pencil and a digital metro tuner on music sheet

Use your metronome most of the time

ByBret Pimentel

Why should you use a metronome when you practice?

  • Music is about organizing sounds in time. Often my students are so focused on playing the “sounds” (pitches) that they forget about the time part. They learn to play the right sounds in the right order, but not precisely in time.
  • The metronome helps reveal problem areas. Without a metronome, it’s easy to conveniently slow down or hesitate over a challenging spot. The metronome annoyingly reminds you that something went wrong.
  • Working with an audible steady pulse helps develop your inner sense of time, so you’ll play more accurately even after you turn the metronome off.

How much should you use a metronome?

  • Probably most of the time. I use a metronome for at least 80% of the time I spend practicing.

But doesn’t playing with a metronome make your playing sound too mechanical?

  • I know very few musicians who have the problem that their tempos are too steady. It’s important to practice the tempo nuances too, but if you can’t play the line in perfect time then you probably can’t do a convincing accelerando/ritardando.

What about when you’re practicing something that doesn’t fit well with a metronome, such as changing time signatures?

  • Smartphone metronome apps have pretty amazing features these days. And music notation or audio editing software can create anything you can imagine. (For examples, see Adam Ballif’s “Ballif Beats” for clarinet repertoire, or James Barger’s classical saxophone accompaniment track videos.) Time invested creating practice tools like these can pay off in a big way. And in many cases you don’t have to create a metronome track for the whole piece, just for the spots that don’t work well with a standard metronome.

What if you’re “not good” at playing with a metronome?

  • Practicing with a metronome is a crucial and mandatory skill for a developing or advancing musician. It’s time to learn.
  • Start slowly, maybe very slowly, and work in small chunks.
  • Learn to use your metronome’s features, including subdivisions and time signatures.
  • Make sure the metronome is loud enough. If feasible, consider using an earphone, an external/Bluetooth speaker, or metronome features like flashing lights or vibrations you can feel.

But what if you heard a big-shot musician say you shouldn’t practice with a metronome?

  • In my experience, there are two kinds of musicians who think they don’t need a metronome. One is the top 1%, who have spent a lifetime developing world-class musical abilities. The other is beginning and intermediate musicians, who haven’t learned the value of metronome work because they haven’t done it enough. Don’t mistake a top-level musician’s musings for good beginner advice.

Fire up the metronome and go practice!

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    ByBret Pimentel

    I hope you enjoy your first classical music performance! Sometimes the etiquette can seem a little foreign. I’ll try to help you understand what to do, and why classical music fans do things that way.

    The most important thing is not to distract the audience and the performers. Some common concert etiquette “rules” include:

    • Be in your seat before the music starts. Then, stay there until intermission (if there is one) or the end of the concert.
    • Don’t talk, even at a whisper.
    • Keep cell phones silenced, screens off, and put away.
    • No snacks.
    • If you have kids who might have trouble staying still/quiet, consider leaving them at home. (Except for designated family-friendly concerts.)
    • Applaud only at the “right” times. (More on this later.)
    • Avoid unnecessary fidgeting, coughing, and anything else that makes noise.

    Why are the “rules” so strict? One reason is that classical music is usually performed in a special concert hall. Usually the music isn’t electronically amplified. The concert hall’s special design makes even the smallest sounds clear from a distance. That’s good when it’s a hushed moment in a violin solo. But it’s bad when it’s an audience member’s crinkling candy wrappers or ringtone. At an amplified rock, country, or hip-hop concert you can make noises like that, and no one will hear. But at a classical music concert people might hear those sounds even if they are far away. The performers can maybe even hear them from the stage.

    Classical music wasn’t always such a stuffy affair. Some of the music was originally performed in more boisterous settings. And there are people in classical music interested in changing the current etiquette. But for now, the (mostly-unspoken) “rules” lean toward pretty strict and formal behavior.

    And, for classical music fans, it’s one of the things they might love about it. The quiet atmosphere is a blank, unblemished canvas for the musicians to paint on. It’s a chance to hear every fine detail of a performance by highly-trained musicians. It can be immersive and meditative. You might find you enjoy it too.

    To seasoned classical music fans, a disruptive audience member (even unintentionally!) might feel like someone standing in front of the TV during a crucial moment in the big football game. And, unfortunately, they might react like a sports fan, with dirty looks, unkind words, or other rudeness. That’s bad too, because it can scare away potential new fans of classical music. But it probably comes from a place of wanting to experience the music in a pure, uninterrupted way.

    A polite audience member also shows appreciation to the performers, usually with applause (not so much yelling, whistling, “woo,” etc.). But pieces of classical music sometimes have multiple parts, with silence between. It can be tricky to know when is the right time to clap. If there’s a printed program, that might help you figure it out. But if you’re not sure it’s best to follow the lead of some of the other concertgoers. (There’s no prize for being the first one to clap.) Sometimes there’s a long silence between the end of the music and the start of the applause. Audience members may be waiting for the last note to finish echoing in the hall. And they might even wait a little longer to savor the magical moment of silence at the end. Don’t worry. The musicians will appreciate that too, and won’t take your hesitation as a lack of enthusiasm.

    If you find all this off-putting, there are ways to appreciate classical music performances from home instead. If you enjoy it you can work up to an in-person concert. Or you may be able to find free or inexpensive concerts in your area, especially if there’s a university with a music department. You can try one of those and leave at intermission if you’re bored or uncomfortable.

