Author: brycon
Date: 2018-03-23 20:48
Quote:
Yeah, well . . . anytime you get used to something, there's a possibility of taking it for granted. That can work for both relying on a metronome to practice and thinking you don't need one anymore. Same thing for tuners, unless you've got Strauss-level perfect pitch.
Yeah, to piggy-back on Nell's advice, metronomes and tuners are tools to build a sense of pulse and pitch. But just putting your metronome on every beat, or even every eighth-note, then phasing it out of your practice regime doesn't build pulse (likewise with the tuner needle and pitch). It's the underpants gnome problem, that is, there's a gap in the process: step one, practice with metronome; step two, ?; step three, phase metronome out of practice.
So students instead need to do things like put the metronome's beat on upbeats, beat 2 and 4, beat 2 of every bar, etc. Those sorts of exercises force you into subdividing and therefore build a sense of inner pulse. Moreover, they use the metronome as a tool rather than as a substitute for a conductor: the player's now responsible for the sense of time. Or as the great jazz pianist Barry Harris says: "You have to swing by yourself; you can't swing by the drummer."
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The Clarinet BBoard
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