MASTERING THE METRONOME

Master the metronome and you will make it a useful tool. In a warm-up you should simply master playing with the click. Almost nobody actually does this. Do not assume you are the exception. Learn to play with the click and then your metronome will become useful.

1. Learn how to play with the click.

2. Learn how to play musically with the click.

3. Learn how to listen to yourself while playing with the click instead of just listening to the click.

4. Learn how to turn off the metronome and still have great pulse and rhythm.

5. Learn what to do when you are not with the click.

You must be 100% with the clicks to consider this skill mastered, and you must be able to do it from the first click onward without changing the musical sound of the content. This is a big project for most people but it is very rewarding. The pot of gold at the end of the metronome rainbow is that your technique is flexible. This is a paradox, yes, but it is real and you will be amazed at the many things that become easy once you are able to play your material musically with a metronome, without tension. Accept the challenge and enjoy the spoils of victory!

Learning to play with EVERY CLICK involves being fluent and supple with your technique, in charge of your mind, and available to external musical ideas. This skill comes in handy when you are playing in an ensemble, small or large. Learning to listen to yourself while you take into account the external information (just a basic click when you’re playing with the metronome) is a tool you will use the entire time you play with others.

STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING METRONOME SKILLS

 ● Record yourself playing simple warm-up exercises with the metronome and listen to assess if you are playing with the clicks.

 ● Ask a friend if they think you sound like you’re with the metronome. (Never ask an enemy!)

 ● Imagine your metronome is a nightclub beat and your finger is a dancer. Release energy right with the beat.

 ● Imagine the metronome is a very musical colleague you are supporting with your amazing musicianship underneath their leading line.

● Imagine the metronome is your conductor. Find a way to think of the metronome as a musical collaborator.

 ● Imagine there is lightness in your body as you speed up, that your fingers are fleet, let your bow stay in the string as it bounces, and remember going fast is easy.

 ● Imagine there is bubblegum stretching between slow clicks and they are stuck together and horizontal and viscous and plump; fill the whole beat.

 ● Learn from your metronome: if you depart from it, why? what do you need to untangle? (Look RIGHT!)

 ● Learn from your metronome: do you need to re-examine your left/right hand coordination to fix something that’s not with the click? (Look RIGHT!)

● Learn from your metronome: you are responsible for every beat. (Go SMALL!) Learn each beat from the click to the click. This is also when it is easiest to eliminate tension, restore healthy posture, and choreograph physical release into your plan for playing.

 ● Learn from your metronome: can you imagine the relative weightiness of different beats of the bar while you use it? e.g. 1 is always heavy, 2 is always lighter.

 ● Learn from your metronome: can you integrate the hierarchy of weights? Can you play each digit on the beat and its neighbors more lightly, and then coordinate the relative weights of the beat-digits through the measure to underscore the hierarchy of beats through the bar, and can you then organize that over the course of a phrase?

YES. Yes, you can. Organize. Then you will be able to play fast without rushing. You will be able to draw your bow without bulging and jerking, or bouncing strokes indefinitely without tension. You must be the master of your metronome, not the servant of it. When you use it, set it aside and see where you are. You do not need the metronome to play rhythmically and with a meaningful pulse; you need it to hear what needs organizing, to organize, and then to play music without it. It’s fun.

THINKING ABOUT THE METRONOME

If you are forcing something to be (almost) with the metronome, you are not succeeding. Use the metronome to make it feel useless because it’s easy to play with it.

Think and set up before the beat so that the sound actually happens on the beat. It feels simple and easy. Your left and right hands will be perfectly coordinated and supple.

Use longer bows (over more beats) while you are developing left hand metronome skills (for example, if you want to hear how organized your left hand is on a scale, slur 6, 8, 12 notes in a bow, so you can hear if the left hand is even and musically directed). Use repeated left hand fingers while you are developing your right hand metronome skills (for example, to practice sautille repeat each pitch 4-8 times per click instead of changing left hand notes each bow stroke).

Never relate to the metronome in relative terms, i.e. I have to go slower on this beat or faster here. Instead, learn each beat, stick the beats together, have confidence and play with direct intentions, not avoidant intentions. This means you play thinking about what you do want to do, expecting success because you know how to do it.

