I have problem following the metronome

[dora96]

Hi everyone,

I am not used to using metronome for the tempo. My teacher always tells me I need to practice the piano with metronome. I set my metronome for Beethoven pathetique first page Grave 4/4 for 80 per crochet. When I play the Con brio 2/4 the tempo. For the Adagio 2nd movement 70 per crochet.  The 3rd movement 2/4 I set metronome 90. I just play and practice the 3 movement with metronome. Honestly I don't  know I am doing the right thing or not. I know that I follow the metronome fine in the beginning the music, but the music go on, I am really not sure. Is there way that I can tell I absolutely folloing the tempo in the metronome?

How to use the metronome correctly if there are lots of different note value in the piece? I hope you guys will understand what I am trying to say.

[danny elfboy]

Hi everyone,

I am not used to using metronome for the tempo. My teacher always tells me I need to practice the piano with metronome. I set my metronome for Beethoven pathetique first page Grave 4/4 for 80 per crochet. When I play the Con brio 2/4 the tempo. For the Adagio 2nd movement 70 per crochet.  The 3rd movement 2/4 I set metronome 90. I just play and practice the 3 movement with metronome. Honestly I don't  know I am doing the right thing or not. I know that I follow the metronome fine in the beginning the music, but the music go on, I am really not sure. Is there way that I can tell I absolutely folloing the tempo in the metronome?

How to use the metronome correctly if there are lots of different note value in the piece? I hope you guys will understand what I am trying to say.

First of all is important to stress the importace of using the metronome just to get the hand of the rhythm during practice but not as a way to find the correct rhythm for performance because simply no piece admit the strictness of metronomic rhythm.
All pieces slow down, speed up, have rubato in them, have rests longer than the values and so on.

It's easy to recognize whether you're following the tempo or not.
When you're following the tempo the TICs of the metronone coincide perfectly with the main beat/notes of the piece. So it's kind as you feel those notes amplified because of the effect of the metronome percussive sounds underlying them.

If you want to learn the follow the metronome I suggest to practice singing the piece and beating the rhythm (maintaining the rhythm) using a bottle or something. Create the own percussion that will underly the piece.

And remember that if you can't follow the rhythm because your hands are not moving as precisely as they should, you should then decrease the speed tillyou find the one you can comfortably follow. Don't become metronome-dependent ... it's not a good thing at all, expecially with such advanced repertory.

[dora96]

Thank you Danny for your advise.

 I feel that it is not the tempo I can't follow, but it is consistency of the tempo I might have trouble with. E.g. in Beethoven sonata and Mozart, there are so many parts of the music getting really unpredictable tone color, the creativity of the sound and phrasing. A sonata is very long, my attention span is lost and the tempo becomes erratic. I am always tapping with my right foot to keep the music in time. It is really hard when I am so involved with music, concentration on getting the whole sonata through, I feel is hard to keep accurate tempo. Especially in the 3rd movement of pathetic and triplet is hard to play correctly. Even I feel worse after listening the recording, I feel that no one is counting the rhythm. I love learning the music by myself however, I always feel do I play the music correctly ? Despite learning from the recording, ask members about the music, watch other pianists play the piece and counting for the beat by myself. Sometimes, I do feel I hope I play it right.

I only go to my teacher once a week, the teaching and learning is very limited with few repertoires.Some repertoires take months to accomplish.   I fear that I will learn wrong thing but not noticing it.  I have few teachers in the past, I find that each teacher never agree the previous teacher's method. I have a teacher taught me for 2 years. There were so many mistakes in the music she didn't realise and taught me the wrong stuff and interpretation. I feel like I have wasted my 2 years learning it. Even worse that it became in bedded  in my brain and accustomed to the method.

[gyzzzmo]

If you have a hard time following the metronome, try playing it without any pedalling (you're probably hardly using any pedal in mozart anyway ). Also, you have to use the metronome for a reason, your playing is probably abit uneven. You'll have to correct your playing, so i advice to put the metronome slower than you're playing it usually and listen very carefully to the metronome. If you get used to playing with the metronome, you can put it on a faster (normal) tempo.

good luck,
gyzzzmo

[danny elfboy]

Thank you Danny for your advise.

 I feel that it is not the tempo I can't follow, but it is consistency of the tempo I might have trouble with. E.g. in Beethoven sonata and Mozart, there are so many parts of the music getting really unpredictable tone color, the creativity of the sound and phrasing. A sonata is very long, my attention span is lost and the tempo becomes erratic.

