“Satan's Ticker” - The Metronome

Many Piano Students Hate Them but Used Properly Metronomes are Great Tools

The metronome, that thing that sits on many pianos, is the subject of a love/hate relationship for many piano students. Most adults who took piano lessons in their youth likely had some experiences with the metronome, often bad experiences. In this essay, I hope to offer advice that will make the metronome your favorite tool for improving both your piano practice and piano performance.

What good is a metronome?

Metronomes are used to assist the pianist's rhythm. They do this by being completely objective. They are not thrown off track by any problems the piano student might have. They just keeping ticking along at whatever pace you set them. If your piano music is easy, the metronome can slow you down. If your music is hard, they force you to keep going. Thus, the metronome helps you avoid the most common rhythm problem of all - playing the easy parts fast and the hard parts slow.

What's that you say? You can't play the hard parts so fast? Well, then you had better set your metronome more slowly until you can keep up during the hard sections of your music. In this, the metronome is also completely objective. It has numbers which are “beats per minutes” and you simply find one low enough to be able to keep up all the way through. My advice is to pencil this tempo into your music. Next practice maybe you can beat it. Always keep track of how fast you are playing properly and eventually your “piano practice tempo” will be as fast as your would like to perform the music.

What to purchase?

Get a metronome that is loud enough to be heard clear over the sound of your piano. This is by far the most important consideration. Another thing to consider is the metronome's range of bpm (beats per minute.) A wider range is definitely better, but wider in the higher direction. For example, a metronome that will tick at 280 bpm is more useful than one that only goes to 220. Let me explain why.

Let's say you have piano music with a constant eighth note LH part. You could set the metronome so 1 tick meant (represented) a single eighth note. Thus, you might have 8 ticks per 4/4 measure, which is, in this case, much easier to follow than 4 ticks per measure. Since you will have twice as many ticks per measure, however, you need to set your metronome twice as fast to get the same tempo in the music.

Of course, if your metronome doesn't go that high, you are out of luck. By the way, don't be intimidated by the ticking of the metronome at a fast pace. Once you play the music you will see that it really doesn't sound all that fast, no matter what the metronome sounds like.

Electric, battery, windup - not important compared to these other items. Also irrelevant is any particular metronome's “definition” of tempo marks like "allegro." Did you know that various company's metronomes has DIFFERENT definitions of these. Use your own definitions.

When to Use it and When to Quit Using it

Use the metronome to do these two things when they are a problem

Force you to even out your tempo

As I said above, piano students, both those learning at home with online lessons AND those learning with a live teacher in private piano lessons, have a strong tendency to play the hand parts slowly and the easy parts rapidly. They practice this way and it becomes a VERY bad habit, one difficult to break. How do you know if you are playing evenly and keeping the beat? Easy. If you have a digital piano or portable keyboard, record your piano playing and then play it back. You'll hear it easily. If you don't have recording ability, get a family member or friend to clap along with your playing. It will soon become obvious if you have uneven playing.

If you do find yourself uneven, then try just starting the metronome and then turning it off. This develops your sense of evenness. If this doesn't work, then keep the metronome on for the entire piece. Makes it mechanical but it will be EVEN and that's an improvement. Once evenness is a "given" you can turn off the ticker.

Keep track of your progress in learn the music

I've had many piano lessons where I instructed the student to slow down and instead they played their piece at the same tempo. For various reasons, the student could NOT actually slow down. In these cases, I set the metronome and found the slowest setting they could keep up with and remain accurate. We penciled this into their books as their current state of success. I then gave them a higher tempo to strive for next lesson.

You can do this at home. It's very satisfying to learn this way, as you can see your progress each practice and know for sure that you are improving. Finally, you are at full performance tempo and the job is done. If you have no trouble staying even, then just start the metronome to get the feel of the current tempo and turn it off.