What features do you want to see in a Metronome?

[Chip Booth]

I do some programming and I am creating a metronome program and would love some input. Yes, I know, there are a lot of them out there on the web, but I am looking to combine all the features of the ones I like into one device. Once completed the metronome can be used on the web or downloaded as a stand alone program. I am not looking to make money on this, maybe at most offering a "donate if you like it" option.

So far the features I am working on include:

- Selectable tempo from 40 to 280 BPM, accessed by both a slider and a numerical input box so you can type in the tempo you like

- Tap tempo input would be nice (in this case it would read mouse clicks)

- Selectable number of beats per measure. I have programmed in 4/4, 2/4, and 3/4. but I think it would be worth it to add a manual input so that any odd number can be used such as 5,7, 11, etc.

- Selectable sounds. What would you like to hear? More cowbell?

- Downbeat of each measure is a different sound than the other beats

- Since I am shooting for the moon, would anyone use a situation where a single measure was divided up with stronger and lesser beats, for example a 6/8 measure has a different sound for beats 1 and 4? Or would it be fine to just use two 3/4 measures? This might makes more sense for splitting up odd time measures such as a 5 beat measure having a different tone on beats 1 and 3.

- Beat subdivision: I currently have it selectable to click on the 1/4 note, or 1/8 note, or 1/8 triplet. Any other commonly used beat subdivision?

-I am adding a feature where the metronome will play for a some number of measures then drop out for a number of measures, still keeping time silently and then come back on again. This allows you to find out if you keep time without the metronome constantly playing. I will allow you to specify how many measures of sound vs measures of silence.

- Visual indicator of the time, what would you like to see?


Any other ideas? I am wide open to thoughts!

[mommythrice]

VOLUME!

I would love something that can be heard over the whole band.

[OldSausage]

I would like one that you can program to gradually speed up after a set number of measures, and go on speeding up by the same amount after the same number of measures continuously.

A nice dark, woody 'tock' sound. Preferably the same on every beat, I find it unhelpful to have a stronger beat marked.

Easy way to halve or double the speed.

[Markus]

I really like the 'drop out' feature, I would fill that out with the options you mentioned. That would attract me to it.

While there is no need to go overboard on sounds, given I normally use my Android phone as metronome it is useful giving some options as some devices don't like the standard tone.

Please let us know when it arrives, if I can use software I can suggest ideas for version 2.0 on ... Sign me up.

[mandocrucian]

I always preferred using a drum machine, or the drum groove presets on a cheap electronic keyboard, over a regular one tone metronome.

However.... at the minimum, there should be two available tones, a low sound and a high sound. And without having to program polyrhythms yourself (so many 8th notes for one rhythm, so many 8ths for the other), there should be presets for 3:2 (three against two), 4:3, 5:2, 5:3, 7:4, 9:4 etc. (with the choice of assigning either the low or the high tone to the voices....ie, 3(high):2(low) or 3(low):2(high).

If you add a third distinct sound, then you can do stuff like "3 against 4 against 5"

And, presets for various time signatures:
2/4, 4/4
3/4,
6/8, 9/8 (3+3+3),
5/4 (3+2 and 2+3),
balkan 9/8 (2+2+2+3)
7/4, 7/8 (3+2+2, 2+2+3, 2+3+2) (the difference is where the low beat-one reference tone is located)
and, if you want ........11/8, 13/8 etc.

(BTW: All this stuff can be done with a music notation program, looping a one bar 2-voiced polyrhythm, or meter, as a sound midi.)

NH

[lonestar_shawn]

What Old Sausage said. The way I practice is play a fiddle tune at a set tempo, then increase a few BPM and play again, and continue until it's so fast I can't play it cleanly anymore.

Now I have an app for the iphone that does exactly this, called Tempo Advance.

[Jeff May]

I would like one that you can program to gradually speed up after a set number of measures, and go on speeding up by the same amount after the same number of measures continuously.

This.

[JeffD]

However.... at the minimum, there should be two available tones, a low sound and a high sound. And without having to program polyrhythms yourself (so many 8th notes for one rhythm, so many 8ths for the other), there should be presets for 3:2 (three against two), 4:3, 5:2, 5:3, 7:4, 9:4 etc. (with the choice of assigning either the low or the high tone to the voices....ie, 3(high):2(low) or 3(low):2(high).