You must find a compromise between organized rhythm but not perfect tempo.
No matter what, these sonatas don't have to be metronomic ... there are moments in which you have to speed up and moments in which you have to slow down and moments in which you have to increase the rest. If you try to underly the sound of a metronome to the recording of a famous pianist playing a sonata you'll see that they don't match. So what you really need is to find an "idea" of tempo, the rhythm within yourself. The rhythm within yourself is consistent and precise but it's not so perfectly flawed as the rhythm of a metronome. You must be able to slow down or speed without losing the sense of rhythm. Think of what rhythm really is, of how you must not lose control of the beats but how this doesn't mean the beats must always be at the same perfect distance of time one from another. Try to put a hand in your chestand follow your heart bit, then jump a little and keep following it, then run a little and then rest.
Your heart beats will be consistent and precise but they will vary in speed and yet you must be able to keep following and listening them in your ears.

Do the same using a bottle and put on some nice piece/song (either classical or pop) and beat the rhythm with the bottle. The reason for doing these practices is the same reason why struggling to stabilize your body is the best way to train your abs rather than abdominal exercises. The reason is funtionality. You must get the funtionality of rhythm in the little things of life and then apply it your instrument, but rhythm is not something you build at the instrument ... it is something you put in your body and follow every second

[alessandro]

Dear Dora 96,
There's no such thing as Truth dear Dora.  One teacher is such and one teacher is so.  Try to find the ideal teacher, one that you feel you get along with, one that matches best with your personalities, your sensibilities.  Onfortunately that is something that you don't often realise immediately, teachers can change, you can change, it's so complicated.  A teacher is required when you have the feeling that you don't progress anymore, that there is a problem or a difficulty that you cannot overcome.   For the rest, interpretation, view, methods, everyone has their own...  
The metronome is something restraining and can only have a certain utility if you have close to no sense for rhytm at all...  It is restraining and in contradiction with music.  Let's have for a while a philosophic point of view on the metronome.   It's not easy to grasp what music is in life.  What music is, does it have a meaning?  One of the reason's that it is so difficult, it's that it is full of subjectivities, and that once the music is over there's no music left.  Before the music, there's silence or no music, and after it, again no music or silence.  Even with a record the same situation.  It's an experience, not something that can be grasped easily.  What I'm trying to tell you here, in a very unhandy ridiculous way, is that the metronome is not necessarily anti-music but anti-life.   A watch is understandable from a practical viewpoint.  Even scientist that have their focus in the universe are still not out of the question 'is the expanding of the universe slowing down or accelerating...'...  So what to think of that metronome?  Do you play a "march", well, try to put that marching in the music, there's absolutely no need to shape it to the sound of that tic-tac box.   Now that I think of it, the metronome is one extremely absurd object; frankly, look at it...   Listen to your heart, to your body, listen to the silence of your body, look at the waving of the trees, is that wind, (makes me think of Italo Calvino's Palomar where there's this description of a wave,  where does the wave start, how does it end) look at all those things, and listen and smell, and (then) play music.  Metronome could be a nice sample for house music, or an instrument of torture, but it has nothing to do with Beethoven.  Tempo is interesting, lento, presto, especially adagio is a difficult one, but the metronome tells us nothing about what adagio could be...
Kindly

[keypeg]

A thought: Does one "follow" a metronome or internalize a heartbeat?  If you follow someone or something, you are alway behind it.

[slobone]

The ability to play in a steady rhythm is, for most of us, something that has to be learned -- we're not born knowing how to do it. When I was younger I never used a metronome (they weren't electronic in those days!) and my playing suffered as a result.

It's easy for a student to get in the habit of speeding up in the easy parts and slowing down in the hard parts. There are also other (bad) reasons for playing unevenly.

Yes, a Beethoven sonata shouldn't be played in a strict rhythm when you're performing it, but for most students I think the danger is more in the other direction. Once you've learned to play it strictly, it's really not that hard to go back and use rubato, etc. But you have to allow time for that step in your practice schedule!

When I'm using a metronome and the rhythm is still not correct, I sometimes double up the metronome setting and apply it to notes of half the value. Quavers instead of crotchets (have I got that right?). But if you're already at 80 and 90 that might not work too well.

[ramseytheii]

Use the metronome only on the off-beats (weak beats), and never on the strong beats.

If you find problems with maintaining a consistent tempo, work with smaller sections, and try and tie them together.  Tempo is innately tied to phrasing, and phrasing is tied to physical gesture, so you have to take phrases apart that give you trouble, until you can put it together as a whole.

Often I find that rhythmic deficiencies are a result of conceptual deficiency, that is, a person has trouble conceiving of a large portion of music.  You have to find the boundaries that mark phrases or structural events, and connect a thread inbetween.

Walter Ramsey

[remy]

I've come to believe that there are serious design flaws in all metronomes.

I've never found one that can keep time with me.

 


remy

[slobone]

Well, if you're compulsive like me you buy one that plugs into the wall instead of using batteries, for fear that the beat would become unreliable when the battery runs down. But now that I think about it, current from a wall socket can vary too, right?