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Should you practice jazz with a metronome?
"In MHO, absolutely not! Why? Because a metronome clicking is not a pulse. What is a pulse anyway? The sound of your heart beating. It produces a throbbing, pumping kind of feeling as opposed to the monotonous, soulless clicking of a metronome. All of the great jazz musicians of the past such as Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Cannonball, John Coltrane, Erroll Garner, etc., display this kind of sound in their time keeping."
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05-09-2014 04:39 AM
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We can start this thread by saying that it's a matter of what you do with it. I think you should have the ability and control to enable you to play accurately, but to become a mechanical extension of an electronic ticker, or to play metronomically is not necessarily a goal to be aspired towards. In some genres, it's essential, or at least more important. In groove or funk music, you need to be able to be locked in if you want to get the gig.
In jazz, listen to the masters, they had the ability to play great time, but it became their choice to use time as one tool of their expressive vocabulary. They were not slaves to the tick tock.
In a recent discussion with Dave Tronzo, a guitarist who's been around the scene for a long time, toured with so many people as a sideman, he said something happened when click tracks became standard in studios: the bar was set by which all musicians needed to be able to "make the click disappear". It happened. It changed the course of the music.
Was it a good thing? There are great studio players who have metronomic precision. There are jazz guitarists who consider it a point of pride and ability to be able to and choose not to. It's a different thing. It makes for a different feel. Tronzo's got great time when he's playing deep grooves. Impeccable. But when he's playing improvisational music, the beat breathes and you're not even aware of it.
It's your choice and it's a matter of individual choice and aesthetics.
And there are those who play bad time because they can't play good time. THAT is NOT a good thing.
I don't use it a lot. I go everywhere with one in my gig bag though, and it's a part of my warm up and work out ritual sometimes, but when the music is live and alive, it's a different pulse I hear. And to feel and hear that takes practice too.Last edited by TH; 05-09-2014 at 06:13 AM.
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Seems like George Benson reports that Wes Montgomery used a metronome to practice... so it cant be all that bad...
George Benson: Still the Coolest of Cats
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Emily Remler says yes ....
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Always with a metronome ... Dont break this rule !!
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Nice lesson. Thanks for posting that. Using the metronome on 2 and 4 that way is also great for getting one's swing comping in order. If you can make a metronome swing, you got something! ;o)
Originally Posted by jalapeno
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They're no substitute for the ebb and flow of a real drummer, but if you can't play to a click, how are you gonna handle an advanced time concepts like "pulse" in a jazz context?
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People have been using metronomes for hundreds of years. The idea that it's some kind of soulless new modern advance is pretty silly, IMO.
It's been essential to my practice. I have pretty solid time now, I think, and can play through tunes without changing tempo with a drummer or metronome, but I didn't get there without a reference point.
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And there's another aspect of using a metronome: you can chart your progress with challenging material. Somewhere in Mimi Fox's book an 'arpeggio studies on jazz standards' she recommends starting one's metronome at 48 bpm. And that's not for just 2 & 4 the way Emily is doing it. Mimi means to start arpeggios slowly to make sure you get them right and even. If you do that, and gradually raise the tempo, you can make steady progress. Guitarists tend to want to play things faster than they can play them right. I know I've been guilty of that.
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I agree with Mr Beaumont and ecj .... at the very least one first has to be able to do it with a metronome. If that doesn't work it won't work in "real life" either.
I definitely need a metronome and by doing a bit of metronome practice every day my time really got better over the past two years (it is still not great though ... to say the least)
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Thank you all!
Usually I use the metronome in 2 and 4, but when I try to play in a solo setting I feel very unconfortable to keep the things going on whitout the aid of the metronome...so I started to have doubts about the use of metronome while studying...
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Practice with and without one.
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Metronomes are for practicing straight time... not for practicing performance. Mikes points are very valid but you need to have Time first. You can't play any version of time if you aren't able to play straight time.
I've basically never used metronomes and my time is always in the pocket... at any tempo, meter or musical setting, because I listen and am aware of time and how it's being used in context.
What you practice will become what you play... if your not aware of context.
Metronomes are great tool for developing reference for understanding time... obviously live performance would be better, but that can be difficult to have for practice.
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I've always had pretty good time. For most of my playing years I never used a metronome. But the past 5-6 years or so metronomes have been my constant companion while practicing. I'm pissed off that I didn't start it sooner. I need to have something to rub up against, to play off of and to bounce around, in the pocket kind of way. And varying the tempos. I use it when practicing soloing on songs, without any other accompaniment. And it has GREATLY improved my playing with drummers.
I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. Chick Corea and Benson say they never use one. Corea says he relies on internal time. That's fine if you've got it to that degree, but for those mortals like myself, I can use it.
