Using a Metronome for practice

Whistle
21

Absolutely, I spent 20 yrs playing before I met the metronome . But Ive been a rhythm player first and foremost. Its not the folk who dont need it that matter, its those that do… if you see what I mean. And even I after 20 yrs of playing dance music found the metronome helped tighten up my bass playing.

Some instruments are by their very nature rhythmical, once you start a rhythm the instrument almost plays itself, other most certainly are not. Fiddle is one whistle and flute another , I recently met a fiddler who cant play a phrase at the same pace as the next one! Its really painfull to listen to.A complete absence of rhythm, played too fast with plenty of added scratch. :smiley: ouch and unfortunately not the first or the last Im likely to meet, sigh.

IMO. There is one simple way to find out if you need to use a metronome to help you tighten up your playing. Try it , if you can comfortably play with it then your doing fine, if you cant, you need to learn to. I mean James Kelly recommends them, so does Kevin Burke.
Besides, metronomes are simply a replacement for a tight time keeper, for those of us without a band leader or drummer to keep the beat the gnome does the job, and wont kick you out if you keep getting it wrong :smiley:

22

Good points, Will. It’s a great automatic foot tapper with invisible feet and nicer shoes. It does the tapping for you, so you can concentrate on your fingers and spare the strain on your tootsies. Especially if you’re tapping 8 to the bar!

23

Talking of which, It was learning to play a drum-kit that got me into a metronome, taping my foot to the floor, single bass and double bass drum 1/8th notes ! there is no room for mistake, none! To any unbelievers I always say try it, try tapping your foot to the metronome, its not as easy as you might think! It requires constant reference, constant listening, there is no spring in the floor to help. Just like many unconscious tasks, Develop a simple routine whereby each movement is as close to the next as possible this allows a regular and stable rhythm to happen naturally.

24

Generations of Irish session players have learned their craft with a metronome, but their metronome was the session itself, which remains the best way to pick up the rythm and swing of the music.

The trouble starts when somebody goes off on their own and practices tunes without any sort of outside rythmic guidance.

We’ve all heard it at session: ITM newbies who for whatever reason don’t get the idea that it’s DANCE music and that it needs to have an even beat. Some are so wild rythmically that you can’t tell whether it’s a jig or a reel that they’re playing.

A metronome can’t replace listening to actual good ITM players but it’s better than nothing.

25

Ive met many a player who sounds good in the session where they can rely on others to maintain the rhythm, but stand them alone and their rhythm is hopeless! They ride the wave of the music and never need to develop strong reliable rhythm. when they notice themselves getting out of time they correct them selves, but this is after they have lost the beat . IMO to play dance music it is essential that each unadorned note is positioned in the right place. This place is determined by the physical capabilities of the dancers. We are putting the notes under the feet of the dancers.

IMO The bottom line is you need to be able to stand alone and play for a set. This is the proof that what you do is traditional dance music. correct speed, lift and rhythm.If people cant dance to your music, solo, then you need to work on your rhythm.

The session is a modern phenomena, a relative newcomer to the world of trad. It is merely one small fragment of the fuller picture .
KNOWING that your rhythm is stable and correct allows you to set a steady course through the meanderings of others, to maintain this dance rhythm despite what others might do, despite where they try to lead you. To sense where others start to speed up or slow down because you have developed a fine understanding of Timing. In a way Timing is finding the empty space between notes.



All those traditional players had mentors, the old wise and experienced. This is often unavailable in this day and age . Internet sites allow people who dont have personal access to the old wise heads to at least have some access.


As Panceltic said, the crux of the matter is to listen to traditional players, Willie Clancy, bobby casey, paddy caney, Seamus Ennis, Johny Doran, Dennis Murphy, the list goes on. Solo players

The problem with just playing along with cds etc is they are not there in real life to wack you on the head with their bow when you mess up, and in sessions we get used to ignoring out of timers, unless they are really obnoxious and loud.It rare that someone will actually stop playing and single you out for fecking up the rhythm! If they do, that lesson will be with you for a life time! but unfortunately even 10, 20 yrs of sessions wont fix your intonation or rhythm. Only you can do that, at home, in the woodshed.

26

I agree wholeheartedly. Learning to play along with a metronome helps one learn to play along with other people, because you get accustomed to listening to something other than yourself and keeping pace with it.

I disagree with this. If rolls are a problem and benefit from playing with a metronome clicking every 8th note, then practice the rolls completely separate from the tunes. Don’t kill the swing of the tune.

