how often should i practice with a metronome?

[cwjalex]

well, in short, the title asks the question that I am wondering.  I consider my rhythm to be average, maybe slightly above average...i'm certainly not rhythm deaf.  My teacher tells me it's not necessary for me to play with a metronome but when I do use one I feel like my timing temporarily becomes so much more solid. 

I used to play a lot of rhythm based videogames like dance dance revolution and IIDX beatmania and what I learned from them is how it can sound like you are exactly on the beat but you are actually off.  In those games you can even turn up the difficulty so there is a tighter window to get a "perfect" hit. 

[j_menz]

A metronome can be used to steady tempo fluctuations and to facilitate timing calculations. It is no use in improving your rhythm.  I'd suggest that if you want to improve that, you can forgo the metronome in favour of rhythm building activities.

These include playing in various rhythms, and undertaking other rhythmic activities such as walking to a rhythm, dancing, drumming out rhythms and clapping/tapping, moving along  to the rhythms in music you are listening to.

At the end of the day, if your rhythm is good, your timing will be right. The reverse is not true.

[cwjalex]

oh im surprised that you say that a metronome won't improve your rhythm...i thought that was the main purpose of it.

[j_menz]

Nope, it's about timing, not rhythm. At best it won't hurt your rhythm, at worst it hinders development of it by concentrating you energies on playing in time instead of in rhythm.  Rhythm is felt, and is about pulse and beat. Timing is about tempo - getting the notes in the right place, but not giving them the emphasis required.

IMO, it also tends to make that something external to you, rather than developing your internal sense of time, and distracts from listening to what you are doing by making you listen to something else.

And in the end, rhythm is flexible and timing is strict. Rubato, swing, lilting, subtle shifts of notes all rely on a developed sense of rhythm, and music is bland (at best) without it.

[cwjalex]

you are making a clear distinction between timing, tempo, and rhythm and I always thought of these terms as interchangeable.  

some of your phrases are also confusing me like:

"at worst [a metronome] hinders development of [rhythm] by concentrating your energies on playing in time instead of in rhythm."

isn't the definition of rhythm playing in time?  also in your previous post your rhythm improving activities such as walking to a rhythm, dancing, drumming out rhythms seem very similar to playing with a metronome.  I guess i'm just not understanding your explanation.

edit:  okay i looked up the difference between tempo and rhythm but I am still not understanding how a metronome wouldn't help improve your rhythm.

[iansinclair]

I use a metronome very very sparingly -- only really to find out from time to time just how close I am (or am not!) to someone's tempo marking for a given piece.

But consider this.  The metronome -- unless you have it set to the fastest possible division in your piece -- can only give you the tempo of the major divisions of a measure -- say for example quarter notes in 4/4 time.  It doesn't tell you anything about how you might divide those quarter notes.  Nor does it tell you anything about how you vary the accent within that measure.  Nor does it give you the slight time variation in the subdivision (best example: a waltz and a minuet are both normally written in 3/4 time -- but they aren't played the same way at all).  It can't help you with the variation between a triplet of a quarter plus an eighth vs. a dotted eighth plus a sixteenth.

I could go on, but I think you can get the point.  All those latter examples are rhythm.

[j_menz]

isn't the definition of rhythm playing in time?

Rhythm is about pulse, and about playing with time as well. If you play in rhythm, you will play in time, or better than in time, because the pulse, the feel of the music will be right. It's about how much stress to put on different notes, and about what flexibility you have in quickening or over-holding them.

Ian's example of a minuet and a waltz is a good one. I'd add another - a Chopin Waltz vs a Strauss Waltz - the latter is usually played with what's known as a Viennese Lilt. It means a shortening of the first (main) beat, and a lengthening of the second. How much? Not constant - more gives a quickening effect, less a slowing effect and effective manipulation of this gives the waltz an enhanced sense of changing mood above the harmonic changes (moderating or enhancing them). You can't do it by the metronome, you've got to feel it.

 also in your previous post your rhythm improving activities such as walking to a rhythm, dancing, drumming out rhythms seem very similar to playing with a metronome.  I guess i'm just not understanding your explanation.

The difference is that they are activities that get you to generate the rhythm and move to it, to create it, to develop your own feel for rhythm. Playing with a metronome is about following, copying, listening outside yourself and reproducing that. The activities I listed mean you have to feel it, internalise it, create it, be it.

[outin]

Of course electrical metronomes have the option of playing out the accents as well. But it's still what J_menz says...won't really help you internalize rhythms.

Also consider that no one really wants to listen to robotic playing (always EXACTLY in time with the metronome), it's the slight differences that make the playing sound interesting and "musical".

[dima_76557]

My teacher tells me it's not necessary for me to play with a metronome but when I do use one I feel like my timing temporarily becomes so much more solid.  

Of course. The metronome is a very useful tool as soon as you are ready for it (don't use it before you know the notes of a piece really well). While you cannot learn rhythm with it, it still helps you to attain very good technical control over what you have to play, which is more than useful if you are preparing to play with others. The metronome is also a lot more patient than some demanding orchestra conductors. It's all too often too easy to explain the inability to play exactly to the beat as "musicality".

In the introductory note of his edition of Chopin's works, Mikuli states the following:

In keeping time Chopin was inflexible, and many will be surprised to learn that the metronome never left his piano. Even in his oft-decried tempo rubato one hand—that having the accompaniment—always played on in strict time, while the other, singing the melody, either hesitating as if undecided, or, with increased animation, anticipating with a kind of impatient vehemence as if in passionate utterances, maintained the freedom of musical expression from the fetters of strict regularity.

[pianoplunker]

Of course. The metronome is a very useful tool as soon as you are ready for it (don't use it before you know the notes of a piece really well). While you cannot learn rhythm with it, it still helps you to attain very good technical control over what you have to play, which is more than useful if you are preparing to play with others. The metronome is also a lot more patient than some demanding orchestra conductors. It's all too often too easy to explain the inability to play exactly to the beat as "musicality".

In the introductory note of his edition of Chopin's works, Mikuli states the following:

I agree with you 100 % .   Playing with others is a great way to get the rhythm 

[ted]

My own view is that rhythm is to pulse as the oceans of the world are to a cup of cold water. I was going to record examples illustrating pulsatile rhythm and degrees of meaningful rhythm with no beat, but then I found an old improvisation containing sections of many types. The most profound rhythms to me are not only non-pulsatile but also completely foreign to musical notation.

Rhythm for me is colossal and ineffable, the very essence of music. Why so much is made of harmony, which is combinatorially simple and discrete, I shall never understand.

Anyway, when I was a kid, my parents bought me a metronome, which I was initially very excited about and then haven't used since. I do not find the sound of a clock very stimulating. If this is not germane to the discussion, just ignore it; some of the answers here just attracted my attention.



 

 

[timothy42b]

I believe you should use the metronome briefly every day to keep your internal pulse calibrated.  You should concentrate on playing exactly on the pulse - I hear many people think it's good enough to just get close, but I want the click to disappear with the onset of the note.

I assume you do some playing by ear.  I think this should be done with the metronome as well, albeit at a slow tempo.  Playing by ear tends to separate you from time without you realizing it. 

Just my opinion, others disagree.

Once a year I spend a couple of weeks playing an hour a day with a metronome, but that is for a very specific purpose.  When I start, I think I'm playing well with it, but as I go I start to hear subtle inaccuracies I missed at first, and try to clean them up.