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Re: Metronome for Polyrhythms

Author: Brad Behn
Date: 2018-03-23 01:00

I find it is crucial to be able to do it in my head. If I can't, I will never be able to do it on stage.

By "it" i mean keep time with precision. While I have a fancy metronome, I rarely use it for anything other than a simple tick-tock.

That said, it is sometimes helpful to have something which splices and dices time in eccentric fashion...but for me, that is a rarity.

I remember back in college at Northwestern University many many years ago. We had "pool" auditions. These were three times per year and they were used to determine whether a player did well enough to get in the top group of about a dozen players which would then rotate between Orchestra and WE.

I remember playing Daphnis and a few other excerpts thinking, believing, convinced that I played very well. When I got the comments back from the profs I was shocked that they said my Mendelssohn scherzo didn't have an even pulse, and that my Daphnis rushed.

I thought - NO WAY! I use a metronome EVERY time I practice those excerpts.

Turns out that I relied on the metronome in such a way that in the real world of the fake world of auditions, my internal clock lost some prominence in my body's ability to cope with the circumstances of all that was happening. In other words, I relied on the metronome to do the work of maintaining the pulse for me, and lacked the internal integrity of keeping ROCK SOLID time on my own.

So I started to use the metronome less and less, and substituted the metronome with my mind, and with a tape recorder. I listened back and was amazed by the progress.

In a few short weeks, my excerpts were solid, and my rhythm was improved with integrity.

Brad Behn
http://www.clarinetmouthpiece.com

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