Metronome in your head

[mambo4]

On occasion, some players recommend simply listening to a metronome beat as background music, like on your Ipod, while going throughout your daily work. The idea is that it will help you establish an internal reference beat. My first intuition is that it would only help you memorize the tempos you listen to...

can anybody vouch for this approach from experience...did it improve your sense of timing accuracy? did you listen to various tempos? did it improve your relative timing at all tempos?

[rappa29]

Interesting idea....never tried it.

In college I practiced piano a couple of hours a day to a metronome at different tempos. It helped tremendously with my internal meter.

I'd guess it couldn't hurt to listen to a metronome all day to internalize some point of reference of where 80bpm, 100bpm, 120bpm, etc. are.

But ultimately, you have to translate that to your hands (or whatever body part) so you can 'feel' where those tempos are. So I think playing along with the metronome helps more than just listening to 'click...click...click...click' all day without touching your instrument or at least snapping your fingers or tapping your desk or clapping your hand. You have to translate that 'click' to something physical so you're not just hearing 100bpm, but feeling 100bpm. If that makes sense.

Listening to music and noting the meter I'd think is also helpful so you have a musical reference of what 100bpm. So you can relate 100bpm to "Dance To The Music" (just an example, not sure what the actual bpm is to that song) instead of relating it to "click...click...click...click".

Knew a drummer in college that said he'd shed to a drum machine when he was learning drums as a kid. Guy was a human metronome. Completely infallible (sp?) meter and with dynamic feel!

My 2 Lincolns....

[onlyclave]

What worked best for me was practicing everything at slow tempos while tapping my foot or thinking of rhythmic subdivisions. 50 bpm is tough to feel but tapping my foot at 100 bpm is a lot easier and helps me internalize the tempo better.

If I'm playing any swing music I'm always thinking 8th note triplets.

[Ed Fuqua]

If you keep it at click=60bpm, you can listen to the seconds of your life click away as you waste your time.

You are not trying to "memorize" a tempo. Working with a metronome is about developing a visceral feeling of playing/improvising/whatever with a steady tempo. So if you start at a specific tempo, you end up at that tempo.

[MarkTAW]

I really like the Peterson BodyBeat (I've reviewed it in threads here & on Amazon) for developing the internal clock.

I wonder if just going out dancing once a week to different genres of music would help with the timing....

[mambo4]

Thanks for the replies. I suspected the idea was a bunch of hooey!

[Conway]

Ive done this ... I dont know if it helped or not directly but I use to have bad timing and I dont anymore. I would listen to beats on the metronome as I cleaned the house and as I got more and more use to the beats and where they hit I started to just dance a little with the beats and once I got a good sense of that basic beat it wasnt much to change them up. It didnt teach me certain beats so much as it taught me evenly spaced beats whatever they are. Its possible I already had the beats in me and the only thing it did was give me the confidence to move and feel with the beat and made it then easier to play it simply because I found a basic beat and in the privacy of my home it taught my body to be able to be confident in playing that beat and moveing to that beat. timing is learned from somewhere and this cant hurt to try.

[()smoke()]

all it did was make me walk like i had goldfish-heeled shoes while i freestyled basslines over the beats