Train your brain to manage subdivisions, hemiolas, string crossings, shifts and all the other disruptive things that make pulse and rhythm seem hard to manage. Pulse is not the problem when you don’t coordinate a string crossing and something is late—the string crossing is! Set aside your viola if there is a brain problem (changing subdivisions, for example) and sort out the brain problem. You may wish to conduct with the metronome, sing, clap, walk/stomp/step, or silently imagine. Sort out brain problems, sort out the viola problems, and then learn what it feels like to have the pulse feel simple when you put them back together.

To help turn off the metronome, move your attention back and forth from your playing to the metronome and see how long you can go between check-ins with the metronome without losing the groove with it. Once you can groove for a long time with the metronome while focused on your playing instead of the click, think about what your body feels like while you do that. You can gradually split clicks in half over and over and keep the music musical and comfortable and predictable. This is not boring musicianship. It is the door to chosen musicianship because you have cleared out technical obstacles and built in musical line to your technical solutions.

Fix your problems at slow speeds so you don’t train your brain to hear and expect incorrect things. When you get to tempo, you should be able to turn the metronome off and not feel naked.

But don’t practice slow all the time—practice small bites at tempo as often as you can.

Set helpful goals to save time: don’t try to go faster sooner, try to go faster better by figuring out the real problems at slow tempos.

RULE OF THE UNIVERSE: practice bouncing strokes at slower tempos ON THE STRING. Like, ON. ON…on. (It turns out they are mostly on the string while they bounce at tempo, too, and almost universally from the string…)

CHANGING THE NUMBER OF CLICKS FOR SUBDIVISIONS

It can be very useful to change the speed of the click while still maintaining the speed of the stroke. If you find it confusing to figure out how to change your metronome in this way, try this formula:

strokes-per-click TIMES clicks-per-minute DIVIDED BY new-number-of-strokes-per-click EQUALS new-metronome-setting.

For example, if you have been playing sextuplets (six strokes per click) at 90 and you want to practice sixteenths, change your metronome to 135: 6x90/4=135.

Triplets at 90 (3x90) divided by 4 gives you sixteenths at 67.5. (You can pick 67 or 68).

In my daily warm up I say hello to my right hand first with triplets at 120, starting down bow and up bow, and then I move to sixteenths at 135 (starting down and starting up), and then sextuplets at 90 (down). I find it amazing every day that the stroke is the same speed as sixteenths and sextuplets: the sextuplets feel slower. What does this mean practically? Sextuplets are more complicated than sixteenths. Because you have devoted more of your brain to thinking about that increased complexity you have used less of it to manage the physical part: tracking point, bow angle, hair angle, place in the bow, right hand release to allow the stick to bounce—this means your bow will look less organized, too. Particularly in a slow sautille, becoming less specific with these means your stroke stops bouncing and you speed up to get it to bounce in the new (wrong) place. I added sixteenths at 135 to my warm up after including sextuplets at 90 because it simplified the stroke I use in Midsummer Night’s Dream Scherzo. Practice any difficult stroke as simply as possible (duples!) to master the elements of the stroke. This will free your brain to consider the actual challenges: thinking in triplets, string crossings, open strings, etc. You can shortcut your excerpt work if you identify your strengths and fix your weaknesses. Find the simplest way to learn your right hand technique: master the basics, slowly add complexity, and master the stroke.

RECORDING YOURSELF

Record yourself playing with the metronome on easy music, on hard music, on a snippet (first measure of Don Juan; first beat of Don Juan!), on a long bit of music (Daphnis and Chloe 162-167).

Record yourself playing a concerto [the first three pages of Bartok?] with the metronome and then when you listen, see if you can block it out and love your performance (With Bartok, this would be done in sections!). More than any other solo music you perform, being able to play a concerto with a click has practical applications—the orchestra is usually not too flexible.

Record yourself playing without the metronome and then overlay it while you listen back. What do you notice? (Use this judiciously. It’s a funny tool, but really can be useful.)

Record yourself without the metronome and conduct what you hear. What do you notice? Listen to it and conduct what you wish you heard. Is it what you actually heard? Wherever it isn’t, look for the obstacle and fix it. Look from all angles: brain, right hand, left hand, your viola’s quirks. Learn to use the metronome instead of relying on it.

Visit Nathan Cole’s terrific website for another perspective on using the metronome wisely.