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RE: metronomes

Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 1999-08-05 17:48

HIROSHI wrote:
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Metronome is very convenient tool to speed up but for other purposes I dislike to use one. If we have superb technical fluency(I do not have) already it will not do anything. Or rather too much dependence on them might jeopadize our sense of rythm we naturally have and make our playing mechanical or monotonous. Especially the sense of free and minute agogics some of the best artists have will not coume up. I doubt Moyse or Cahuzac themselves used metronomes. Maybe it was invented for also-runs players without rythmic sense to catch up the betters in 17th(?) century.

Hiroshi -

I really disagree. You build technical fluency by working on the sequences of notes that you play unevenly or have to slow down for. Identifying these sequences is not easy, and the most efficient method of finding them is to work on scale and chord patterns with a metronome. It's dreadfully medicinal, but if you don't attend to it, you will have constant fluctuations in your playing that are out of control and that you may not even be aware of and can't do anything about.

To play with freedom, you must first have order, so that you know what you're departing from. You should of course never perform like a metronome, but your phrase shaping and nuances should always be exactly what _you_ want rather than being dictated, even partly, by something you aren't in control of.

You are correct that some musicians never go beyond metronomic playing. I have heard far too many recordings of, say, the slow movement of the Brahms Quintet, by some big name players, that have everything perfectly even but completely miss the rhapsodic elements. That's dreadful, but even worse is to hear someone (Thea King, for example) audibly struggling with difficult passages, content just to get through no matter how distorted or uneven it has to be.

Of course you would never perform with, or like, a metronome, but its use is essential to build a solid, even technique. A tree needs roots and a trunk just as much as it needs leaves.

Ken Shaw

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