There are some of us who do NOT benefit by removing all swing and then trying to reintroduce it. I think I’m part mynah bird, because I easily get stuck mimicking what I hear. :wink: If I initially learn a tune without any swing, that’s how I’ll hear it in my mind and I’ll have to work hard to overwrite that. I avoid listening to simple read-off-the-sheet-music midi players, too, because they sound so wooden playing straight 8th notes and I don’t want to put that audio image into my head. The music I play is written (if it’s written at all) in a simplified form. Beginners to traditional music, especially those with any classical music background, are in particular danger of misunderstanding and playing things exactly how they’re written. We’ve all heard that done, and we know it sounds wrong.

Having the metronome click only twice per measure, whether in 4/4 or 6/8, works best for me and allows the music to swing naturally while still staying in rhythm. I would recommend that to a beginning player. When you do go out to play with other people, you’ll adjust your swing to how the group swings each particular tune – sometimes a lot, sometimes very little, but always some. Fiddle tunes with no swing become simply violin music. :smiley:

27

Maybe you’re right Sarah. I know a fiddler who practices his reels slowly and strongly dotted, in other words played like hornpipes, so that they will have a strong swing when played up to speed.

However I’ve done most of my listening to uilleann pipers, many of whom play the eighthnotes quite evenly. I’ve been playing along quite a bit with a bootleg tape made at a session where Paddy Keenan is playing several jigs and the eigthnotes are like the clicks of a metronome, including his rolls. It’s helped my jig playing tremendously to play along with Paddy in this way. The swing or lift Paddy uses is extremely subtle even at half speed.

I’ve spent many hours transcribing tunes from uilleann pipers slowed down to halfspeed and it really jumps out when I come across the rare piper who strongly swings his jigs, dotting the rythm.

28

The swing still needs to fit within the confines of a regular beat. A gnome click per 1/8th note still leaves plenty of room for subtle swing.

The crux of the matter is what you listen too. Listen to the tunes played by masters, day in day out, then when you find a tune you like, its quite possibly that it catches your attention because you already know it from listening. This is definitely the case with me, I spend thousands on CD’s building up a huge collection over the years. Immerse yourself in the music till it wells up inside you demanding expression :slight_smile:

I also advise folk to listen to other instruments to appreciate the many different ways the tunes can be expressed and to develop a personal style. Just listening to trad fiddle, or whistle etc or worse just one particular stylist can limit your understanding of the freedom within the traditional form. You might get the impression that this one way is THE way, but its not, there are so many ways , find your own.

29

I’m having a hard time imagining this. You’re saying that if you set the metronome to click once per 8th note, and you play along with that so that your 8th notes happen right on the click, there is still room for swing? Maybe I just lack experience or imagination, but, to me it seems like you haven’t left any room for the swing.

Since you brought up the matter of “what you listen to,” can you point to recordings that provide an example of this swinging while still on-the-spot-with-each-8th-note?

30

Its pretty simple, if you take the 6 even clicks of a jig , they leave plenty of time between each click, which is more obvious when done slowly, so elongate the first note , , and the next 2 are short, the 4th is stretched again but a bit less, 5,6 short.

If you vocalise this as nyaah ba da, dya ba da , for a banjo/ fiddle a slide up on that first note give you the feel.

Richard gave some examples above.

31

Is that Gaelic for “diddly diddly”?

32

Yes, that sounds simple enough, and it’s what I would have expected if someone had said, “imagine what a jig sounds like with some lilt to it.” No problem there.

My confusion is re: your earlier remarks, which I still don’t understand, because I think they contradict the “nyaah ba da” example. I thought that you had been proposing that the metronome should click once per 8th note. Yes? So, aren’t you saying that the metronome is clicking 6 times per measure, on a jig? So, if that’s going on, the metronome is going “na ba da” but you’re playing “nyaaah ba da”, then you’re not playing in time with the metronome, now, are you? Wouldn’t the metronome be more of a hindrance at that point, since you’re playing with a swing but the metronome is not?

33

No, I think it’s the way Fred Flintstone would lilt a jig. Not sure where the “dooo!” would go though – maybe that’s just for slip jigs?

34

I should stay out of this since I’ve never owned or used a metronome. I was taught at an early age to tap the foot. If you lost the beat, the foot of one of the respected elders would exaggerate the beat to get you back into the tune’s tempo. If you were lucky enough to be next to that elder they might tap right on top your foot. Enough personal folk lore and tales of the built-in metronome.

