Jeff via NuNo said:
If a metronome is considered an important time developing device, how is it that nearly every great musician in nearly every style of music acquired good time without using one?
I would be interested to know what the proof of that assertion is. Or, do I have to attend a clinic to find out?
Jeff via NuNo said:
The top jazz musicians since the 1920s swung hard without practicing with a metronome. The top studio players since the 1940s, the big bands of the last 70 years, the busiest studio musicians in New York and Los Angeles for 50 years, the best rhythm & blues musicians America ever produced, and practically every well know rock musician since the 1950's have never used a metronome to get their time. Nearly every great bass player including Jaco Pastorius, Paul McCartney, Sting, Steve Swallow, James Jamerson, Will Lee, Bill Dickens, Larry Graham, and Stanley Clarke didnt rely on a metronome to get good time.
Since I can't verify any of these assertions, I can't comment on them. Even if everything that is said here is true, that has no impact on the assertion made by myself and most music teachers that metronomes can help improve ones sense of time.
Of course, some people at one end of the bell curve already have a perfect sense of time and people at the other end, there are probably people who may not be able to learn good time. However, I think that for the majority of players out there, practicing with a metronome can improve one's sense of time.
A sense of time is just like any other aspect of playing music or any other learned task. It is a skill that can be acquired. You can't learn to feel a good sense of time unless you have a standard to compare it against. (except perhaps for the minority of people who for some reason are born with a pefect sense of time) Otherwise, how would you know if you're wrong and be able to correct yourself? It's like practicing basketball by shooting free-throws with no basket. If you don't know how off you are, how do you learn to correct yourself?
I'm not saying that practicing with a metronome is the only way to learn good time. If you have a good drummer who can play in perfect time, that should be just as good.
This is a very important and personal subject for me. When I was taking lessons, every teacher I ever had told me to play with a metronome and I ignored them. Subsequently, I was unable to join or stay in any decent bands because my was so bad. It was just about 3 or 4 years ago that I finally tried to join another band after 5 years of just playing by myself and I had an audition with the drummer. Afterwards, he asked me whether I ever played with a metronome. It was clearly a rhetorical question since he already knew the answer.
After that I started practicing with one more often and I almost immediately noticed an improvement in my time. What started out with the frustration of constantly rushing or lagging the beat (which is, I think, the reason why many players give up on metronomes early on), quickly became excitement when I figured out that I could learn better time and that my problem was always that I practiced without any metronome or constant time source. Now, I play in two bands with one of the best drummers in the Bay Area. We do extensive looping which requires a good sense of time.
Good time can be learned and having a good time source to play against is the best way to do it. Most people that take Jeff's advice to not use a metronome will likely suffer because of it. I seriously doubt that any of the people that Jeff mentioned as not having learned good time from a metronome would take Jeff's militant stance against them. In fact, Jeff is the only professional that I've ever heard say that metronomes can't be used to improve one's sense of time. I understand that there is some mythical "proof" of that assertion that can't be explained here but only in one of his clinics. I am still awaiting some explanation of what that proof might be.
A sense of swing or being able to play behind or in front of the beat is a skill that requires a foundation of being able to understand where the beat actually is. One can argue that it's all a matter of feel but feel is nothing more than an internalized understanding of something rather than the conscious thought about it. Internalizing good time is what it is all about. It is something that can be learned.
It's easy enough to prove that metronomes can improve one's sense of time. I won't go too much into detail about it here. I did so once in Jeff's forum and it was subsequently erased along with the rest of the forum. Suffice it to say that all you need is a metronome, yourself, and a means to record yourself. Practice with a metronome for a while and compare the recordings against ones you made before you practiced with a metronome. I suggested doing this via recording yourself digitally on a computer and actually measuring timing differences but I think that a purely audio comparison would be adequate. I would bet that the majority of people performing this experiment would notice an improvement in time after only a week.
In conclusion, writing off metronomes based on what Jeff says is as serious a mistake as writing off fretless or extended range basses because of what he says about those. I was a big fan of Jeff's for many years (from the mid 80's up until about 2002) and would buy any recording that had him on it without a second thought. He is obviously a phenominal bass player and among the best. His articles about playing Bach (which mention playing it with a metronome, by the way) were a big influence on my decision to learn the 6 Solo Cello and the 6 Solo Violin works (which I am now able to play to varying degrees of skill). However, the things I have heard him say in his forum I feel are inexcusable. Of course, that's a big part of the reason why his forum no longer exists and why something similar apparently occurred at The Bottom Line.
"Along with great power comes great responsibility." or something like that. If someone is in a position to influence a great many people, they should do so responsibly. Making various claims as fact that are clearly based on opinion is a very easy way to lose my respect. Apparently, I am not alone on this.
- Dave
but i am wondering is he right?should we use metronome or what?
when pratice and learn for example a new scale ,it is wrong to start with a metronome!but when that scale is fully memorized i think its good to use it 
´
Music is a language, isn`t it?
