Take an highly skilled trombone player skilled at the genre and let him incrementally speed up, he'll get there with the stepwise motion. The other 98% of trombone players will never play this one.

When I worked this one up, I set the metronome to 160, final tempo. I played the first pattern, but on the first two notes. Hard to explain, and so easy to show! There are 13 notes in the first run. I played the first two notes, but continued to play the second note at tempo for the next 11 notes as if I were moving. C-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F Then the first 3 notes in rhythm, and repeated the 3rd note on the rhythm of the next 10. Etc. Master four measures at a time - but sometimes I had to master two notes at a time.

Doing this shows immediately where the difficulty lies. The transition between some notes is easy and others near impossible - and can usually be fixed with a correct fingering choice and a lot of practice.

What I'm saying is yes, you have to simplify; but don't fall into the trap of thinking slowing down is the only way to simplify.

It can be the worst way to simplify.

Once the correct motions at speed are understood, slowing down is often the best way to get real control. But as a first step, particularly for a beginner, it can be very limiting.

I have other objections but they are more philosophical so I'll spare you.

Don't stop there! I'd like to hear your philosophical objections.

Wow, there's quite a bit of nonsense in this thread so far.

1. Do you feel students need to use a metronome?

It depends on the student. Some kids innately have a strong sense of pulse, so it would be ludicrous to impose something that the kid doesn't need. On the other extreme, some kids (and adults) have ZERO sense of pulse, and no matter now much you try to shove metronomes down their throats, nothing will help.

Sometimes it's a brain development thing, and you just have to wait it out. It's like Algebra--some kids can do it in 4th grade, most kids can do it in 8th grade, and some kids can't ever do it (and in California that means you don't get to graduate from high school).


2. If so, when?

Two things:
Can the kid clap steadily? Can the kid clap with a metronome? Generally speaking, this happens when the kid turns 8 or 9. Of course, some kids can do it earlier, and some kids will never be able to do it. It really depends on the individual student.

Using a metronome is like having blinkers on ...
no peripheral vision.

And to think that the mighty Beethoven supported it’s first use
after first being patented by Johann Maelzel in 1815.