    Thanks for your interest in live classical music, and I hope you enjoy!

  • Wind controllers as “practice” woodwinds

    ByBret Pimentel

    Can you use a wind controller, like the Akai EWI, the Yamaha WX, or the Roland Aerophone, as a convenient and/or quiet way to practice a “real” woodwind instrument, like the saxophone or the flute?

    No, not really.

    You can practice some very limited aspects of woodwind playing. For example, each of those wind controllers has fingering patterns that resemble (but are not identical to) the fingerings of standard woodwinds. If you are in the very early stages of playing a woodwind instrument and still trying to memorize fingerings, I suppose you could use a wind controller to help you with that specific task, to the extent that the fingerings do match.

    The Akai instruments have saxophone, flute, and oboe modes, plus the more flexible “EWI” mode that is quite saxophone-like, and even a couple of variations of a valved-brass-inspired mode. The Yamaha WX5 has several saxophone modes and a flute mode. The Roland instruments are set up to map fairly directly to saxophone fingerings, even going so far as to include some of the saxophone’s more problematic features like “palm” keys. However, with that exception, none even have all the keys needed to learn proper saxophone, flute, or oboe technique.

    (None of the instruments currently has a clarinet mode, presumably because the real-clarinet phenomenon of overblowing to odd-numbered partials raises some complications for an electronic instrument capable of many octaves of range. And none of the instruments has the physical keys to reasonably approximate bassoon technique.)

    Plus, in all cases, including the Rolands, none of them can fully imitate the “feel” of a standard woodwind. Beyond the very basic stage of learning fingering patterns, much of the fingering work that woodwind players practice has to do with nuances of the fingers’ interactions with the keys. Even switching from one flute to a slightly different model of flute can mean having to re-adapt to the keys’ precise locations, spring tensions, etc. Switching between a flute and a wind controller is a much larger leap.

    And, of course, no major wind controller currently provides a realistic approach to tone production. None has a reed that functions as such, and none has a flute-like embouchure hole. There are some superficial similarities like breath pressure being mapped to volume, or a bite-able mouthpiece that allows for something like saxophone-style jaw vibrato (or to the ill-advised reed instrument technique of bending pitch with jaw movement).

    So, can you practice on it? Not really.

    But the good news is that wind controllers (particularly, in my opinion, the Akai EWIs) have lots of potential as instruments in their own right. (If you aren’t familiar, look no farther than Michael Brecker’s playing for an eye-opener.)

    Rather than looking at wind controllers as a “practice” instrument or a low-budget stand-in, consider a wind controller to be an additional avenue for expression. Playing it well requires just as much hard work, but also brings worthwhile creative rewards.

  • Practice fewer notes

    ByBret Pimentel

    I can’t remember where I picked up this tip, but it has been a game-changer in how I practice technically-challenging passages. (If you know a source, please let me know!)

    The idea is this: practice only as many notes as you can keep in your head. So, if I’m practicing an unfamiliar passage, and can only memorize the first 3-5 notes at a glance, that’s the size of chunk I should practice.

    If the music has an obvious or familiar pattern, such as a common scale or arpeggio, I might be able to memorize more of it at a glance, so I can practice a larger chunk. Or, as I get increasingly familiar with the piece, I might be able to hold more of it in my memory at once, and can graduate to longer passages.

    It’s tempting to practice in larger chunks, but start smaller at first to really develop your muscle memory. Gradually build to larger segments as you are able to store them in your short-term memory.

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    Know your foreign musical terms

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    "Excerpt

    I heard some very fine playing during the auditions, but many of the students were fooled by the “senza vib.,” with some going so far as to use fairly extreme vibrato at the beginning of the note.

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  • Individuality, conformity, and music students

    ByBret Pimentel

    I found myself relating to Jennet Ingle’s recent blog post about an independently-thinking oboe student and the subjective qualities of tone. I related both to the student and to the teacher.

    … I had to lecture a student on Sound a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe how uncomfortable it made me.  It is truly such a personal thing.  I felt like I was criticizing his smell, or his personality – it was that delicate for me.

    I don’t actually think I am leading him wrong in insisting that he sound more “American” to fit in at his Midwestern college – but I hated telling him so.   I would love for him to use his own unique voice and have it be accepted for what it is.  But instead I have to encourage him to get more generic, and to sound more like everyone else.  This rubs me wrong, philosophically.

    I have been in the position as a student of trying to do something that I think is a personal artistic expression, and being told that I need to toe the line. I have also been in the position as a teacher of watching a student pursue an individual course that conflicts with what I am trying to teach.

    Should music students (or students in any kind of artistic field, for that matter) be expected to conform, or allowed to explore freely? By letting a student do his or her “thing,” am I incubating innovative, boundary-smashing Art? Or am I failing a student by not grooming them in the established tradition? Read More “Individuality, conformity, and music students”

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    I recently met a fellow woodwind player, and the conversation inevitably turned to gear. We had each recently tried out an instrument by a relatively new maker. My new acquaintance found it not to his liking. “I’m a _____ snob,” he proudly explained, naming a very popular and well-established instrument maker.

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    Your gear choices are your own. But if you find yourself clinging to brand names, and defending those choices with something besides objective comparisons, then you might be missing out.

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