That is a cool feature. I would like that.

[Justus True Waldron]

Could you please please please try to borrow some ideas from this, the coolest metronome ever?


I also do some programming and wanted to make an iphone app based off it, but I am too busy. Chris Thile and Casey Driessen both use one... they are pretty hard to come by though.

Poly-rhythms!

[TonyP]

All the stuff so far I concur with Chip. Especially the tap tempo. Right now we are recording and I'm not local to our studio. So I'm practicing remote, then going in. I find it easier to practice my parts to a metronome, than to the tracks as I get distracted. If it could auto detect the rhythm of a given track that would be great too. I know there should have been a click track in the recording, but that was not agreed to unfortunately.

The drop out feature would be great too, along with being able to program every so many bars speeding up. And especially the wooden tock. I like my old windup wooden metronome way better than an electronic one.

Thanks so much for doing something like this.

[John Duncan]

For me as a fiddle player, I always loved the addition of drone pitches (c,c#,d,eb,e, etc...) on my korg when I was first starting in 2005.

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

[Marty Henrickson]

Chip, I hope this will be available on android.

[mandroid]

electric contacts, and wires to trigger nerve impulses to make my arm keep in time.

well not as much as electro shock therapy ala "one flew over the coo-coo's nest"

ie Jack Nicholson doing film of Ken Kesey's book..

[Chip Booth]

Another feature I will add is the obvious master volume and independent volumes for the different sounds, so that the downbeat can be louder than the other beats.

I am programming this in Director, a sort of fixed platform version of Flash. It can run in the Shockwave plugin in a browser though. There is no current method for porting this to a mobile platform unfortunately, so it will only be computer based.

I am surprised to see much interest in poly rhythms, I figured the average player would not get much out of that. I expect that version 1 will not include them, but I will design the engine to be modular flexible enough to be able to add them without a herculean effort. As Niles mentioned, at some point you are better off using a fully featured drum machine.

The automatic speed up feature does sound like a useful way to practice, I will get that on the list as well. I do that all the time, except that I just stop and reset the tempo.

Justus True Waldron, having watched that video I can't say with absolute certainty I exactly get what the Trinome does, but it appears that you set a lever for a subdivision of the measure, so one sound can play in 4 note subdivision while one play is in three, etc. The information I have found so far says "The three beat-levers (bell, tick, tock) engage beats numbered 1 to 8, singly or in combination. It is possible to get three totally unrelated rhythms going at the same time. They will have beat one in common." Thing that is an interesting idea, and not too hard to design, it basically just means running multiple engines at the same time. If you have any additional info or links let me know. There is one available on the 'bay right now. Also, here is a similar product, a digital metronome called the Quadranome which costs $15 to download.

jhduncan, what type of sound would you recommend for a drone? A sustained electronic tone (sine wave, etc), or a recorded sample of some particular instrument?

[loess]

Chip, would it be possible to program a feature that allows the user to set and manipulate the tempo on the fly using a USB foot pedal such as this one? I use one with Amazing Slow Downer and it's great to eliminate the need to constantly move your hands from your instrument to the keyboard/trackpad and back.

[jesserules]

I would like one that you can program to gradually speed up , and go on speeding up continuously.

they already make those. just ask your music dealer for a "drummer's metronome".

[John Duncan]

jhduncan, what type of sound would you recommend for a drone? A sustained electronic tone (sine wave, etc), or a recorded sample of some particular instrument?

electronic tone works great!

[Bill Burch]

How about the ability to add a real sampled voice to count beats? Instead of CLICK click click click you could hear a male or female count ONE two three four. Helpful for practicing odd time signature music. Give the user the option to chose which beat(s) they want accented.

Bill

[OldSausage]

Give the user the option to chose which beat(s) they want accented.

Bill

And a range of different accents for the voice, of course, for the comedies.

[mandocrucian]

I am surprised to see much interest in poly rhythms, I figured the average player would not get much out of that. I expect that version 1 will not include them, but I will design the engine to be modular flexible enough to be able to add them without a herculean effort.