My point is that you don’t see the toe tappers dancing out all of the eighth notes generally (or have I led a sheltered life?). In jigs it’s two taps per measure. Reels may be two taps per measure or four at times. You always tap on the accented beat. So I don’t understand why you would set the metronome to beep at every eighth note and have to fight to get the lilt of the tune. Why wouldn’t you set the metronome to beat on the ones and twos as HDSarah suggested earlier? What am I missing?

I like and understand the “nyaah ba da, dya ba da” suggestion. That works. It doesn’t matter what is vocalized, be it diddley, doodley, deedley or (as they did when I lived down south) “crocodile, crocodile” for jigs and “alligator, alligator” for reels, as long as you get the accents and number of syllables right. Maybe someone could invent a new metronome that plays back one of those little mnemonics at 120 beats per minute.

WWJD, what would James (Brown) do? “Hit me, yeeow!”.

Feadoggie

35

Its a drummer thing, but honestly there is no need to fight the click, it just keeps steady time. Anyhow you can get an online met that you can adjust the swing as much as you like if you want
. The advantage of the click per note is steadiness . if you want then you can lilt it in many ways and ornament it in many as well. Once you can nail each beat on the head you develop an understanding of placement and the amount of space within the notes, the possible disadvantage of 3 note per click is that those three notes can be poorly positioned within the bar. A dancer will tap out all six notes, a bodhran will also and maybe add triplets etc.
My suggestion of course does not discount click per beat, that is simply another possibility.
1/8th Note per click, double timing, means that once you can do it successfully another level of accuracy results. After all, why not just have one click per bar?

Take a reel, thats 8 notes per bar[1/8th] All possibilities can be used, 1 per click, 2 per click 4 per click, 8 per click. They are all usefull. But 1/8th per click allows no room far laxity, no room for scrappy timing and unstable rhythm. 2 per click could be lilted in may ways, a scotch snap is an extreme example, 4 per click and only 1 of those notes could be on time. 8 per click could be useless! 1 on time and everything else jumbled up untill 1 comes around again!

People foot taping can be as good as useless too without the guiding mentor or click. If you can tap your feet in time and play in time then a metronome has little to offer. But it can still highlight problem areas. is your 1 really precisely on time? can you actually play a regular rhythm with your instrument? a regular rhythm that is the same as others regular rhythm? a drummer with accurate timing can be playing 1/16th notes while the tune is going 1/8th, if your 1/8th are not actually correctly placed then chaos can be the result or just scrappy -together playing!


Ive sat in countless sessions and many times rhythmically it can be all over the place with one person holding it together while others fit in as best they can, Im sure you too have been there. The sound is not cohesive, or together. Even great old players can get out of sync when they concentrate on ornamentation to the exclusion of rhythm. take Joe ryan and Gerard Commane, or Jack and Charlie Coen, Even Bobby Casey or Paddy Canny at the odd rare time might lose the rhythm for a moment . Of course this does not detract from their genius, but it does detract from the music as dance music. I hasten to add these guys are some of my all time favourites!


The nyaah lilting is not like the others you mention; aligator, or diddly, it indicates where the first note is stretched, where the nyah fits in, and it can easily be done with accurate timing, click per 1/8th note. all note are not equal, but some are more equal than others :slight_smile:

Its not about maintaining a simple jig rhythm, but about getting the nyah into the playing while remaining dead on time, as a drummer or dancer would be. Drummers and dancers are obliged to keep the rhythm, unlike fiddlers and whistlers, pipers and all who can play a-rhythmically if they choose.

36

Great info here everyone! Thank you so much for your insight and humor!!

I’m trying to get my metronome down–I’m having a hard time doing the song with the ornaments in it…they mess me all up with my timing..so that means I am probably not doing them correctly. So, back to the drawing board!

Would you suggest that I practice with no ornaments and get my beat down first? Or just go slower and keep my ornaments in the places I have put them.

I really don’t like to memorize songs before I put the ornaments in…as I have a hard time putting them in after I learn the song. I have “Off to California” down so good–but now I can’t seem to get the ornaments in..anywhere! My fingers just won’t go there? Is this a Newbie status problem??? Will it go away like the a cold???

Thank you!

