Practice with a metronome?

[Jmcoote]

Depends how good your drummer is! I've had the privilege of playing with a lot of great and varied drummers which have helped me find my place in a live setting.

An act I MD uses backing tracks with click. For that purpose, obviously the metronome is essential, but once we're playing, I listen to the drummer and play with him rather than the click.

The only time I practice with click is to help me get some licks faster. When I was starting to learn I was always on the metronome, but you learn to "break time" once you learn to fit in time, as it were.

 

[MrTRobD]

I find the metronome irritating but valuable. It is irritating because one has to focus on the metronome and the sheet and his hands, which tends to make me overload. For that reason I limit the metronome to songs I already know pretty well. Still, I think it has improved my timing.

 

[Kathmarie Oripaypay]

I do sometimes. Because I'm only a beginner. But I find practicing with a metronome such a hassle for me. :3.

 

[petervanpersie]

I suppose if someone has issues with timing it might be a good thing so you can teach yourself how to play and stay in time with a beat, especially if you aspire to play in an ensemble scenario. But only until the ability to keep time has been cracked, then I think it is best to wean yourself off using it at all.

 

[Kase Villand]

The metronome is a tool, and like every tool it has a scope of good uses, and a whole lot of things you can use it for that it won't help with - some that it'll hurt.

I'm picking up keyboards again after almost 2 decades of playing drums, bass, lead vocals, and almost a decade of recording engineering. I had 8 years of piano lessons as a kid, but stopped just before high school, so it's been a long time. Trying to get thru the old Bach 2-part inventions is like pulling teeth these days- almost all the muscle memory is gone. So in this case, technique practice is helped greatly by a metronome. I turn the speed way down until I get thru the exercise perfectly, then slowly dial it up. The metronome keeps me honest, and once I get the feel for the patterns, I can speed it up.

But as far as performance, I agree with the no-click crowd. Locking yourself into a tempo like that often makes the music very cold. In one band I was in, the drummer couldn't play with a click track to save his life - but he was a great musician, very intuitive, and our music had an ebb and flow to the tempo that felt perfectly natural and complimented what the rest of us were doing. When we'd go in to record, it would drive the engineers nuts because they couldn't copy and paste stuff around wherever they wanted, but so what? We weren't there to make their lives easier, we were there to make music. Drastic tempo deviations are hard to make sound good, but the music has more life to it when the tempo is allowed to breathe a little.

So in my opinion, both sides are right.