How does one play quarter-note triplets, or septuplets, or quintuplets (etc.) on an instrument if those timings are vacant in one's mind?

True, the "pimitive"metronome is just a click track - fine for developing tempo consistancy or pushing the boundaries of velocity on tunes/exercises in simple meters (2/4, 4/4, 3/4, 6/8) that aren't confusing.

The way most more-advanced players get polyrhythms in the head/ear is by doing mechanical tapping exercises with the hands and/or feet. One hand taps 3 equal duration taps while the other (or foot) taps 2 (or 4) equal in the same period of time, with the 1 on the L synching up with the 1 on the R. The voice does the count of one side, or the other, until it can shift between the 3 and the 2 (or 4) without losiong it, eventually being able to simultaneously "hear both" as equal.

That's why you have a two-voiced polyrhythm setting(s) - to tap/clap, stomp/count along with, while it slowly composts away inside your brain. And then, later, you can begin playing with the rhythmic elasticity of your note runs over a 'normal' metronome setting. Ther polyrhythmic metronome settings are there so you brain can begin to hear them.

Not to use stereotypes or anything, but have you ever watched any of the clapping games black kids mess around with? The results are some very, very funky rhythmic grooves. And, if that is the stuff you got comfortable with as a kid (either by playing the hambone games, or just hearing it a lot all around you), the 2/4 polka rhythm is gonna sound stiffer than concrete .......ultra-square.

NH

[Chip Booth]

Ok, polyrhythm people, here's a question for you. How do you set the Beats Per Minute when dealing with a polyrhythm? It seems to me that the true value of reference becomes Measures Per Minute, but that isn't what we are used to. I am imagining that I would use 4/4 as the internal BPM reference regardless of the value of the rhythyms actually set, and calculate the total value of a measure then subdivide for the correct values. BPM really doesn't make much sense in this context, so how would you do it?

I am making some progress on the project, but's it's heavy gig season so I am busy, and this is just for fun in my spare time. I will release prototypes as I get to a point where it is coming together though. I suspect the polyrhythym feature will probably be near the last thing I program but I don't see it being a major project once the basic engine is complete.

[August Watters]

Two requests:

1) The sounds should be NEUTRAL -- i.e., not pitched. It's confusing to the ear when the metronome is chirping a G, and you're practicing in B major.
2) It should remember what tempo you last used - turning it off doesn't make it forget.

[JonZ]

Big numbers.

[Chip Booth]

Two requests:

1) The sounds should be NEUTRAL -- i.e., not pitched. It's confusing to the ear when the metronome is chirping a G, and you're practicing in B major.
2) It should remember what tempo you last used - turning it off doesn't make it forget.

Good suggestions. I also thought about having it save the last state when you turn it off, including volumes, sounds, tempos, etc.
At some point all this becomes so much programming (for an amateur like me) that it is obnoxious, but I love all the ideas, and given some time they may all make it in there.

Big numbers

Another good point. Oddly, the interface has been what I have struggled with the most so far. My programming tool changed a lot of features in the last version with almost no documentation. Something as incredibly simple as font size for a text input box simply isn't working right now...

[Chip Booth]

Ok, for Windows users only here is a very basic demo. It does not yet include polyrhythms and does not yet save your settings, but does have most of the other features I hoped to add such as dropping out for measures and speeding up the tempo. Lots of things about this are very temporary such as the graphics (which basically don't exist yet), the general interface, confusing labels, sounds, etc. Pretty much everything but some of the code.

This is a direct link to the executable file. It does not need to be installed, just copied to your computer and run directly by double clicking it. I promise there are no ads, trojan horse programs, or other nasty things to crash your computer, just a basic, ugly, but hopefully functional metronome program. Please give me any feedback you have, especially if you find issues. I know of a few little bugs, or "features" as programmers like to call them, but basic functions seem ok.

chipbooth.com/metronome/Metronome v11.5.11.exe

Screenshot:


Default is set to go silent for 1 measure after 3 audible measures are played. It will not automatically increase the tempo until the "BPM to Increase" value is above 0.