Metronome

This month I resolved to make a serious attempt to use the metronome in my work on the Tune of the Month. The TOM is The Temperance Reel, which is a fairly straight-forward Irish reel. Long runs of eighth notes, relatively easy fingerings, maybe a few tricky parts; but overall, a good one to focus on steady rhythm.

I have two freeware metronome programs that I have used but not liked. So step one was to find a metronome I would actually use (and not have to pay for). I went through CNET's download offerings and just was not very excited with any of the freebies. Then I started looking for an online metronome. There are lots of them. Many are written in Java or require Adobe Flash, which I won't knowingly use unless I am sure of the integrity and security of the website. So I didn't even try any of those. Others are more up to date.

The one I found that I currently like and have been using steadily for three days now is at https://www.flutetunes.com/metronome/ . It just gives you a basic "click" sound, which is fine with me. I don't need 99 different percussion noises. But it does have adjustable volume and (of course) tempo. Its visual tempo cue is much better for my brain than any of the others I have tried.

A side benefit of that site is its library of tunes. There is a huge overlap between flute tunes and mandolin tunes so a lot of them are quite mandolinable. You can download PDFs of the sheet music or midi files that can be loaded into TablEdit or TEFView.

My plan of attack on the Temperance Reel:
1. Get the tune in my head well enough to be able to play it all in pieces and most of the time all the way through without a trainwreck.
2. Set the metronome at 70 and play it over and over again until I am thoroughly bored. (I am playing in 4/4 with eighth and quarter notes, quarter notes = 70 bpm.)
3. Set it at 90 and get it right.
4. Set it at 110 and get it right.
5. Keep pushing to the end of the month.

I am now on step 2. The big surprise to me was that it is not easy to play it that slowly. I think (re)learning the discipline of staying with that enforced beat takes some practice. I think that discipline is important. I'll probably move up to step 3 tomorrow.

ps: if an Irish reel is written in 2/4 or 4/4 and its melody is mostly eighth notes, it would probably be played at 180 to 200 bpm for dancing. I am hoping to get up to 170, but 150 would be more realistic for me.

edit: I couldn't dance a reel if my life depended on it, so what do I know about the proper tempo? My 180-200 number is based on internet research via Google, so it must be correct, right?

Hank, I always get confused about the proper pace of metronomes. Here is how I understand it for ITM. 112 bpm is a common tempo for dancers.

For a jig that is a click for every three eighth notes, (2 clicks per measure).
For a reel that is a click for every four eighth notes, (2 clicks per measure).

The reel feels faster because you are squeezing in 2 extra notes per measure.
The problem I have is I use the metronome to help me maintain pick direction. So I set my tempo to click every downstroke. This has helped me keep pace and control pick direction. However I thought I was getting pretty fast until my teacher told me I wasn't really playing at 120, I was playing at 60.

I also found it helpful to set the metronome to match my playing speed. Then work my way up from there. It takes some practice to learn to listen and pace yourself to match the metronome.

BJ

Oh man, that's fast. By my reckoning that 112 translates to 224 the way I have been counting. I have a long way to go. Oh well, let's just call it an air in 4/4. Or maybe dirge.

But I continue to have high hopes and great expectations. Onward and upward.

I just listened to about 20 youtube videos of Temperance Reel and I used my metronome app "Tap" function to tap along with the music of each and it gave me my "tpm", taps per minute. I got tempos as low as 75 (or 150) and as high as 140 (280). Tony Rice was right up there at about 135 (270) but it was a smooooooth 135 (270). By far, most of them fell in the 100-120 (200-240) range. (Andy De Jarliss was flying at 140 (280) ).

In one group, I think they were Canadian, sorry, didn't take names, the accordian player was stomping his foot at 230 taps per minute and the bodhran (sp?) was tapping his at 115. So, stop! stop! we're both right!

Nonetheless and regardless, today I managed to keep up with TablEdit's midi player at 70 (140) on Temperance Reel but I was on the ragged edge. Couldn't handle (145). Maybe tomorrow. A single (or 2) bpm per day increase in speed is easy to contemplate. That would put me right up there with Andy by the end of the month, no problem.

I do think using the metronome and/or playing along with TablEdit is helping me push higher.

Today I saw the following video in another thread out on the main forum. It makes a lot of sense.


Now I feel like all the reels I have notated as being in 4/4 with eighth notes are just plain wrong. So I am trying to think of everything being sixteenth notes in a 2/4 time signature. In concept, no problem; in practice, well, not so easy.

I set the metronome at 60 so I could play sixteenth notes at the same tempo as I would have been playing eighth notes at 120. It was hard at first. Still is, but I think I am wrapping my subconscious around it. Maybe my music reading training from 60 years ago is getting in my way. I may have to retranscribe the reel I am working on from 4/4 to 2/4 just so the notes will look right.

It's a bit like the problem of thinking of the eighth notes in a jig being triplets. I guess once you get it pounded into your subconscious, you just forget about it and play.

Interesting video, thanks

Henry, rather than re-transcribe everything, just change the time signature to alla breve or cut time—⍧ or 2/2 instead of 4/4. Keeps the note values the same as what you're used to, but it denotes two big beats per measure, the half notes, rather than four. Pretty much every reel or hornpipe I have seen is written in common time (4/4), but if you listen to them, they really are in two.

If you are working with the metronome, another good trick is to take your handy pencil and put a slash above every beat—where you want to be when the metronome clicks. Keeping the notation you have, this would be a slash above the first eighth note and one above the fifth (or their equivalents in quarters, halves, whatever you have going.)

These pieces have more of a flow played in two, regardless of the tempo at which you play them. In four, they can become either martial or pedantic rather than dance-like.

Louise, I tried putting a slash mark above every beat with a sharpie. Now my whole monitor is blacked out.
Actually, it turned out that what I wanted to do was very easy in TablEdit.

I obviously need the practise of reading, feeling, playing 1/16th notes because it is much easier for me to play it in 4/4 at 150 bpm than in 2/4 at 75.

I have been using the metronome all month as I work on Temperance Reel. I am quite sure it is helping me in two ways. One is just the discipline of playing to a steady beat. The other is in providing me a way to guage progress in upping my picking speed. The latter is quite important because I, and probably anybody, do not increase speed capability in big noticeable jumps. Starting a practice tune at a comfortable speed and then bumping the metronome up a couple clicks at a time until the wheels start coming off gives you a concrete measure of how fast you can go. It is surprising to me that I continue to see slow but steady increases in the speed I can get up to. Increases that are not individually noticeable but over a week or two are quite significant.

Oh, Henry. Time to get out that bottle of White-Out and restore that monitor to its pristine condition.

"My mama invented that stuff."



~ Michael Nesmith