Nancy

37

IMO, yes learn the tunes with no ornaments, so that your rhythm is spot on, all the while thinking of different ways to ‘say’ it , phrase the tune. Some players and regional/personal styles ornament little to none, concentrating on a driving rhythm and lift strong enough to get yous flying!. The only reason you find it hard to ‘put the ornaments in’ is because you dont really know the tune. Once you can play it then IME you will find you naturally express yourself with ornaments, they fall off the fingers.. .

Ornaments are simply that, they are what you can choose to do once the structure is internalised.
There is an approach, as typified by the British military pipe band tradition of learning tunes with set ornaments. However this is contrary to the Gaelic spirit which is exemplified by the Irish tradition of personal interpretation and to be honest it does seems only few pipers really are able to approach a high level with this approach, and it can leave little room for personal expression. I am a great fan of GHB music, the level some players achieve is remarkable, John Burgess, Jim MacGillivray to name but 2.

The approach of learning the tunes, with integral ornaments is however , IMO, limited, there seems little option to vary those ornaments as we would in Irish music, one time a cut, another a roll, third time a plain note, 4th a slide, fifth triplets etc etc etc its all by the book, regimented, controlled, the power is with the judge, the written record, Historically the performers have been to some extent disenfranchised by the ruling class, those with the money to control.

It does seem that there has been to some degree standardisation within Irish music as well, but it really is contrary to the very ethos underlying the art form; that of personal expression, creation, within and even without the boundaries of the form.

It is quite acceptable to play the tunes without ornaments, with lift and drive. Its dance music, it serves a purpose as part of a communal activity. Sadly this has been lost in some places but luckily not everywhere. A tune with all the ornaments and frilly bits without the ‘solid centre’ is of little use to a dancer.IMO You really need to be able to stand alone and play for the set dancers. if you cant do this you need to learn to. Precise accurate rhythm, drive and lift. once you have these, once you have power in your playing, then sure go ahead ornament to your hearts content, but not to the exclusion of the rhythm.

Listen to the old fellas, try clarebannermans you tube for classic stuff.

38

To my way of thinking, that depends on what is meant by “ornaments”.

Irish music doesn’t have much in the way of “ornaments” if the word means “something superfluous to the melody which is added for decorative effect”.

I don’t consider cuts, pats, and the rolls which are built from them to be ornaments but rather articulations done with the fingers (rather than the tongue).

So, using Off To California as an example, the first bar or the first part with its pickup notes could be played as:

DEF# | GF#GB AGED |

but I and probably a lot of other players would put a long roll on G at the start:

DEF# | GGGB AGED |

these three Gs being G(cut)G(pat)G, in other words a “long roll”.

To me, that’s not an “ornament” because nothing superfluous or decorative has been added to the tune; rather that bar begins with three Gs which are seperated by finger action rather than tongue action, and I would practice that with the metronome exactly as I would if I were playing the phrase GF#G rather than GGG.

By the way, this being a hornpipe and played with a strong bounce (dotted), I would have the metronome click four times per par.

39

For a whistler/fiddler or fluter a roll might be part of the tune, but for a banjo/mandolin. guitar its an ornament which couldnt possibly be part of the tune because these instruments cant roll.
The whole underlying ethos in ITM is freedom to ‘improvise’: freedom to interpret and ornament as you choose.

MY understanding of ‘the tune’ it is that which can be played by any instrument in the traditional lexicon, in this understanding trebles rolls cuts pats are all ornaments.

Ornaments are what individuals choose to do with the tune. The tunes can be played on banjo, concertina, box, fiddle, whistle etc If it cant be played on all the instruments it is an ornament.

40

Yes if you’re playing an instrument on which you don’t or can’t seperate melody notes with gracenotes, the two beginnings of Off To California I gave are different only in the melody notes involved, GF#G in one case and GGG in the other.

On the whistle, flute, pipes, or fiddle the GGG seperated by gracenotes is a “long roll”. But, there’s no change to the timing of the melody notes, as the timing of the GGG is the same as the timing of the GF#G.

I don’t play plectrum instruments so I have no idea what those would do in that sitution.
If what you do is to introduce extra notes (a “triplet” of some sort) then that would be an “ornament” I think, as it’s superfluous to the melody and has a decorative effect.

Likewise an Irish wind player could, instead of playing GGG seperated by gracenotes (the GGG in the normal timing of the tune), could shove in a faster roll with a melody G behind it so that there are four Gs in the space of three: |GGGGB AGED|

If learning Off To California with a metronome I wouldn’t be putting stuff like that in there.