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Re: The Metronome Problem

Author: ww.player
Date: 2010-08-14 18:55

Ronish, rhythmically challenged people will like the William approach. The problem is, it's not the best or even a good one for very long.

William's approach is fine for the first few minutes of practicing a piece or passage. Of course you need to make sure you can tell what all the pitches are. This is especially true with passages that have lots of accidentals and/or go far off the staff. However, the moment you have figured out the pitches, it's time to practice them in time. Here are some reasons why.

If you practice a passage out of time, you are essentially learning it with the wrong rhythm. Studies have shown that it takes many times longer to relearn something that has been learned incorrectly then it would have taken to learn it correctly the first time. In addition, since you are already struggling with keeping a steady beat and rhythms, any practice you do out of time only reinforces this weakness. I could give you other reasons why extended out of time practice is not good, but hopefully you get the idea.

The posters here are right. If you can't play a passage and stay with the metronome, then you can't play the passage. You're only fooling yourself if you think you can (which is very common among students, BTW). You just need to slow down and master a passage at a tempo you can handle easily and then start working faster from there.

"Play the piece at the correct speed until you get all the notes correct and the beat as well as you can, and then turn on "the clicker" for timing accuracy" just doesn't work for hard passages. I have had many students try this and almost without fail a difficult passage will never get clean without a whole lot of slow, rhythmically accurate practice. There are no shortcuts.

I know metronome practice is like pulling teeth for some. However, if you aren't a person that can keep their own beat and play accurate rhythms, it is the easiest and best way to learn. You need to practice with a metronome to develop and then strengthen your own internal beat box. While metronome practice might not be the most fun thing, it is the fastest way to get technically solid, and being able to play music well is fun.

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