Getting started with the metronome

…and the stages that we go through as we learn to use it.

I can hear some of you at the eye-gym having a roll all the way into the back of your head at the sound of the word metronome. Yeah, I know, we all go through a bunch of stages in our relationship with the metronome in our musical journey. I see it all the time, and I’ve been there myself - let’s talk about it.

Disclaimer: this is not a how-to. This is a post talking about how we start out absolutely hating the metronome at first. We all went/go through that. I can get a little cheeky at times, so be aware if that isn’t your vibe.

The first stage I like to call the resist stage. This is when we are encouraged to use it, but we find all of the reasons to avoid it. When we do finally sit down with it, we feel the resistance and get frustrated with it, because it’s wrong and we’re right. The little math robot that goes ding is wrong, and our ever-changing and ever-learning mind is correct. Of course. So we grumble about it, turn it off, and carry on. Unevenness is our bestie, we can’t really play through something without hesitating or stopping because of mistakes - our own internal tempo of too fast for our fingers and brain is correct though.

The next stage we’ve accepted it as a necessary evil, but we’re still mad about it. We still use it, get frustrated, but we don’t put it away. We just use it and let it make us feel bad about our playing - because we can’t play the speed we expect to be able to play, and set it to…so now of course we have to play it over and over until we get it to that one specific speed, without changing what it is on the metronome.

There’s a lot of mistakes and restarts. Cue the frustration and self-doubt.

This next stage is crucial. Now we’re starting to get used to it, we’re changing to the tempo to something more manageable, and yes, we do still get frustrated sometimes, but we’re starting to see how it kicks our butts back into accuracy. Now we’re starting to see all of the mistakes we used to make without the metronome…and we’re finding it so much easier to not stop through a passage, or oh, this part sounds different…because I was playing it wrong this whole time.

We still occasionally have to be reminded how we can use it for good.

This is when we start realizing how much further along we would be if we had not spent so much time in the resist stage, and got to this point earlier. Resist stage is a canon event - there is no avoiding it like you avoided your metronome for so long.

Finally, we’ve arrived at the acceptance stage. Not just acceptance, but we’re welcoming it into our practice, and figuring out how to use it for good, rather than thinking it’s still a source of frustration.

We’ve figured out that yes, we can just slow the tempo down to what we can play instead of stumbling to something we should be able to play. We can slowly bump it up and eventually can play the faster tempo accurately.

We can use it for fast practice in micro-chunks to help our fingers know what the movement feels like. We’re using subdivisions like it’s our best friend. We’re using it to make sense of polyrhythms, practice a couple measures at a time, and even using it to think about direction in phrasing. We think about it as a member of the Practice Room’s Best Friends Club (PRBFC includes you, your instrument, and your stand and music…if you’re working from sheet music that day).

Practice time is glorious. We use the metronome to our advantage. We no longer flinch at the sound of the beep or automatically scowl at the word metronome. We’re free, we’re finally free!

So if you’re in the resist stage (having admitted it to yourself or not) and need someone to help you along through your musical journey and acceptance of the metronome as a tool of good in your practice (or at any stage), I can help you with that.

If you’re looking for a flute teacher, or music lessons to work with your practice routine, or want to try something new. Click here to enrol in my online flute lessons or click here to get in touch to chat about what might be right for you (even if it’s metronome struggles!)

And of course, the metronome can also be the instrument.