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Having taken a few lessons with Mike, I can say that he is very big on developing internal, pulse, groove and flow.....To be honest with no disrespect to him, at times I felt like I was having a lesson with an old hippie stoner getting almost cosmic on me.... Anyway he tries to get you to a space where your rhythms are flowing, organic and natural, not forced.
Basically the lessons consisted of him and I playing congas in a 6/8 type groove taking turns rhythmically improvising on the basic pattern for about a half an hour....then while he kept playing congas, I would pick up the guitar and play along with him freely "keeping the flow in mind and body"....it is in this "state" that he tries to get his students to play from....don't know if it will help you navigate ii V's....but it does make you hyper aware of any subtle deviations within your own "flow" more obvious. Getting into this frame of mind every time you pick up your instrument is a very big deal to him.
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I will say with firm assurance - absolutely! The metronome gives you a reference to a solid external pulse, and using it regularly in your practice will help you to internalize the idea of regular time. You can LEARN to keep time!
When I was taking piano lessons as a child, teenager and later as a young adult in college, for some reason my teachers would not insist on me learning how to keep a regular rhythm. It was always "Just play it as you feel it." Ignore the pulse, use rubato and speeding up to keep it interesting. WRONG! If you don't know the pulse how can you deviate from it?!
As a result, I am severely deficient in being able to maintain a regular rhythm. In fact, one person told me recently, "Your sense of rhythm is so bad that if you were Catholic you'd be pregnant!"
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I learned the hard way that despite having a very good sense of timing it can be tricky when it comes to recording...
I was not use to follow a click or even foot tapping and had the tendency to ignore the click while playing...bad idea!
Internal beat is good but rarely perfect without lot of practice WITH a click; even pro drummers do practice with a click...Last edited by vinlander; 05-09-2014 at 12:18 PM.
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Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Joe Satriani, Jaco Pastorius, Frank Zappa, Steve Vai, Mick Barr, Jason Becker, Jimmy Bryant....all credit their early intense "metronome" work with the development of their incredible technique and impeccable rhythmic sense.
Maybe not everyones stylistic preference but surely this is a worthy endorsement for the metronome...
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A metronome is also useful for practising that most basic performance skill - not stopping because you made a mistake/got lost/saw an email come in/etc etc ...
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I've started using Time Guru. The metronome beat drops out so you can see whether or not you're in the pocket. Been all too revealing.
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Metronome? Hell yes.
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In the age of click tracks and multi-track recording, playing to a metronome or click is important. In terms of studio recordings of a band or orchestra, of course one must be able to follow the conductor or the drummer. One of the disadvantages when recording to a click track is making ritardi or varying the rhythm in a dramatic sense. Much easier live than with the click droning in the background.
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Let me relate an experience I had.
I have been playing for around 8 years and I always have used a metronome but on a straight beat click "1 -2 -3- 4."
I learned to play many songs from many genres.
At some point I had the technical skill to play certain songs and then started using play-along backing tracks.
I found out I could not play with the drummer's beat in these play-alongs and still stay in time, especially with the Jazz play alongs. And the faster they are, the worse it gets! I needed that quarter note pulse.
I still struggle with this and it appears to me that "How" you use the metronome is as important as whether or not you use it.
My 2 cents.
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Using a metronome is essential. It should always be by your side when you practice.
Set it on beats 2 and 4.
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There are many elements to playing music well, so there are many different things a musician can practice.
There are many different useful things a player can practice, depending on what he is working on.
Rhythm and time is not one thing or one element, there are many, many elements to it, from playing a burning solo in an odd meter to comping tastefully on a ballad, to interacting musically with your bandmates, to playing unaccompanied and making the time feel good, to playing rubato and makin it feel good, on and on.
Rhythm isn't one thing that needs to be addressed in one way. There are many different practice activities to engage directly with your sense of time/rhythm and address things in your playing that you want to change.
The metronome is a tool. For each practice activity or goal the player might ask "what purpose does the metronome serve in this setting?" AND "what is the most effective way to use the metronome in this setting?"
I get aggravated by the question of "should you play with a metronome or not?" My response is - during what? With my students we are typically working on something specific, rather than just "go practice music" and I often will advise them to use or not use the metronome depending on what the practice activity is.
And as has been stated, the metronome is a tool, so even when you are 'using' it, there may be effective and ineffective ways to use it.
My point is, rather than a blanket 'yes or no' it just seems really obvious to me that for a musician who gets time to practice often, the question should be 'during which' and 'how?'
Longo's points are passionate but logically inconsistent and intensely biased. Not that I have a bias against that sort of thing...
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Moffa Mithra
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